Boggs is an assistant professor in the Department of Entomology, College of Food, Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, and an OSU Extension commercial horticulture educator.

Q: How did the Asian Giant Hornet get the name “Murder Hornet”?

A: Well, you know, entomologists are kind of laughing about that. Presumably, the name came from Japan, with an entomologist over there that said, “You know, the sting is so painful. It’s like murder.” I’ve never seen it in writing to say that’s where it came from. But it has caused a bit of a challenge among entomologists because, you know, it’s not murdering anything.

Q: How did the Asian Giant Hornet get to the United States?

A: We don’t know for sure. I mean, there’s no smoking gun. But this insect behaves very much like our own native bald-faced hornets, for example in yellowjackets, and that is at the end of the season, queens emerge and they look for a place to spend the winter. So we might imagine a queen flying off to find somewhere protected for the winter and maybe accidentally making her way into something – they got loaded into a shipping container. But it does indicate that we need to be aware that this hornet can travel. And that’s very important.

Q: Why should we be concerned?

A: The concern we have is that it is a hunter. It is a meat eater and it is a major hunter of other insects. And what they’ve seen in Japan, is that they go after European honeybees. Now, I use that very deliberately because Asia does have its own honeybee. They have the Asian honeybee, but they’re not as good at gathering nectar and producing honey. The European honeybees like we have here are very good at that. So if you have an insect that will fly in and within a few hours just completely destroy a hive … it’s been very destructive on the European honeybees that beekeepers are keeping in Japan.

Q: Are they really “giant”?

A: They are the biggest hornet in the world. When you see pictures of them, it’s not an exaggeration. You pull out a ruler, an inch and a half is pretty darn big, but I would imagine if they’re flying around they probably look about one foot long. People that have seen these do say that they are a very big insect, and they buzz when they fly.

Q: Are they aggressive?

A: No, they’re not any more aggressive than our own yellowjackets and bald-faced hornets. I just stated that in a very deliberate way, if you grew up like I did, I learned firsthand bald-faced hornets can be very aggressive if you throw a rock at their nest. That’s the same with these Asian giant hornets. They’re not aggressive by themselves. As far as, is this a killer or is it going to murder us and all that? No, it’s not any worse than our natives. Again, if we leave them alone, they’ll leave us alone. However, if they do sting, we can’t look past the fact that this is a giant hornet. It has a big stinger. It does deliver a lot of venom.

That does bring up a concern. It’s a concern we have whether we’re talking about paper wasps, yellowjackets or our own native bald-faced hornets. That is we don’t want people who are allergic to bee stings to get near one of these things, any more so that we would want them to get near yellowjackets’ nest because of that extra venom they pack. It’s a big insect, you’re more likely to have a problem if you have an allergy to bees.

Q: What are the main characteristics of Asian Giant Hornets?

A: They are a social insect. So you have a colony and that colony’s objective is to make more hornets overall. Starting out in the spring, each one of these colonies are started by a single queen. She’s all by herself. She has to go out and gather materials to build the nest, then once she starts laying eggs, those eggs hatch, she has to tend to the young. Now, this is where what do they do really comes into play. These are meat eaters. Now the workers go out, what are they doing? Well, they’re going out looking primarily for meat. Here’s another behavioral trait, they appear to be more of a forest insect, and when you think about that, it makes sense for meat eaters because you have multiple canopies, a lot more meat out there.

Q: Do we have similar hornets in Ohio?

A: Yes and no. As I mentioned before, we have bald-faced hornets and yellowjackets. You think of these black and yellow small insects that sting, which may make a nest in the ground or occasionally in the wall of a house. Those yellowjackets are highly aggressive against their nest. Bald-faced hornets, that’s the stinging insects that make those round balls of paper that are hanging up in trees.

So far, all the pictures that we’ve gotten where people are suspecting it’s an Asian Giant Hornet turn out to be another non-native called the European Hornet.

So we have another non-native that’s already here. They don’t seem to cause much trouble, but they are big. They look like a yellowjacket on steroids. We’re probably going to have a lot of folks mistaking the European Hornet for the Asian Giant Hornet. It’s not as common as bald-faced or yellowjackets, but it can be mistaken for it.

Q: How will we know when the Asian Giant Hornet reaches Ohio ?

A: Well, that’s an excellent question, one that we’re very proud of here in Ohio. The Ohio Department of Agriculture has a website, they’re the regulatory agency that would be involved if these Asian Giant Hornets are found in Ohio. A person can make a report on this website but there is one stipulation, you need to have a picture. The reason for that is pretty straightforward. ODA would like to identify the insect before committing resources to investigate. We are the only state beyond Washington State that has a reporting site for this hornet, and reporting it’s very important. We’ve gotten almost exclusively images of European Hornets, which is good – we would rather have people send a hundred images of something else, as opposed to missing that single image that could be an Asian Giant Hornet. We urge that people take pictures and report it.

More information is available at https://bygl.osu.edu/node/1544

A nearly two-minute trailer for “TBDBITL 141” premiered at halftime of the annual Spring Game at Ohio Stadium. The documentary will take viewers inside the 141st season of the marching band, from summer practice to tryouts to the makings of their legendary halftime shows.

“The Ohio State University Marching Band now has 141 years of history behind it, and every season is, in its own right, a story of the remarkable accomplishments of our students," band director Christopher Hoch said. "Our 141^st season was an incredible journey, and I’m thrilled that ‘TBDBITL 141’ will feature our students and the tradition of excellence they maintain.” 

The documentary is a passion project for filmmaker and University Communications Director of National Broadcast Media Joe Camoriano. A former national anchor and reporter, video producer and director, Camoriano wrote, produced, directed and edited three previous documentaries: “Jewels of the Sun,” “Vanessa’s Story” and “Prodigy Brothers.”

“Millions of people are familiar with The Ohio State University Marching Band as a result of their jaw-dropping halftime performances on YouTube. But not very many people are aware of how much time and effort goes into these shows,” Camoriano said. “With ‘TBDBITL 141,’ I wanted to pull back the curtain and give the public an opportunity to go on a personal journey with these students. I hope after watching the film, viewers will be able to feel what I felt after seven months of spending time with them. That is, how special and unique this program is – there really is nothing quite like it.”

The season was a special one for the marching band, featuring historic trips to New York for the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade and to the Rose Bowl. The Macy’s parade was a first for TBDBITL.

Camoriano and his team had exclusive access on the trip to New York and followed the band members throughout the special week, which culminated in a halftime show during Ohio State’s 62-39 drubbing of Michigan and Urban Meyer’s last home game as head football coach.

Konner Barr, a fourth-year strategic communication major, was selected as drum major for the 2018 season. He’s one of the central characters in the documentary.

“It was a really cool experience and the thing I’m looking forward to from this documentary is just being able to go back and look at these memories,” Barr said. “Because the seasons are a very long period of time and you forget a lot of things that happen.”

The documentary is currently in post-production and will have a theatrical debut in the fall.

Head coach Geoff Carlston said his team wanted to be surprised when they opened the doors to their new home. The reaction to their first visit to the new building this weekend was exactly what he hoped it would be.

“A lot of them were crying. They were hugging. There was excitement. Everyone handles it a little bit differently,” Carlston said. “We had a few that were just in awe. And I mean there were definitely tears.”

Carlston offered Ohio State News a behind-the-scenes tour of the new 3,700-seat arena. The arena is the new home to seven varsity sports: wrestling and the men’s and women’s squads in volleyball, gymnastics and fencing. In addition, it will serve as the occasional venue for women’s basketball as well as the host site for local tournaments and camps.

The Covelli Center now serves as the dedicated training facility for men’s and women’s volleyball. The teams will benefit from up-to-date locker rooms, offices, training and treatment rooms.

Inside the dedicated locker room is a team theater. A giant television, flanked by new speakers, sits in front of two rows of movie-style seating.

“We’ll do a lot of team meetings here. Obviously, we’ll go through our teaching and our game plan and practices and all that will be in here,” Carlston said.

Next to the theater is a player’s lounge. Carlston said the room is still awaiting some finishing touches as the team finds ways to personalize it.

“As we make it more of our own and let them put their touches on it, it will feel even more and more like home. I’m super excited for that part of it,” he said.

The new building is already helping the women’s team compete in the future.

“We have a top-five recruiting class coming in that’s built on the dream that has now become reality,” said Carlston, adding that he and his team are thankful to have a new home in the university’s Athletic District.

Gratitude is a central theme to his coaching philosophy and part of a breakfast discussion every morning.

“So when we’re breaking bread, we’re talking about ‘what are you thankful for today? What are you thankful for? What are you grateful for?’ And all of them, at one point or another, have said this building, this space, the ability to be here.”

Jennings Family Wrestling Practice Facility

The Covelli Center is also home to the Jennings Family Wrestling Practice Facility. The new site includes a state-of-the-art practice facility, along with offices for coaches and student-athlete space.

“It was always the right time for student-athletes to be in a place that is as cool as they are,” said wrestling head coach Tom Ryan. Executing a plan to upgrade space for the team “took the leadership of this current administration. So I’m really grateful to this administration and to our donors who stepped up.”

Ryan said the new facility is already drawing attention for Olympic and national wrestling events.

Horujko took action to stop a violent car and knife attack on the Columbus campus in November 2016. The award for Horujko is the highest national award for valor presented to a public safety officer.

“Thanks to Alan, not a single innocent person died that day. Officer Horujko, we are forever grateful,” Trump said.

Horujko joined police and firefighters from across the country at the White House. Barr said only a handful of the more than 2 million first responders across the country receive the medal of valor each year.

“Each of them has had their fight-or-flight moment and each of them has stood their ground,” Barr said.

Horujko shared his thoughts about the attack in a video in 2017. At the time, he credited a university police training program for preparing him to respond to the attack.

Horujko said he was at the right place at the right time to save lives that November day.

“There was a plan that had me there that day,” he said in 2017. “It seems like the stars aligned in some way to put me right there where I was needed to protect those people. So that’s why I’m just very grateful that happened.”

The medal of valor is awarded to public safety officers who have exhibited exceptional courage, regardless of personal safety, in the attempt to save or protect human life. Public safety officers are nominated by their chiefs or public safety directors and recommended by the Medal of Valor Review Board.

The state has also honored Horujko. The Ohio Attorney General presented him with the Ohio Distinguished Law Enforcement Valor Award in 2017.

Crews are nearly finished with the construction for the relocation of Cannon Drive, with the road expected to open at the end of June.

“We’re about 85 percent complete with construction. Our last step is to open that last section between 12th Avenue and [John] Herrick Drive,” said Tom Ekegren, senior project manager for the Office of Facilities Operations and Development. “Once that’s opened, the sum of the road will be done.”

The project is part of Ohio State’s Framework 2.0 master plan. The new Cannon Drive will help provide flood protection, create 12 acres of developable land and a north-south connection between King and Lane avenues, and will add green space in the Olentangy River corridor.

“The move of Cannon Drive is really about protecting the university and, primarily, the health sciences district and the medical center from the 100- and 500-year flood events,” said Mark Conselyea, associate vice president for FOD.

The project began Sept. 5, 2017, and the first phase of construction is expected to run through autumn 2019. Part of the project is a pump house powered by three massive pumps that can drive 27,000 gallons of water per minute away from the campus and back into the river.

“By doing this project it raises the protection of the campus and removes the hospital from that floodplain,” Ekegren said. “Phase one is what we’re doing now between King Avenue and John Herrick Drive. It takes that first step to take it out of that floodplain.”

Owens’ legacy is hard to miss at The Ohio State University as well.

“In the track world, it’s impossible not to know Jesse Owens,” Gray, a fourth-year biology major, said. “He’s everywhere. He’s on the wall in the gym and our track is [Jesse Owens Memorial Stadium]. I mean it’s impossible not to know your history about him.”

That’s why Gray was excited and a little surprised when he learned he broke a school record owned by Owens in the 100 meters. The record time had stood for more than 80 years.

“I didn’t think it would be me that would break it, to be honest. I wanted to, but seeing all the greats that have come before me, I was like ‘I’m not going to get it,’” Gray said.

Gray broke the record with a time of 10.17 in a race at the Gamecock Invitational at the University of South Carolina this month. Gray won a silver medal in a race he said was a struggle.

“The gun went off and I was almost in last place. I had to fight all the way back. [The race] felt fast. But not that fast,” he said.

When he crossed the finish line, his time of 10.17 beat Owens’ school-record 10.2 set in 1936.

“It was big. That’s something a lot of athletes have tried to do over the years and now it has finally been done. It’s big for him,” said Joel Brown, assistant track and field coach at Ohio State. “We knew when he came here, he had talent to do it. But you talk about Jesse Owens, who won four gold medals in the Olympics, to break his record, you know it’s a milestone.”

While the 100-meter race is one of his strengths, the 200-meter dash is where Gray excels. He broke a 26-year-old school record at the same event on the same day.

The records add to what is a decorated career at Ohio State. Gray is an eight-time Big Ten champion and a five-time track and field First Team All-American, and has won more than 37 races in his career as a Buckeye.

“Nick has been a pleasure to work with. He’s a great man and he is value-added to this program,” Brown said. “He’s showing up and being prepared every day for whatever is on the plate for him for training. And also he is handling his business off the track because that’s important, for both of those things to be in line with each other.”

Gray is studying to be a dentist when his sprinting career ends. He hopes to start dentistry school at Ohio State after he graduates in a few weeks.

Both Gray and Brown acknowledge the school record that he owns may not last for last for another 80 years. It may not last this season. The team has a talented second-year sprinter in Eric Harrison, who is capable of shattering records on his own.

And if Gray is the holder that record time for only a short while, he’s prepared.

“Records are cool and all, but I know it’s coming down.”

A study of 32 Florida restaurants found that customers left more negative remarks on comment cards on days when it was raining than on days when it was dry.

Results showed the odds of patrons leaving very negative comments versus very positive comments were 2.9 times greater on rainy days.

In two other online studies done in other parts of the country, results suggested that unpleasant weather left people in bad moods, which was then linked to them having less positive views about the restaurants they visited.

“Restaurant managers may see more than the usual bad reviews on certain days, and it may have nothing to do with the service or the quality of the food,” said Milos Bujisic, co-author of the study and assistant professor of hospitality management at The Ohio State University.

“Restaurants can’t control the weather, but it may affect how customers review them.”

The research appears online in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research and will be published in a future print edition.

While weather was not the most important factor in how customers reviewed their dining experience, it can’t be ignored, said study co-author Vanja Bogicevic, a visiting assistant professor of hospitality management at Ohio State.

“It may be a smaller factor, but it is something that managers should pay attention to,” Bogicevic said.

In the first study, researchers examined the comments cards left at the Florida restaurants, all part of the same national fast-casual chain.

The researchers rated the comments on a five-point scale from 1 (very negative) to 5 (very positive). They also examined weather data from the National Climatic Data Center for each restaurant’s location on the days comment cards were left.

They examined 14 different weather variables, but only three were related to customer comments – rain, temperature and barometric pressure.

Higher temperatures – which in Florida, can often mean it is uncomfortably hot - were linked to more negative comments.

Higher barometric pressure was also connected to negative comments in Florida, which is also probably different from much of the country, the researchers said, because rising pressure is often associated with fair weather. In warmer climates, high barometric pressure is often linked to higher daytime temperatures.

Two other studies conducted online offered more insight into exactly how weather affected customer evaluations.

In one study, 158 people from around the country who visited a restaurant within the last 24 hours were asked to rate and describe the weather conditions right before their restaurant visit. They also rated their own mood and what kind of “word-of-mouth” review they would give the restaurant – in other words, whether they would recommend the restaurant and tell others positive things about their experience.

Results showed that people who described the weather as more pleasant also rated their mood more positively. Better moods – and not the weather itself – were related to more positive word-of-mouth.

A third study specifically targeted people living in the Midwest, Northeast and Northwest regions of the United States, where the weather is variable over the year.

This study involved 107 people. Some were asked whether they visited a restaurant in the last seven days during pleasant weather, and some were asked if they had visited a restaurant in unpleasant conditions (very cold, raining or snowing).

Participants who reported eligible conditions for the study then answered questions about their mood that day, their dining experience and whether they would give good word-of-mouth to the restaurant.

Similar to the previous study, pleasant weather elevated consumers’ moods, which was linked to a better rating of their restaurant experience and better word-of-mouth compared to those who visited in unpleasant weather.

Bujisic noted that bad weather may affect not only the mood of customers, but also the wait staff and others who serve the customers.

“A rainy day may put employees in a bad mood and that will affect their service,” he said. “Managers need to explain that to their employees and work to keep them motivated.”

In addition, managers may want to find ways to boost customers’ moods during unpleasant weather, Bogicevic said.

“Think about creative strategies to make customers happy. Maybe offer a free drink or play more upbeat music,” she said.

Other co-authors on the study were H.G. Parsa of the University of Denver, Verka Jovanovic of Singidunum University in Serbia and Anupama Sukhu of the University of New Hampshire.

The Buckeye Dairy Club runs the annual Milk-a-Cow on the Oval event. The club is a student organization supported by the Department of Animal Sciences enabling students to network and learn about the dairy industry.

Carmen, a Jersey cow from Waterman Dairy Farm, was out near Bricker Hall with members of the club to meet students, faculty and staff. People were able to milk the cow, learn about dairy production and pose for selfies.

“Every year we bring a cow out on the Oval to get main campus students in touch with their agricultural side,” said Lexie Nunes, president of the Buckeye Dairy Club. “It’s not an everyday thing that they get to see or milk a cow. We like to make that connection between the [agricultural] campus and main campus students and talk about the dairy industry a little bit and teach them a little bit about what we do in Buckeye Dairy Club.”

While the event is entertaining by its very nature, Nunes said it serves an important purpose.

“A lot of people are concerned about where their food is coming from and are concerned about how animals are raised. So we’re here to spread the word that everything we’re doing is humane and we are doing our best to raise our animals happy and healthy and provide a wholesome product for consumers,” she said.

Rose Tyler, a second-year student majoring in psychology and French, was excited to try milking a cow for the first time.

“It was a cool experience. I’m really glad I got to try it kind of just impromptu like this,” she said. “It was easier than I expected. I thought that there would be more instruction to it and it’d be a little more complicated. But it’s pretty simple and self-explanatory.”

Nunes, a senior majoring in agricultural communication, said it’s important to dispel misconceptions about how cattle are cared for at Ohio State. While Carmen is in a protective chute for the time she is on the Oval, that’s not the norm.

“Normally, she’s in a nice, soft, bedded barn. She has access to food and water all day long,” she said. “She’ll be in a nice temperature-regulated barn with fans or curtains if it’s too cold. She’s normally relaxing and enjoying her day.”

The annual event is entertaining for visitors as well.

“We love checking our social media after the event because everybody loves taking selfies with Carmen and posting their experience on social media,” Nunes said. “So it’s really exciting to see the positive feedback that we get from it.”

The new building will be located at the corner of East 14th Avenue and Pearl Alley just east of The Ohio State University campus. The $29 million building is part of the new 15+HIGH project being developed by Campus Partners. The five-floor, 52,000-square-foot WOSU headquarters and studios is expected to be completed by early 2021.

“This new headquarters will be transformative for WOSU, but more importantly it significantly expands our ability to serve this growing community and the Ohio State campus,” said Tom Rieland, general manager of WOSU Public Media. “Much more than just a structure, this space encourages public engagement through experiential activities and events, it’ll be a place for the community and students to create their own stories, a collaborative public space to discuss the primary issues facing our community and the world. This new facility provides a new model for public media across the country.”

The building will feature an open 2,200-square-foot community studio, an expanded newsroom, broadcast studios, a performance studio and a state-of-the-art media learning lab. Rieland said the facility will enable WOSU to expand and enhance its programming for the more than 2 million citizens it reaches through television, radio, digital channels and its WOSU Classroom services.

Ohio State Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron said the new headquarters will help connect the new 15+HIGH district with the heart of campus.

“Location matters. Proximity to campus will allow hundreds of students to have an experience with WOSU every year, creating regular connectivity to that academic core that we’ve referenced,” he said. “WOSU will truly be reknit into the fabric that is the culture of this campus in a wholly new way.”

The 15+HIGH development will include a University Square public space and a “signature building” that features direct sightlines to The Oval and William Oxley Thompson Library. A reimagined Pearl Alley will serve as a retail corridor with new stores and restaurants.

“The 15+HIGH project has been a dream for six years now and it’s taken a tremendous amount of work to get to this point,” said Keith Myers, vice president of Planning and Real Estate for Ohio State. “This is the first building to really come out of the ground here at this most important of all corners for the university.”

The project is part of the university’s Framework 2.0, a plan for the physical environment of the Columbus campus guided and informed by Ohio State’s Time and Change strategic plan.

“This building will be a phenomenal addition to campus – a place of energy and innovation connecting to faculty and students through creative programming,” McPheron said. “It will grow student internships and mentoring and disciplines as diverse as journalism and engineering and allow Ohio State to tie to the greater community through teacher workshops, summer camps, media creation and much more that we have yet to even imagine.”

So far, individual and corporate donors have committed more than $9.5 million of the “New Place. New Space. New Experience.” campaign goal, including previously announced foundational gifts from Andy and Sandy Ross, L Brands Foundation and American Electric Power Foundation.

“It’s really a reconnection to the community and reconnection to the Ohio State academic core,” Rieland said. “So that’s all important. Most of all, it’s really an affirmation of public media for the next hundred years in central Ohio. This is a commitment to public media that’s really important at this time.”

Figuring campus could always use a little extra love – a bit of unexpected brightness and encouragement – atmospheric science major Eliza Alpeter brought the Kindness Rocks Project, a grassroots kindness initiative, to The Ohio State University on Thursday night.

The idea behind Kindness Rocks is to spread encouragement and goodwill through rocks that people transform from ho-hum to inspirational works of nature-meets-art that they deposit here and there in hopes of bringing a smile to a stranger.

Imagine stumbling upon a pink rock that says “Comparison Kills Creativity” in the middle of one of those days where you just can’t help but feel a little less-than your art school classmates, for instance. Or struggling with the idea of abandoning your dreams of becoming a doctor and happening upon a purple stone encouraging you to “Be patient. It will all work out.”

“It’s not really about the rock. The rock is just a way for people to connect to one another. The project is really about kindness and compassion and connection,” said Kindness Rocks founder Megan Murphy, who traveled to Columbus for an appearance at the Gateway Film Center that coincided with Thursday’s rock-decorating event.

“Really, this project is a call to action for people to…be more mindful of others and in the end hopefully make this world a kinder place,” said Murphy, who lives in Massachusetts and started the project.

Murphy lost her parents at a young age and in moments of introspection sought signs from them on the beach near her home. One day, she grabbed a Sharpie and started writing hopeful messages on beach rocks for strangers to find. Since then, the Kindness Rocks movement has picked up steam around the world.

Alpeter, who grew up in Hilliard and is in her third year at Ohio State, said that she was looking for an uplifting campus event in her role as a member of the Residence Halls Advisory Council.

“I know we all are stressed out about school and exams and if you just have something that says ‘Good luck on your exams’ you’re like, ‘Wow, I needed that today’ and it will help people just be happier,” she said.

Gretchen Rudolph, who is from Toledo and is in her second year studying communication at Ohio State, said on Thursday night that she’d already thought of places to drop her brightly colored rocks for unsuspecting fellow students.

“Places where I’ve kind of felt like ‘Oh, I just really need some encouragement right now,’ like walking out of a specific building and doing poorly on an exam. I know I would have liked to see a rock there,” Rudolph said.

Who knows, maybe you’ll stumble across one today.

For more information on Kindness Rocks, visit www.thekindnessrocksproject.com

The MacArthur Award was instituted in 1989 to honor the top U.S. Army Senior ROTC battalion from each of the eight Cadet Command brigades. The awards, presented by Cadet Command and the Gen. Douglas MacArthur Foundation, recognize the ideals of “duty, honor and country” as advocated by MacArthur. The award is based on a combination of the achievement of the school's commissioning mission, cadet performance and standing on the command's National Order of Merit List, and cadet retention rate.

Ohio State’s Army ROTC was rated best overall after a review of its performance in five categories: Overall Commission Mission Achieved, Order of Merit Scores Achieved, New Contracts Achieved, Cadet Summer Training 2018 Performance, and Accessions Distinguished Military Graduates Achieved.

During the award ceremony on March 26, University President Michael V. Drake congratulated the cadets and thanked them for their leadership and commitment to excellence.

“Your dedication and courage are exemplary. We appreciate that very, very much.

“This award is a reflection of all that you have achieved and the example that you have set for our future generations of aspiring leaders here at The Ohio State University and beyond,” said Drake.

The award was presented by Col. David C. Welch, 7^th Brigade Commander, U.S. Army Cadet Command, who told cadets that competition for the MacArthur Award is tough – there are only seven other battalions in the nation, out of 275 battalions in the country, to receive the recognition. He also expressed thanks to the university for their partnership.

“I am thankful for The Ohio State University ROTC program and Ohio State University leadership who have continued to demonstrate that each is doing their part in the preservation of our freedom through the investment in these Army ROTC cadets – the future leaders of our army.

“The Ohio State University is a leadership factory,” said Welch.

Joining Ohio State as winners of this year’s MacArthur Award are Virginia Military Institute, the University of Vermont, the University of Virginia, University of Texas at Austin, Embry Riddle Aeronautical University and Pacific Lutheran University.

A shiny, black recreational vehicle was parked in front of the Recreation and Physical Activity Center on a recent Wednesday afternoon. The RV packs enough horsepower to crisscross the Buckeye state in comfort. But it’s intellectual muscle that really powers the new Mobile Design Lab.

“It’s a 34-foot bus that we’ll be able to take to all of our campuses and do outreach across the state around design thinking, mobile app development, coding, and how to use technology in teaching and learning as a student, as a professor or staff,” said Director of Learning Programs & Digital Flagship Cory Tressler. “So it’s really a physical, mobile design space for us, but also an outreach vehicle to educate everybody in our community.”

Digital Flagship is the university’s digital learning initiative to support educational innovation for students. The rollout of iPads to first-year students across the Columbus and regional campuses was one part of a larger effort to support student success through technology.

“[Our primary audience] is Ohio State students but also faculty and staff, as well as our outreach as the land-grant, flagship institution for Ohio. That means everybody in a larger sense,” Tressler said.

The land-grant mission includes using technology to solve community problems in central Ohio, across the state or at Ohio State, and preparing the workforce of tomorrow. It also means putting skills into the hands of students so that they’re better prepared for careers that haven’t even been thought of yet, Tressler said.

“So that’s the core mission of Digital Flagship – to better prepare our students for success here as well as into the future,” he said. “And this is a big part of that because this is the hands-on lab where you can come and learn all of these things.”

The design lab won’t be limited to the Ohio State campuses. The lab will provide outreach to K-12 schools, the larger Ohio community and extended campus partners.

The Mobile Design Lab will help students and faculty boost their digital skills with the support of on-site coding education, app development experts and state-of-the-art technology. Coding will be taught using Swift, Apple’s intuitive programming language for macOS, iOS and other Apple products.

Liz Webb, a second-year student majoring in public affairs, is one of the Digital Flagship student mentors. She said the lab is designed for those who might be intimidated by the technology or the idea of learning to code.

“So we’re going to have staff who know how to code and other students who are really well versed in the app development process and break it down with them,” Webb said. “We’ll show them the different steps that they’ll need to do and really work with them to make sure that they understand each part.”

Inside the Mobile Design Lab are large video screens for projecting at events or teaching larger groups. Smaller workstations can support individual users. Tressler said all it takes is imagination.

“So if you have an idea, which a lot of us do, for the next great mobile app, you’ll be able to learn what that means,” Tressler said. “In a physical environment like this, that means hands-on instruction in coding or hands-on whiteboarding of ideas.”

The lab’s seating on comfortable, scarlet and gray upholstery supports small group discussions and a large L-shaped couch area is available for team projects. A large awning and exterior monitors provide flexibility to teach outside.

“I think it’s going to really open up a lot of help for students who don’t know how to code or who have never really worked with app development, to really dive into that field,” Webb said. “It’s a really exciting area, and students can gain a lot within their studies and enrich different research projects or other plans that they have here at Ohio State by coming here and working with us to make their app dreams a reality.”

In a study that appears in the Journal of Biological Chemistry, researchers from The Ohio State University report success in identifying biomarkers of fibromyalgia and differentiating it from a handful of other related diseases.

The discovery could be an important turning point in care of patients with a disease that is frequently misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, leaving them without proper care and advice on managing their chronic pain and fatigue, said lead researcher Kevin Hackshaw, an associate professor in Ohio State’s College of Medicine and a rheumatologist at the university’s Wexner Medical Center.

Identification of biomarkers of the disease – a “metabolic fingerprint” like that discovered in the new study – could also open up the possibility of targeted treatments, he said.

To diagnose fibromyalgia, doctors now rely on patient-reported information about a multitude of symptoms and a physical evaluation of a patient’s pain, focusing on specific tender points, he said. But there’s no blood test – no clear-cut, easy-to-use tool to provide a quick answer.

“We found clear, reproducible metabolic patterns in the blood of dozens of patients with fibromyalgia. This brings us much closer to a blood test than we have ever been,” Hackshaw said.

Though fibromyalgia is currently incurable and treatment is limited to exercise, education and antidepressants, an accurate diagnosis has many benefits, Hackshaw said. Those include ruling out other diseases, confirming for patients that their symptoms are real and not imagined, and guiding doctors toward disease recognition and appropriate treatment.

“Most physicians nowadays don’t question whether fibromyalgia is real, but there are still skeptics out there,” Hackshaw said.

And many undiagnosed patients are prescribed opioids – strong, addictive painkillers that have not been shown to benefit people with the disease, he said.

“When you look at chronic pain clinics, about 40 percent of patients on opioids meet the diagnostic criteria for fibromyalgia. Fibromyalgia often gets worse, and certainly doesn’t get better, with opioids.”

Hackshaw and co-author Luis Rodriguez-Saona, an expert in the advanced testing method used in the study, said the next step is a larger-scale clinical trial to determine if the success they saw in this research can be replicated.

The current study included 50 people with a fibromyalgia diagnosis, 29 with rheumatoid arthritis, 19 who have osteoarthritis and 23 with lupus.

Researchers examined blood samples from each participant using a technique called vibrational spectroscopy, which measures the energy level of molecules within the sample. Scientists in Rodriguez-Saona’s lab detected clear patterns that consistently set fibromyalgia patients’ blood sample results apart from those with other, similar disorders.

First, the researchers analyzed blood samples from participants whose disease status they knew, so they could develop a baseline pattern for each diagnosis. Then, using two types of spectroscopy, they evaluated the rest of the samples blindly, without knowing the participants’ diagnoses, and accurately clustered every study participant into the appropriate disease category based on a molecular signature.

“These initial results are remarkable. If we can help speed diagnosis for these patients, their treatment will be better and they’ll likely have better outlooks. There’s nothing worse than being in a gray area where you don’t know what disease you have,” Rodriguez-Saona said.

His lab mostly concerns itself with using the metabolic fingerprinting technology for food-related research, focusing on issues such as adulteration of milk and cooking oils and helping agriculture companies figure out which plants are best suited to fight disease.

The chance to partner with medical experts to help solve the problem of fibromyalgia misdiagnosis was exciting, said Rodriguez-Saona, a professor of food science and technology at Ohio State.

Rodriguez-Saona said for the next study he’d like to examine 150 to 200 subjects per disease group to see if the findings of this research are replicable in a larger, more-diverse population.

Hackshaw said his goal is to have a test ready for widespread use within five years.

Fibromyalgia is the most common cause of chronic widespread pain in the United States, and disproportionately affects women. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 2 percent of the population – around 4 million adults – has fibromyalgia. Other organizations estimate even higher numbers.

About three in four people with fibromyalgia have not received an accurate diagnosis, according to previous research, and those who do know they have the disease waited an average of five years between symptom onset and diagnosis. Common symptoms include pain and stiffness all over the body, fatigue, depression, anxiety, sleep problems, headaches and problems with thinking, memory and concentration.

Eventually, this work could lead to identification of a particular protein or acid – or combination of molecules – that is linked to fibromyalgia, Rodriguez-Saona said.

“We can look back into some of these fingerprints and potentially identify some of the chemicals associated with the differences we are seeing,” he said.

In addition to identifying fibromyalgia, the researchers also found evidence that the metabolic fingerprinting technique has the potential to determine the severity of fibromyalgia in an individual patient.

“This could lead to better, more directed treatment for patients,” Hackshaw said.

Other Ohio State researchers involved with the study were Didem Aykas, Gregory Sigurdson, Marcal Plans Pujolras, Francesca Madiai, Lianbo Yu and Monica Giusti. Tony Buffington, formerly of Ohio State and now at the University of California, Davis, was also a co-author.

The research was supported in part by the Columbus Medical Research Foundation.

In an effort to reduce illness and deaths among expecting mothers and their unborn children, maternal-fetal medicine and perinatal physician-researchers designed a rapid tool to identify preeclampsia using an affordable and non-invasive clinical “red dye-on paper” test and piloted it in a clinical study at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. The results are published in Lancet’s E-Clinical Medicine. 

“This is the first clinical study using the point-of-care, paper-based Congo Red Dot (CRD) diagnostic test, and the mechanism proved superior in establishing or ruling out a diagnosis of preeclampsia,” said Dr. Kara Rood, first author on the collaborative project and maternal-fetal medicine physician at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “Our findings will have a huge impact on the health of women and children.”  

Currently, preeclampsia is identified by high blood pressure and certain proteins in the urine. The disorder is the No. 1 reason physicians decide to deliver children prematurely and is responsible for approximately 18 percent of maternal deaths in the U.S.  

“Preeclampsia affects up to 8 percent of pregnancies. The challenge is that it’s a progressive disease and not everyone progresses at the same time,” said Rood, who is also an assistant professor of maternal-fetal medicine in the College of Medicine. “Some women can have the disease for weeks before having symptoms, whereas other women can progress to a dangerous level within days.” 

In the study, researchers enrolled 346 pregnant women who were being evaluated for high blood pressure and possible preeclampsia. They used the CRD urine test, which provides results at the bedside within three minutes. Trained clinical research nurses analyzed results before each patient’s doctor made a final diagnosis. Results of the CRD test were not shared with the patient’s care team. 

Eighty-nine of the pregnant women had a clinical diagnosis of preeclampsia. Of those, 79 percent were induced due to preeclampsia, with an average age of delivery at 33 weeks gestation. The team found the CRD test was superior to other biochemical tests, with an accuracy rate of 86 percent.  

These findings confirm that the CRD test is a simple “sample in/answer out” clinical tool that allows for very accurate and rapid diagnosis of preeclampsia, Rood said. 

“Preeclampsia is often described as ‘mysterious’ because it’s difficult to diagnose,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of the College of Medicine. “I’m proud of our dedicated researchers for finding an easy, non-invasive test that will help diagnose this condition and maintain the health of pregnant women and their babies.”  

If undetected, preeclampsia can lead to eclampsia, one of the top five causes of maternal and infant illness – including seizures and coma – and the cause of 13 percent of maternal deaths globally. Pregnant women may be induced and babies delivered early, even if there’s just suspicion of preeclampsia. Premature birth is also a concern because it increases the risk of learning disabilities, cerebral palsy and blindness in newborns. 

Rood says in addition to clinicians using this test during prenatal appointments, she also sees this as an easy tool for pregnant women in underdeveloped countries where resources are lacking. 

“It’s unique that you had three guys that all came in at different times but three really special young men that come from fantastic families,” said head coach Chris Holtmann.

Woods is completing his lone season with the Buckeyes after joining the Ohio State program last summer. He has played more than 26 minutes a game this season and has been instrumental in helping the Buckeyes position themselves for postseason competition. Woods has been working toward a graduate degree in leadership and coaching while at Ohio State.

Lane has spent the last four years with the program. Initially a walk-on with the Buckeyes, Lane, who hails from Deerfield, Illinois, earned a scholarship prior to his sophomore season. He has been an Academic All-Big Ten selection each of the last three seasons and appeared in more than 30 games during his Ohio State career. He will graduate this spring with a degree in marketing.

Jackson is completing his third season with the Buckeyes. The Charlotte, North Carolina, native has played nearly 100 games for Ohio State with nearly 70 starts. He is close to 1,000 career points with more than 300 rebounds and assists during his Ohio State career. Jackson will graduate this spring with a degree in sport industry.

Former standout Greg Oden was also honored on senior day. He will graduate in May with a degree in sport industry. He spent one season in the scarlet and gray and led Ohio State to the 2007 NCAA Championship Game.

The No. 1 pick in the 2007 NBA Draft, Oden is a native of Indianapolis, Indiana, and has spent the last three years as a student assistant coach with the Buckeyes.

In the first “Take Five” video, the Georgetown University sociology professor and Baptist preacher discusses why King’s radical message has been sanitized, the importance of African-American activist athletes such as Ohio State’s own Malcolm Jenkins and how his hometown of Detroit became the launching pad for legendary musicians.

Step backstage for some deep cuts with one of America’s leading thinkers, Michael Eric Dyson.

“I think it’s the job of the artist to create work that inspires and uplifts so we can, together, move forward to a future that we create,” Lomax said.

Lomax is a jazz drummer, composer, educator and so-called “triple Buckeye” with an undergraduate degree, a master’s and a doctor of musical arts in composition from Ohio State. Lomax was a guest in the class President Michael V. Drake co-teaches with Moritz College of Law Dean Alan Michaels.

The course, “The Civil Rights Movement and the Supreme Court,” examines the Civil Rights era and uses music from the time as a reference point. Previous musical guests have included Paul Simon, Mary Wilson of the Supremes and Jorma Kaukonen from Jefferson Airplane.

Drake introduced Lomax after discussing the connection between jazz saxophone musician Cannonball Adderley and civil rights leader Jesse Jackson. Jackson is both the inspiration for and a participant on the 1969 album “Country Preacher.”

“Both Cannonball the band leader and Jesse Jackson the preacher talked about music, and how music was a part of the understanding and the community of people coming together,” Drake said. “Music connects with people. It connects people with time, it connects people with places and it connects with our emotions. It’s very important in our lives as humans.”

Lomax explained to the class how he explored those connections in his latest work, 400: An Afrikan Epic. The 12-album collection traces the story of the African diaspora from the past, present and future.

The collection is divided into thirds and explores thousands of years of history beginning with pre-colonial Afrika, the 400-year period from the beginning of the transatlantic slave trade to today, and Afro-futurism – a vision of how blacks in America progress in the next 400 years.

Lomax said his plan was to compose a three-part symphony to debut in 2019 – 400 years from the recognized start of the transatlantic slave trade. The project, supported in part through his residency at the Wexner Center, took more than three years to develop and produce. The result is an 8 1/2-hour-long musical journey.

Lomax said it was a connection to history and community that made the music possible.

“It occurred to me that I didn’t really do anything. I was just a vessel for a narrative that already existed. I stand on the shoulders of my ancestors and my elders who had long before me told this story,” Lomax said.

Lomax explained how common musical scales or rhythms occur and recur in music across history. That historic connection helps move people forward.

“What does the future hold? I don’t know,” he said. “I do know that if we are to be healthy, happy and whole again we need to be reprogrammed – reprogrammed in a way that helps us see each other in the most authentic, most substantive and profound way.”

Lomax said he is now taking his new collection on the road. His tour will go to college campuses to encourage students to use art they create to listen, engage and change.

Drake said learning the connection between history and art helps people develop in their own lives.

“The point to share is that artists create their art from the personal and political and social circumstances of their being,” Drake said. “They express that in a way that we, from different points of view and different times in our lives, can be in touch with that point in their lives and use that to expand and enrich our own existence.”

“So this is a terrific song. It’s a great song actually for February. It’s Black History Month,” Drake said as he introduced the song. “This is a song written in 1968 by Paul McCartney. [He was] kind of thinking about the things that were happening in the United States at the time and the freedom that was just out of reach for women or African Americans at the time and it’s one that everybody knows.”

The event at the Lincoln Theatre earlier this month was part of the Columbus Association for the Performing Arts’ 50th Anniversary Celebration. CAPA was founded in 1969 to save the historic Ohio Theatre in Columbus.

The nonprofit supports local theaters and arts and culture organizations, and presents national touring shows each year. CAPA is marking 50 years with a year-long community celebration.

“Thank you on behalf of our staff. I really want to say thank you to Buckeye Nation, first off, for all of your support,” Day said. “One of the things that was amazing to me this past season: We go to TCU in Dallas, we go to Indianapolis for the [Big Ten] Championship game, we go to Pasadena for the Rose Bowl and we come out of that locker room and we see the scarlet and we feel Buckeye Nation and we hear Buckeye Nation. It’s unbelievable and your support and loyalty means everything to us.

“That’s why our team gets up at 6 a.m. for mat drill on Wednesday. That’s why we go to work and that’s why our staff is here to make you guys proud. It’s for you guys, Buckeye Nation, so thank you.”

Day’s staff, his first as Ohio State’s head coach, consists of:

• Larry Johnson, associate head coach/defensive line
• Greg Mattison, co-defensive coordinator
• Jeff Hafley, co-defensive coordinator/secondary
• Al Washington, linebackers
• Matt Barnes, special teams coordinator/assistant secondary
• Kevin Wilson, offensive coordinator/tight ends
• Mike Yurcich, passing game coordinator/quarterbacks
• Tony Alford, assistant head coach for offense/running backs
• Brian Hartline, wide receivers
• Greg Studrawa, offensive line

Day’s staff features all of the offensive coaches from the record-setting 2018 campaign plus five new additions, including four on the defensive side of the ball.

Students who may not have the budget to purchase an outfit for an upcoming interview or career job fair were aided by the event at the Ohio Union.

“There is this great need for students to be able to get affordable clothing. The thing about our students is they’re extremely talented,” said Lane Washington, assistant director of strategic partnerships and outreach for Student Life. “They’re very prepared for the job market but sometimes clothing can be a burden. And so we want to make sure that we’re providing a very affordable experience for all of our students who need help.”

From clothing to shoes to accessories, hundreds of combinations were available for free. Students use a point system to select a limited number of items.

“Students can come here and get gently used professional clothing from alumni, staff and faculty and go into the job market,” Washington said.

“Things that legitimately are sitting in people’s closets could make a world of a difference for a student,” said Laith Khalaf, a Career Closet volunteer. “It’s that simple.”

The event is supported by donations collected across campus earlier in the year. Donations are accepted throughout the year.

“Obviously in Student Life it’s all about creating that extraordinary student experience,” Washington said. “So the opportunity to be able to create that for them and give them an opportunity to be in that space – that’s why we’re here. And that’s why we love this event.”

The central Ohio mother of four and her family are celebrating their 14th BuckeyeThon Dance Marathon this weekend. Hall has been a fan and supporter of the student-run philanthropy since her daughter, Avalon, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia when she was only 17 months old.

Hall learned about BuckeyeThon while Avalon was receiving treatment and became one of the first families to physically represent what the organization was trying to fight.

“We fell madly in love with these kids because [BuckeyeThon] doesn’t just raise money for cancer kids. It teaches the students that they’re part of something bigger than themselves,” Hall said.

From a humble beginning in 1999, the philanthropic effort has grown into a massive campus-wide event. BuckeyeThon’s first dance marathon was held in 2002 with 108 dancers and 206 volunteers. Students danced for 26 hours and raised more than $32,000.

Fast forward to this weekend: The two-day event set a new fundraising record as students involved with BuckeyeThon raised $1,704,184.19. Since its founding, BuckeyeThon has raised over $9.8 million and boosted awareness for the Hematology/Oncology/Bone Marrow Transplant Unit at Nationwide Children’s Hospital.

“Having been involved this long, we are getting to see some of the ripples in the pond,” Hall said.

She said she knows students who have organized BuckeyeThon who are now in medical school or business leaders and continue to give back.

“It’s fun to see how much the campus is involved and that it’s something that everybody knows. Now you say BuckeyeThon and everybody at Ohio State knows what it is and they know what they’re fighting for – they know they're fighting for cancer kids,” she said.

Hall and her family are part of that fight. They continue to enjoy the dance marathon every year and help fundraise. Her children Ambrosia, Avalon and Anam are part of the yellow dance team for the weekend festivities.

Ambrosia is a senior in high school but takes pre-college classes at Ohio State. She’s co-captain of a team that raised $5,000 this year.

Avalon, a ninth-grader, said that as a cancer survivor, it’s vital to give back as well.

“That’s why we help out so much with BuckeyeThon. Because I’m trying to give back what they gave to me in that really hard time,” she said.

The desire to give back is what motivates the student organizers of BuckeyeThon. Students work year-round to support the families and kids going through treatment. As a program of the Office of Student Life at Ohio State, BuckeyeThon engages thousands of students annually.

“We have the ability to do all we can to help families in any way possible through art therapy or music therapy or lifesaving research,” said Bill Tucker, vice president of outreach and engagement for BuckeyeThon. “So I think it’s our duty as civil servants and members of the community to do the best we can to make their lives as easy as possible and possibly save lives of those in the future that are unfortunately affected by pediatric cancer.”

Tucker, a third-year human resources major, has helped with BuckeyeThon since he was a first-year student. He said his favorite moment comes at the end of the dance marathon when the fundraising total is revealed. That’s the payoff for long weeks and hours to put it all together.

Hall said that commitment means the most to her.

“This is a full-time job in addition to being a student and these students are not always going into a career that this is going to help. They’re just doing this out of the goodness of their heart, and that’s one of the most amazing things.”

While there is a growing body of research in preschool and school-age children that provides evidence of differences in cognitive abilities between deaf and hearing children, researchers at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center wanted to know when those differences emerge. 

To do this, study co-authors Claire Monroy, postdoctoral otolaryngology fellow, and Derek Houston, associate professor of otolaryngology, became the first to compare visual processing skills in hearing and deaf infants. They found it takes longer for deaf infants to habituate or become familiar with new objects, which highlights a difference in how the infants process information, even when the information is not auditory in nature.

“This research lays the foundation for further exploration into the causes of these differences and their implications,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of the College of Medicine.

When babies successfully encode a visual object, they lose interest and look away. To test their visual processing skills, researchers showed 23 deaf infants and 23 hearing infants ages 7 to 22 months a colorful object on a screen. Deaf infant looking times were 30 seconds longer than those of hearing infants, and the deaf infant look-away rate was approximately 40 percent lower than the hearing infants’ rate. 

“This is somewhat counterintuitive because a lot of people assume that deaf children compensate for their lack of hearing by being better at processing visual things, but the findings of the study show the opposite,” Monroy said.

However, researchers say the results don’t necessarily mean that deaf children are learning at a slower pace. 

“Because they use vision to process the world around them, they may pay closer attention to visual objects,” Houston said. “They might actually be processing more about each object.”

Future research will examine why these differences in visual learning exist.

“Understanding the source of these differences can really help us tailor interventions specifically for these children,” Monroy said. “And the earlier that happens, the better.”

The food options and locations are part of a multimillion-dollar renovation to the arena to celebrate the building’s 20th anniversary. The expansion includes relocation of the team shop and a food court where fans can gather to eat before the game or concert.

“If you haven’t been to the Schottenstein Center for a little while to attend an event, you might be surprised when you walk in to see all the changes that we’ve made,” said Molly Kurth, vice president of NCAA operations for Levy Restaurants.

Kurth said most of the renovations were completed at the end of 2018. New concession stands include Fowl Play, serving boneless wings with a variety of sauces, and Sear and Stack, serving gourmet burgers.

“We’ve got our turkey burger and our signature Double Shot Burger, which has been a fan favorite for a couple of seasons, but at Sear and Stack you will be able to get seasonal burgers and we’re going to do a rotating feature of different flavors and profiles for fans to experience,” Kurth said.

There are some unique food options as well. A new 600-pound smoker allows Schottenstein Center chefs to create custom-made brisket sandwiches. Kurth said all of the meat is smoked in-house and the seasoning is a custom recipe.In addition to the food court and new food stands, there are also new options to help fans get their snacks and get back to their seats more quickly. A new grab-and-go area offers drinks and pre-made food, including hummus and vegetable packs and salad shakers as well as candy and caramel corn.

New in 2019 is an unlimited soda program. Once you buy a beverage, you can get free refills at refill stations around the arena.

“There’s lots of great seating, a lot of different lighting elements and some great digital features around the facility that we want to make sure everyone gets a chance to check out,” Kurth said. “So if you haven’t been to the Schottenstein Center recently, make some plans and come on down to join us.”

According to the Wilmington office of the National Weather Service, the advisory is in effect until noon on Monday. Parts of the state could see wind chills of 20 degrees below zero.

Please remember to take precautions while traveling in winter weather and check with your scheduled activities to be sure there are no changes or cancellations.

Before snow and ice start to collect, the university treats campus roadways and sidewalks. Staff remain on campus throughout the day and night treating and plowing, as needed.

Students, faculty and staff can monitor the current campus conditions online. The website includes a live weather camera, updated weather conditions and current forecasts.

As the snow starts falling around campus, share your photos to the Ohio State News Twitter page. We’ll take some of the best pictures and share them throughout the holiday weekend.

Diabetes is a growing problem in the United States, with nearly a third of the population living with diabetes or prediabetes, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Joshua J. Joseph, an endocrinologist and assistant professor at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, wants to bring those numbers down. He studies various ways to prevent diabetes. His latest work looked at how cardiovascular health can impact diabetes risk.

“This research adds to our collective understanding about how physicians can help their patients prevent a number of serious diseases, including heart disease, cancer and now diabetes,” said Dr. K. Craig Kent, dean of the College of Medicine.

The team at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center, led by Joseph, assessed diabetes among 7,758 participants in the REasons for Geographic and Racial Differences in Stroke (REGARDS) Study and used the American Heart Association’s Life’s Simple 7 as a guide for measuring heart health among the group.

The Life’s Simple 7 health factors and lifestyle behaviors that are associated with cardiovascular health are physical activity, diet, weight, cholesterol, blood pressure, blood glucose and tobacco use.

Overall, the study participants who were in the recommended, ideal ranges for at least four of the seven factors had a 70 percent lower risk of developing diabetes over the next 10 years.

“What’s interesting is when we compared people who had normal blood glucose and those who already had impaired blood glucose,” Joseph said. “Those in normal levels who attained four or more guideline factors had an 80 percent lower risk of developing diabetes. Those who were already diabetic or prediabetic and met four of the factors had no change in lowering their risk for diabetes.”

Joseph said this research proves using prevention strategies from the very beginning is key to helping Americans avoid diabetes.

“Healthy people need to work to stay healthy. Follow the guidelines. Don’t proceed to high blood sugar and then worry about stopping diabetes. By that point, people need high-intensity interventions that focus on physical activity and diet to promote weight loss and, possibly, medications to lower the risk of diabetes,” Joseph said.

Community outreach is one way Joseph and his team put their research to practical use. They attend wellness walks, community days and other gatherings around central Ohio to help educate people about diabetes prevention and starting healthy habits.

“We don’t wait for people to come to us as patients. We’re very engaged in taking our work from the lab and applying it to our populations so we can help keep our communities healthy,” Joseph said.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases supported this research.

“So I think it’s like the Spiderman thing: You guys have a lot of power and you have a lot of responsibility,” he said.

Abdul-Matin, who served as the sustainability policy adviser to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, will get to expand on that idea on campus later this month. He’s a keynote speaker at the Ohio State 2019 Community Engagement Conference, set for Jan. 23 and 24 in the Ohio Union.

The theme this academic year is Partnering for a Resilient and Sustainable Future. The conference will bring together faculty, students, staff and community partners to explore the importance and impact of meaningful community-university partnerships with the goal of advancing sustainable communities.

Abdul-Matin said Ohio State is well suited to help lead that conversation as a land-grant university in a capital city in the Midwest.

“The Ohio State University owns property, has relationships with the community and is present in the community,” he said. “And the better they are at building partnerships and making people feel part of their success, the better things will be.”

Abdul-Matin’s resume on environmental policy includes experience in the public, private and civic sectors. In addition to advising Bloomberg, he was the director of community affairs at the New York City Department of Environmental Protection.

He also worked as an Outward Bound instructor, helped found the Brooklyn Academy for Science and the Environment, and blended youth organizing and technology while at the Movement Strategy Center. His book, “Green Deen: What Islam Teaches About Protecting the Planet,” explores the intersection of faith and environmentalism.

“If our goals are to build a resilient society, to have our communities be resilient, to have our infrastructure, our communities to be resilient communities then we need to be engaged with the people … at a deeper level than we’ve ever done before,” he said. “So even if you’ve done amazing stuff in the past there’s more you can do.”

Conference planners agreed that building connections through engagement is critical to solving big problems.

“If we think about our land-grant legacy at Ohio State, it’s very important for us to be connected with our state,” said conference co-director Linda Weavers, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering. “And how we can provide value to [municipalities] so that they can figure out how to solve some of the problems that are happening in their communities.”

“This is a tremendous opportunity for people at Ohio State to come together with people in the community, many of whom have been working together for many years, and really showcase the kind of work they’re doing and to learn from each other,” said conference co-director Elena Irwin, faculty director for the Sustainable and Resilient Economy program.

In addition to Abdul-Matin, Mary Robinson, the former president of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice, will also be a keynote speaker on the second day of the conference.

Planning for the conference includes an emphasis on sustainability as well. A mobile app containing agendas and information will cut down on nearly 20,000 pages from conference program booklets alone.

The planning committee and University Catering at the Ohio Union have worked together to reduce waste at meals by using all washable or reusable materials as well as reducing plastic use by not providing bottled beverages. Catering will also use sustainable or local providers when appropriate.

The 2019 Community Engagement Conference is made possible by ENGIE-Axium and Ohio State’s Office of Outreach and Engagement, OSU Extension, Wexner Medical Center, Sustainability Institute, Alumni Association, Corporate Engagement Office, Discovery Themes Initiative, Graduate School, Office of Government Affairs, Office of International Affairs, Office of Research, Office of Student Life, Office of Undergraduate Education, and the Ohio Water Resources Center.

“These toilet stools became popular through things like viral videos and social media, but there was really no medical evidence to show whether or not they are effective,” said Dr. Peter Stanich, assistant professor of gastroenterology, hepatology and nutrition at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center and College of Medicine. “This study shows that these simple devices may help symptoms like constipation, bloating and incomplete emptiness and can help people have more comfortable and effective bowel movements.”

The study, which is published in the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology, was completed with healthy volunteers as participants. Despite this, 44 percent of participants reported increased straining and nearly a third said they had trouble completely emptying their bowels.

At the end of the four-week study, 71 percent of participants experienced faster bowel movements, and 90 percent reported less straining. “Importantly, at the conclusion of the study, two-thirds of participants said they would continue to use a toilet stool,” said Stanich, who co-authored the study.

The key to their effectiveness is body positioning. Stanich said the most natural position for a bowel movement is squatting. Sitting on a toilet creates a bend in the rectum that makes it more difficult to have complete bowel movements.

“Bowel movements are difficult to talk about and not a lot of people want to bring up their constipation,” said Rachel Shepherd, a physical therapist at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center who specializes in treating pelvic floor disorders. “But if there’s something as simple as changing the position by adding a stool, then that’s an easy fix that anyone can add in.”

One in six Americans experiences constipation. Having an easier time in the bathroom can prevent issues like bloating, constipation and hemorrhoids. Leaving bathroom troubles unresolved can lead to discomfort and more serious health issues such as damage to the pelvic floor and hernias.

“I would encourage everyone with bowel problems, constipation or diarrhea to make sure they discuss it with their doctor. Not only can your doctor likely help you feel better, but it may head off more serious disease down the road,” Stanich said.

Other researchers on the team include Dr. Rohan Modi, Alice Hinton, Dr. Daniel Pinkhas, Dr. Royce Groce, Dr. Marty Meyer, Dr. Gokulakrishnam Balasubramanian and Dr. Edward Levine.

Spears-McNatt grew up in Akron before heading to Ohio State for college. She lived in Canfield Hall, walked to classes, worked on campus and spent time connecting with the community.

“One thing I will always iterate is that I was once a student. So having that experience graduating from OSU, I understand what it’s like to walk across the oval. I understand what it’s like to be in Ohio Union,” she said. “I’ve been there. I’ve walked in their shoes. It’s important for me that [students] feel welcome, that they’re safe and this is the best four or five years of their life. I want them to be able to focus on their education and studying. Let me worry about keeping them safe.”

This week, Spears-McNatt became the 11th police chief in Ohio State history. Her full-time appointment comes six months after taking over as interim chief upon the departure of Craig Stone. In addition, Tracy Hahn, the former police chief of Upper Arlington, has joined the division as deputy chief.

“My personal and professional philosophy is to whom much is given much is required. So I am very humbled by the opportunity to be the chief of police,” Spears-McNatt said. “I realize it is a big responsibility and so I’m excited for the challenge and the opportunity. Not only was I a student here, I also worked here and I get the opportunity to create policy to keep the campus safe and move the agency forward.”

Ohio State Director of Public Safety Monica Moll conducted an extensive search for a new deputy chief in 2016. She found the best option in-house.

“She has all the qualities that I look for in a line level police officer and also in a police leader. She’s in it for the right reasons, she genuinely wants to help people,” Moll said. “She really has no ego at all, just kindness and a service mentality.”

Moll said she first observed the chief’s leadership skills while riding along as Spears-McNatt, then deputy chief, led traffic operations on a Buckeye football game day.

“She was just so kind to everyone we came across. It was just amazing to watch her customer service orientation, her concern about the community. But also all the employees that we came across, you could tell that she really cared about her co-workers and all of our law enforcement partners as she drove around and was checking on them and making sure that they were OK on a long day,” Moll said. “So that was my first interaction with her and I thought, ‘there’s something special about this person.’”

Spears-McNatt has much more than a deep knowledge of the campus and a history with Ohio State. The new chief has more than 20 years of law enforcement experience and is a member of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives and the Ohio Association of Chiefs of Police. In her time with Ohio State, she has received several honors, including a Commendation Award and a Medal of Valor.

Spears-McNatt is a graduate of the Police Executive Leadership College. She received her bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Ohio State and a master’s degree from Franklin University. She is also a graduate of the Certified Law Enforcement Executive program and a member of the International Association of Campus Law Enforcement Administrators.

As chief, Spears-McNatt wants to emphasize she is making sure the university’s police division understands the needs of an increasingly diverse campus population.

“One of the things that I am very passionate about, and (President Michael V.) Drake put this in motion several years ago in his 2020 Vision, is the importance of community engagement and diversity and inclusion,” she said.

“It’s important that the students, staff and faculty see my officers and interact with my officers. I don’t want my officers to just to show up when something goes wrong. I want them to know us on a first-name basis,” she said.

Spears-McNatt is also a reflection of a diverse campus community. She is Ohio State’s first female police chief and joins Deputy Chief Hahn as a police leadership team of women.

“One thing I will say is that both Kimberly and Tracy were the best candidates out of the pool that we were choosing from,” Moll said. “But it certainly doesn’t hurt that they’re also both women. We’re at a time right now in law enforcement where you’re seeing progressively more women leaders in policing.”

Hahn also has roots at Ohio State. She served as a police officer on campus from 1990 to 1993.

“I have 28 years of law enforcement experience. With that, I have seen pretty much everything that can happen,” Hahn said. “And I think that that will be the thing that I can bring here.”

For Spears-McNatt, each day begins with a sense of responsibility toward her work and the work of others on campus.

“I have a strong work ethic and so I’m dedicated to anything that I do. So I look forward to challenges,” Spears-McNatt said. “So every morning when I drive off the ramp from state Route 315, I realize that there are parents, there are staff and there are students who are here to accomplish goals, to develop dreams and be our next leaders. And I want them to be able to focus on that and let me focus on making sure that they have a safe environment to grow.”

For the millions who suffer with the daily pain and stiffness of osteoarthritis, treatments to slow the progression of the disease are limited. A clinical trial is testing the Calypso Knee System and the device’s ability to extend the functional life of the joint, thus allowing patients to remain active without knee pain.

“This device works like a shock absorber to take pressure off the inside of the knee while creating a cushion similar to what cartilage provides in a healthy joint,” said Dr. David Flanigan, an orthopedic surgeon at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center who performed the surgery. “The hope is that it increases joint functionality, reduces pain and delays a total knee arthroplasty for years or even decades.”

Developed by Moximed Inc., the device is designed to treat the symptoms of osteoarthritis on the inner knee, the most commonly affected area. Without altering the anatomy or removing tissues or bone from the knee itself, the implant absorbs excess knee loads that cause pain in osteoarthritic joints.

“We hope this will be an opportunity for patients with osteoarthritis to remain active without pain for a much longer period of time,” Flanigan said.

Researchers will study approximately 80 trial participants who receive the implant. Ohio State Wexner Medical Center is one of only four sites in the trial.

If the trial is successful, Flanigan expects the device could soon be available to patients across the country.

Knee osteoarthritis occurs when cartilage in the joint wears away, causing stiffness and pain that continues to get worse with time. Current treatment options, largely for end-stage osteoarthritis, often involve invasive surgical procedures that permanently change the knee structure. While effective, removing bone or tissue can limit patients’ future treatment options.

More than 700,000 knee replacement surgeries are performed in the U.S. every year, a number that continues to grow. Flanigan said the device could help reverse that trend, helping more people avoid joint replacements and preserve their knees.

“A total knee replacement is truly permanent. You’ve removed the bone and there’s really no going back at that point,” Flanigan said. “People are really looking for other options to help them remain active and extend the life of their joint as much as possible before having a knee replacement.”

Moximed is funding the research. To learn more about this clinical trial, go to: http://go.osu.edu/ChhG

The retiring head coach has guided Ohio State to postseason wins at the Fiesta Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Cotton Bowl and the inaugural College Football Playoff National Championship Game. Winning the game nicknamed “The Granddaddy of Them All” would be a fitting ending to a career resulting in the third-highest winning percentage in the history of major college football.

“I dreamt a lot about Ohio State, the rivalry game, the Rose Bowl,” Meyer said at Rose Bowl media day. “Seems like every year in the '70s when I was at that age where everybody is watching it, the parade, the game, and then watching Archie Griffin score touchdowns in the Rose Bowl.”

The sixth-ranked Buckeyes take on Pac 12 champion ninth-ranked Washington (10-3) on Jan. 1, 2019, in Pasadena, California.

The setting might be new to Meyer, but it is the 15th Rose Bowl appearance for the Buckeyes. Ohio State owns a 7-7 all-time record at the Rose Bowl, but has won in each of its last two appearances: a 26-17 victory against Oregon in 2010 and a 20-17 win over Arizona State in 1997.

Washington’s all-Pac 12 quarterback Jake Browning, who had 2,879 yards passing and 16 touchdowns this season, leads the Huskies.

The Buckeyes and Huskies have played 11 previous times, all during the regular season. Ohio State has won eight of those games, most recently in 2007 – a 33-14 win in Seattle.

The Smart Circuit shuttles began humming their way along the Scioto Mile in Downtown Columbus on Dec. 10. The low-speed, electric vehicles make stops at COSI, the National Veterans Memorial and Museum, Bicentennial Park and Smart Columbus Experience Center. The service offers free rides to the public from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., seven days a week.

The initiative bringing self-driving shuttles to the Buckeye state is driven by Smart Columbus and Ohio Department of Transportation’s DriveOhio, in partnership with The Ohio State University. The Smart Circuit demonstration will help engineers, researchers and policymakers from this partnership inform future deployments of self-driving vehicle technology throughout the state.

Columbus won the Smart City Challenge in 2016, earning $40 million in grant funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation, as well as a $10-million grant from Paul G. Allen Philanthropies. With that seed funding, Columbus was dubbed “America’s Smart City,” a designation bringing with it the challenge to reinvent mobility in the capital city and serve as a model for connected urban areas of the future.

“The Ohio State University has been integral to the design of the project and the ambition for what we are going to achieve with self-driving vehicles in this community,” said Jordan Davis, director of Smart Columbus. “Ohio State has been involved since the very, very beginning — since the grant. And we have continued to work with them as we design the research and try to identify other research opportunities with faculty for this project.”

And, as the community can look forward to riding the self-driving shuttles downtown, undergraduate students at Ohio State set their sights on the potential value of bringing smart mobility to a campus setting.

Ohio State’s Institute for Materials Research hosted a three-day INNOVATE-O-thon event in November with DriveOhio, an initiative working to advance smart mobility in Ohio. Each semester, IMR challenges undergraduates studying a variety of disciplines to work with each other, as well as faculty, industry and government representatives to a solve real-world problem.

At the most recent INNOVATE-O-thon, students were challenged to help shape DriveOhio’s technology strategy by imagining a future with self-driving shuttles on the Columbus campus of Ohio State. Students built value propositions for that project and pitched them to government representatives, faculty and other subject matter experts.

Evan Luikart, a mechanical engineering freshman, was part of the top prize-winning team, earning him a seat among the first to ride on the self-driving shuttles during a preview event held Dec. 4 at the Smart Columbus Experience Center.

“I thought the ride was awesome,” he said. “It was very smooth. It just felt like I was in a car. I kind of forgot it was driving itself.”

Each student team at INNOVATE-O-thon developed a shuttle user profile, then plotted out that user’s day in the life and transportation challenges. Their ideas could be applied to a wide range of potential riders, from students, staff and faculty to prospective students touring the campus or patients and visitors of the Wexner Medical Center.

Their proposals needed to be empathetic, desirable and feasible.

Luikart and his teammates focused on safety for late-night travelers with “Hannah,” a fictional undergraduate student at Ohio State navigating an evening that begins at the Recreation and Physical Activity Center and ends early the next morning, after dinner and bar hopping with friends on North High Street.

A wide range of factors informed the transportation needs of each student-created character. One had a tight window to make a scholarship interview, another had a physical disability, another had anxiety and chronic stress. There were early mornings, late evenings, and full course loads in between.

Many scenarios were informed by direct experiences from student life.

“Students will be some of the primary users, so it was natural to go directly to them,” said Rich Granger, managing director of workforce development at DriveOhio. “On top of that, it gives students a chance to be both planners and the voice of the customer.”

Their work was guided by representatives from IMR, DriveOhio, Smart Columbus, Ohio State’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at the Fisher College of Business, and the university’s Corporate Engagement Office. The event was sponsored by DriveOhio, the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences.

Students outside Ohio State also showed interest in self-driving shuttle services on campus. Collaborators joined from Central Ohio Technical College, Columbus State Community College and Marion Technical College through the Ohio Department of Higher Education’s Ohio Means Internships and Co-ops program and its central Ohio coordinator, the university’s Ohio Manufacturing Institute.

“These events give students exposure to working with not just external partners, whether they’re from industry or government, but partners who are engaged and eager to connect with our undergraduates,” said Jay Sayre, director of innovation at IMR. “And, in the process, students have to collaborate with one another. This forces a convergence of backgrounds, disciplines and individual talents that they might not have imagined coming together to solve a problem.”

Lexi Jesenovec, a freshman in business at Columbus State Community College, said she enjoyed working in a dynamic group to help shape the future of student transportation.

“Overall, I was very impressed. There was value in all five teams. Each of them brought a different perspective and insight,” Granger said. “This becomes part of a growing library of use cases for autonomous-vehicle shuttles on campus, statewide. This is the first chapter in that collection.”

The University Staff Advisory Committee hosted Drake at the Ohio Union for a conversation about issues important to staff. Moderator and USAC Chair Tom Gessells, director of information technology for the OSU Health Plan, started off asking about the strategic plan and specifically about the role of staff in supporting teaching and learning.

“We want to be as efficient and effective as possible in creating educational content that we transmit to the people who are receiving it and then measuring that, in fact, it’s making a difference,” Drake said.

Drake explained the university’s new teaching support program offers an optional professional development opportunity for lecturers to improve their work in the classroom. The program, managed through the University Institute for Teaching and Learning, features a monetary incentive for those who participate.

“We want this to be a good thing that helps those who are teaching do a better job of teaching so that our learners have a better experience,” he said.

Gessells asked Drake for an update on the search for an executive vice president and chancellor for academic health care. The university announced the search for the position last year. The new leader will take over a medical center operation that accounts for about half of the university’s budget and is developing plans for a new hospital and ambulatory centers.

The new leader will manage a hospital system and health science colleges that are showing strong results in patient care, research funding and academic success.

“We’re doing the very best we’ve ever done and are among the best in the world today. So we don’t want to add someone to the mix who’s not going to improve our really outstanding performance,” Drake said. “We’re being very thoughtful and careful about looking at who might be able to come and help us do that.”

Drake said the search committee has identified a group of candidates with national reputations and is in the process of meeting with them. He hopes to have the position filled in a matter of months.

Jeff Trimble, a lecturer in the School of Communication, pointed to research that suggests academic excellence is not a strong indicator of career excellence. He said he knows of students who would like to take a greater diversity of classes but have concerns it will hurt their grade average.

“The bottom line here is what can you do to make it easier for students to take intellectual risks?” Trimble asked.

Drake said the university experience should improve students in the areas of academics, research, character and leadership, and he agreed that letter grades don’t always capture student success in those areas. He said the general education curriculum is already under review and should enable students to take more elective classes for double majors and/or minors. Drake said he is also a proponent of so-called pass-fail classes to offer a challenging educational experience without the pressure that comes with a letter grade.

“We hope to continue to help people to develop,” he said. “A really important part of our curriculum is helping people to be who we want them to be as citizens when they leave.”

Elite described the program as a whole, academics at Ohio State, the football culture and coaching. It was also how head coach Urban Meyer described coach-in-waiting Ryan Day when the university announced Day would take over as the 25th head coach in team history.

“I hired Ryan Day because I thought he was a very good coach. I knew he was,” Meyer said. “What I found out was that he’s far past those thoughts. He’s elite.”

Day, the Ohio State offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach who led the team to a 3-0 record at the start of this season, will take over as head coach of the program on Jan. 2. He said leading the Buckeyes is the fulfillment of a dream he had growing up in Manchester, New Hampshire.

Day recalled growing up watching the Buckeyes play on TV and “watching them play The Team Up North,” he said. “I remember being on my grandfather’s couch and watching the game and just the respect I had for this place, and it was always a dream of mine.”

Day’s career has taken him from a record-setting quarterback at the University of New Hampshire to the coaching ranks of the National Football League to the top of college football.

He had more than a dozen years of collegiate coaching experience before joining Ohio State two years ago, including offensive coordinator positions at Temple and Boston College. Day also worked as quarterbacks coach in 2016 with the San Francisco 49ers and in 2015 for the Philadelphia Eagles.

He spoke about what he expects when he takes charge at Ohio State.

“On the field you can expect a team that’s going to be tough, that’s going to have great energy, and will be creative,” Day said. “On offense, we continue to force defenses to cover the entire field this year as we went from J.T. Barrett to Dwayne Haskins at quarterback this season, which took on a very different attack.”

Day said he wants an aggressive defense and special teams to work as the “tip of the spear of the program.”

Ohio State Senior Vice President and Director of Athletics Gene Smith said Day has the character traits needed to lead a program like Ohio State.

“He has confidence, passion. He has the perfect demeanor for our environment. He shares the values that we hold so dear: integrity, education, excellence, people-first, respect and tradition,” Smith said. “He’s a good human being, good family man and we’re blessed to have him as our next head football coach.”

Day said those core values were something he and Meyer both hold.

“I think Coach Meyer and I’s values and morals and what our beliefs are, we share a lot of the same things in common,” he said. “I think anytime there’s a change in leadership, there’s a different personality, there’s a different style involved with it, different demeanor. But we share so much in common that there’s going to be a lot that’s carried over.”

He said he is well aware of the work ahead of him and the elite standards he will need to uphold.

“Every coach whoever put a whistle around their neck strives to be the head coach at The Ohio State University,” he said. “I fully understand the challenges that await for me. And being on the same list as Paul Brown, Woody Hayes, Earle Bruce, John Cooper, Jim Tressel and Urban Meyer, it’s extremely humbling, but I’m prepared and ready for the task.”

The Ohio State University 2019 Community Engagement Conference is set for Jan. 23 and 24 in the Ohio Union. The theme this academic year is Partnering for a Resilient and Sustainable Future.

“Sustainability is really about asking questions about how can we grow our society and develop our economy in ways that are in balance with our environment, our earth’s systems and our natural resources,” said conference co-director Elena Irwin, faculty director for the Sustainable and Resilient Economy program. “How can we do that in ways that promote the prosperity of people in our community and of all people?”

The focus of the inaugural Community Engagement Conference last January centered on building and maintaining healthy communities. This conference will bring together faculty, students, staff and community partners to explore the importance and impact of meaningful community-university partnerships with the goal of advancing sustainable communities.

“By bringing these people together we can work together and learn from each other about research efforts that are going on and activities that are occurring in these communities and how to bridge that gap and bring solutions to these communities,” said conference co-director Linda Weavers, a professor in the Department of Civil, Environmental and Geodetic Engineering.

Weavers said the theme this year is especially relevant as the country and planet grapple with environmental crises like hurricanes or wildfires.

“Resiliency is really how communities can recover from some sort of catastrophic event. So say there is a tornado or a hurricane on a coastal area: How can we design cities and how can we organize the communities and those cities so that they can recover and have the lowest amount of damage?” she said. “And it may not necessarily be in ways we traditionally think about that ability to recover.”

Both co-directors said the conference serves Ohio State’s land-grant mission to remain connected to the state and serve as a resource for solving problems in Ohio communities. It was a point President Michael V. Drake highlighted when announcing the conference.

“For nearly 150 years, our mission has been to elevate our communities through the creation and dissemination of knowledge,” he said. “Through this event, Ohio State will focus on expanding our engagement and scaling our efforts to address issues that affect us all.”

The keynote speakers for the conference are leaders in environmental advocacy. Mary Robinson is former president of Ireland and head of the Mary Robinson Foundation – Climate Justice. She will be joined at the conference by environmental policy expert Ibrahim Abdul-Matin, the sustainability policy adviser to former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.

Experts from across Ohio, the county and the world working with researchers, teachers and students from Ohio State to discuss and present solutions to big problems is just the beginning.

“A meaningful partnership that endures starts with, for example, a faculty member or a student who has an interest in doing research and is open and interested in a truly authentic way to understanding how that research connects to community problems and can be a solution,” Irwin said.

The 2019 Community Engagement Conference is made possible by Ohio State’s Alumni Association, Corporate Engagement Office, Discovery Themes Initiative, Graduate School, Office of Energy and Environment, Office of International Affairs, Office of Outreach and Engagement, Office of Research, Office of Student Life, Office of Undergraduate Education, OSU Extension, Office of Government Affairs, the Ohio Water Resources Center and Sustainable and Resilient Economy program.

The halftime show during the game against Michigan was a celebration of the holidays. Although it was fitting that the game against Ohio State’s rivals up north included a visit from the Grinch.

The band marched in formations that resembled the Grinch, Buddy the Elf, the train from Polar Express and a holiday bells. The marching band closed out their show by spelling out “Happy Holidays.”

Music from the show was a mix of classical and modern from “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” and “Carol of the Bells” to the theme from “Elf” and “the Polar Express.”

It proved to be a busy week for the marching band. They returned on Friday following their debut appearance in the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City.

Thomas Unger, from Cincinnati, Ohio, dotted the ‘i’ this week. Unger is an electrical and computer engineering major who joined the marching band from La Salle High School.

“I was genuinely delighted by how far along the planning had been with respect to this initiative,” Stone said.

Stone was joining Ohio State after serving as the chief technology officer at the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and the Air Force is no stranger to esports and gaming technology.

“Because of my previous world with the Defense Department, I want to convey to you how transformative gaming technology has become. Use of gaming technology and specific gaming engines to develop synthetic environments to contribute to pilot training has been transformational,” he said to members of the Board of Trustees Academic Affairs and Student Life Committee last week.

Stone was part of a presentation to update trustees on the development of the university’s esports program since it was officially unveiled last month. The interdisciplinary curriculum will focus on game studies and esports and is expected to be one of the first of its kind in higher education.

The program is currently under development and involves five colleges at Ohio State. The new curriculum will include undergraduate and graduate degrees; an elective course in esports content production; online certification programs for specialized credentials; and a gaming speaker series.

“This is not teaching students how to play the games. This is developing the games, it’s the technology that goes into them, the psychology and human health components,” said Executive Vice President and Provost Bruce A. McPheron.

Specific areas of study may include esports management, game art and production, game design, programming, the business of games, and health and rehabilitation.

“This is an endeavor that really encompasses the breadth of the university. It’s a new curriculum development concept, it’s actual research, it’s in fact part of student life and has substantial student interest,” McPheron said.

Stone said some of the research possibilities include the use of gaming to aid rehabilitation, understand the cognitive development of esports athletes and exploring the potential of artificial intelligence.

Senior Vice President for Student Life Javaune Adams-Gaston said the value of an esports program extends beyond the classroom and the research lab and into the lives of students. She said a state-of-the-art arena is being built on campus to serve as home to Ohio State’s esports teams and open to all students.

“Really it’s an opportunity to pull students out of their dorms or out of their room if they live off campus, into a large, integrated opportunity to engage with their peers,” she said.

Adams-Gaston said the current esports teams offer experience in team building, strategy and leadership. She said the comprehensive nature of Ohio State’s esports program would help broaden the perspective of students.

“All of those things we hope will move them toward thinking more globally about what they’re doing in the esports world,” she said.

Trustee Hiroyuki Fujita asked if the program would seek partnerships with the gaming industry. Ohio State is actively seeking input from industry partners to construct the most comprehensive programs possible.

Trustee Clark Kellogg offered the most direct question.

“If we don’t do this would we miss out?” he asked.

“It would be an opportunity missed to not take a leadership role here,” McPheron said. “But this is a place where the comprehensive capacity and the fact that this builds to all of our core strengths and mission really holds up something we need to treat seriously and make some inroads into.”

The theme of this week’s show was Happily Ever After.

As part of an annual tradition, the halftime show faced the east end of the stadium for the first time this season. The band marched in formations like a big, bad wolf huffing and puffing to blow a house down. A knight in shining scarlet and gray climbed up a princess’s hair as the band played music from the movie “Tangled.”

One of the band’s drills featured a princess’s kiss transforming a frog into a prince as they played Randy Newman’s “Friends on the Other Side” from “The Princess and the Frog.” And in a nod to more modern fantasy, the marching band played their version of the theme song to the popular HBO series “Game of Thrones.”

Lindsay Hostetler, from West Liberty, Ohio, dotted the ‘i’ this week. Hostetler is a geographic information systems graduate who joined the marching band from West Liberty-Salem High School.

He discusses a few hypotheses with Audrey Sawyer, assistant professor of earth sciences. Could it be seasonal? Or manmade: The fact that the renovation of the lake is completed and construction work is no longer stirring up the lake’s sediment? Maybe it’s biological, caused by algae and plants growing in the lake. Or a more complicated possibility: The lake is currently supplied by both city water and groundwater from a limestone aquifer, and the chemistry of the lake water could be equilibrating with the atmosphere.

The installation of a new hydrogeology learning lab in and near the lake gives students like Madson the opportunity to apply classroom learning without leaving campus.

“Professors can say, ‘This is what we’ve been talking about, and it’s right in your backyard,’” says Madson, an earth sciences major.

Both Madson and Sawyer started their undergraduate studies in astrophysics; Madson also was studying geophysics. They took advantage of diverse course opportunities and eventually discovered the potential of — and their own keen interest in — earth sciences.

“I like this so much better,” Madson said before donning waders to make an adjustment to the sensor in Mirror Lake. “I can go out in the field and get my hands dirty. It’s not that I’m stuck at this desk.”

The new lab consists of monitoring stations in the lake and a groundwater well. Both are equipped with wireless sensors to monitor pressure, water level, temperature, electric conductivity, total dissolved solids and salinity.

Future hydrogeology classes, Madson says, will be able to pull up Mirror Lake’s data on computers to analyze it.

Sawyer, who developed and, with several students, installed the lab, says already two general education classes and an upper-level hydrogeology class are using her teaching materials.

“These three courses alone will expose approximately 900 students annually to hands-on skills in hydrogeology,” says Sawyer.

“In the ‘Water Issues’ general education class, we talk about water in the news and use it as a jumping off point to learn about geology,” Sawyer says, noting that the class (ES 2204) has discussed hurricanes, droughts and global groundwater contamination issues such as natural arsenic in Southeast Asia.

Sawyer’s interest in earth sciences was piqued at a high school summer program, where a professor talked about waterborne diseases.

“I thought, wow, if I want to do environmental science and make a difference,” she remembers, “I need to do water.”

Sawyer, who joined Ohio State in 2014, received funding from the National Science Foundation to study water table fluctuations and establish the hydrogeology learning lab. The well for the lab was donated by Jamison Drilling. Students use the lab to learn about the area’s aquifer and soon will install several shallow wells for monitoring the water table. Resulting data from all of the sensors will supply fodder for senior theses.

“Through the university’s ecosystem services goal, we hope to increase the opportunities for faculty and students to utilize more of campus grounds for learning labs,” says Steve Volkmann, university landscape architect.

The university’s sustainability goals, established in 2015, are designed to develop solutions to the challenges of sustainability and in evolving a culture of sustainability through collaborative teaching, pioneering research, comprehensive outreach, and innovative operations, practices and policies. Among the goals: increasing the ecosystem services that the university’s properties provide, such as stormwater control, carbon sequestration, local food growth and recreational or cultural interaction opportunities.

The hydrogeology lab also could prove beneficial for local scientists outside of Ohio State. Sawyer says the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Ohio Department of Natural Resources have inquired about using the lab to train new employees.

Sawyer sees even more potential: “Maybe we’ll discover data that could be helpful for the daily operation of Mirror Lake,” she says. “Or looking at the water table, we might be able to see changes due to the natural spring that used to be here, so we’ll have a historical perspective.”

Given the many disciplines of study available on campus, Sawyer hopes student projects at the lake also will capture the attention of students outside earth sciences.

“If they walk by and see this kind of science, and it sparks their interest in any kind of science,” she says, “that would be the reaction out of this that would be the end goal.”

Next summer, Sawyer hopes to use the Mirror Lake lab to develop a hands-on learning activity for the Ohio Supercomputer Center’s Young Women’s Summer Institute for middle-school girls in Ohio.

The lines separating environmental science, engineering and geology are blurring, says Sawyer, as scientists work in teams at the interface of these fields. She adds that in geology and hydrology, the technology revolution has been significant in recent years.

“I’m excited that we can bring this technology to students through the learning lab,” she says. “It’s a chance for students to learn the tools that environmental geologists and consultants use in the professional world.

“Geology is one of those sciences people find by accident,” Sawyer says. “It turns out it’s a super-viable career, but few people know how fun and lucrative it can be until they start digging into it — no pun intended.”

Further reading:

Film studies major Vincent Tricaso, who took Audrey Sawyer’s Water Issues class, made a video of the well drilling for Sawyer to use to teach earth studies students about the topic.

Mirror Lake Restoration

Time-lapse video of Mirror Lake Redesign

And that could help in efforts to prevent infection, according to the researchers.

Reduced immune function, recent antibiotic use, current or recent hospitalization and prior C. difficile infection predicted risk of subsequent infection, opening the door to potential preventive interventions.

“This could help health care providers red-flag those patients who are at high risk of C. diff, and may one day lead to therapeutic or dietary tactics to lower the chances of infection,” said the study’s co-lead author, Vanessa Hale of The Ohio State University.

The study appears in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

The research included studies in both humans and mice, and involved the transplant of feces from human study participants to mice to assess differences in susceptibility to C. difficile infection and molecular-level explanations for that increased risk.

“Microbes in the gut play a critical role in defending against disease, and the really exciting part of this study is that it might help us better identify the risk factors that are linked to problems in the gut and susceptibility to these dangerous infections,” said Hale, an assistant professor of veterinary preventive medicine at Ohio State. The study was conducted at the Mayo Clinic, where she previously worked.

The researchers started by looking at the gut microbes of a group of 115 people who had diarrhea but who did not have C. diff when they first sought medical care, some of whom went on to develop a C. diff infection. They also analyzed the gut microbes of 118 healthy volunteers for comparison.

“About half of the diarrhea patients had gut microbial communities that looked healthy, but the guts of the other half were really intriguing – they had different microbes and very different levels of metabolites. We called this half the ‘dysbiotic’ – or unhealthy – group,” Hale said.

“When we transplanted human stool from the dysbiotic group into mice, we discovered that these mice were more likely to become infected with C. diff than mice that received human stool from the healthy-looking group.”

The researchers then examined potential risk factors found on the medical charts of individuals with “dysbiotic” and healthy-looking gut microbial communities and found a cluster of five factors that were associated with unhealthy communities.

“We knew that dysbiotic microbial communities put mice at higher risk of C. diff infection, and we wanted to see if the five factors could be used to predict C. diff infections in humans,” Hale said.

To do this, the research team went back and looked at the medical charts of more than 17,000 previous patients who were free of C. diff when they initially sought care. In that larger group, there also was a clear connection between the risk factors and subsequent C. diff infection.

Furthermore, the researchers found higher levels of amino acids – particularly proline – in the guts of mice that received transplants from people whose gut microbiomes were unhealthy, or dysbiotic.

That was interesting, and potentially important, because C. diff needs amino acids like proline to proliferate and it cannot make proline on its own. That prompted the team to wonder if reducing dietary amino acids could protect against C. diff, Hale said.

Feeding the mice diets low in protein moderately lowered the growth of C. diff, providing further evidence that amino acids – including proline – play a role in risk of infection and leaving researchers curious about the potential for dietary interventions in at-risk humans, Hale said.

“It’s possible that a dietary strategy could reduce C. diff infection in those patients who are deemed to be susceptible based on the cluster of risk factors we identified,” she said, adding that more study is needed to understand that relationship.

The study also showed that prophylactic fecal transplantation from a healthy donor could protect against C. diff in mice that were initially prone to infection.

“The transplants were fully protective against C. diff infection in all of the animals we tested, which was pretty amazing,” Hale said.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration currently allows fecal transplantation for treatment of recurrent C. diff in individuals who do not respond to conventional therapies – primarily antibiotics. However, it is unlikely that fecal transplantation would quickly be adopted as a prevention strategy in those deemed to be at elevated risk of infection, Hale said.

The National Institutes of Health and the Center for Individualized Medicine at Mayo Clinic supported the study.

Eric Battaglioli of Georgetown College was the co-lead author. Purna Kashyap of Mayo Clinic is the senior author.

The marching band celebrated all things about dance while playing songs like “Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough” and “Can’t Stop the Feeling.” They even moved one degree closer to Kevin Bacon by playing their version of “Footloose.”

Fans on both sides of the stadium were entertained by the marching band’s formations. The band mimicked a pair of dancing shoes while facing the east side of the stadium and marched as Michael Jackson’s hat and gloves toward the west side.

Anna Hurley, from Delaware, Ohio, dotted the ‘i’ this week. Hurley is a city and regional planning major who graduated from Rutherford B. Hayes High School.

King was assassinated in April 1968 and just days later the Civil Rights Act was signed into law.

The marching band spelled out “Free at Last” and “1968” and recreated the Lincoln Memorial, site of the “I Have a Dream” speech. Music for the halftime show included “We Shall Overcome,” “People Got to Be Free,” and “Pride (In the Name of Love).”

Taylor Thompson, from Marysville, Ohio, dotted the ‘i’ this week. Thompson is an accounting major who graduated from Marysville High School.

“With Ohio State being a leader in engineering, academics, research and medicine, it seems a natural fit to pull all of these together to support the esports program,” said Deborah M. Grzybowski, co-director of the game studies and esports curriculum development and associate professor of practice in The Ohio State University Department of Engineering Education.

An interdisciplinary curriculum spanning five colleges will focus on game studies and esports is being developed at the core of this program. This curriculum will be one of the first of its kind in higher education, and will include undergraduate and graduate degrees; an elective course in esports content production; online certification programs for specialized credentials; and a gaming speaker series.

Specific areas of study may include esports management, game art and production, game design, programming, the business of games, and health and rehabilitation. The university is actively seeking input from industry partners to construct the most comprehensive programs possible.  

A state-of-the-art arena is being built on campus to complement this curriculum and to give students diverse career opportunities. The arena will be home to Ohio State’s esports teams and open to all students.

“The arena will not only be a place for our teams to practice and compete, but it will also encourage open gaming, and virtual reality experiences,” Brandon Smith, director of esports in the Office of Student Life, said. “It will include over 80 seats, with computer console and virtual reality systems, as well as a broadcast booth for students interested in shoutcasting.” 

The teams will compete with other Power 5 universities in a newly formed league commissioned by the Electronic Gaming Federation. The Ohio State University will help to develop the governance body of this league. 

Researchers across the University and at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center are the first to study the brains, bodies and behaviors of elite esports athletes. Through a deeper understanding of this relationship and the combined influences of this triad on an individual’s ability to perform a given task, researchers will discover ways to unlock new levels of human performance. This new knowledge will benefit student success, elite athletes and even patients.

“Ohio State is known for high-performance athletics, and esports plays to this strength,” said James Onate, co-director of the Sports Medicine Movement Analysis and Performance Program at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center. “The methods are the same as any other sport, the skills are just different. We have a lot to learn from studying esports athletes, from their exceptional reaction times and rapid decision-making abilities to their physical attributes and health behaviors.”

In order to support these efforts, researchers at Ohio State Wexner Medical Center are putting esports athletes through a variety of tests, all in an effort to figure out what skills and attributes elite esports athletes should have. The results of these studies will help individuals and teams optimize and sustain high levels of performance through assessment, analysis and augmentation.

“Ohio State is already ahead of the curve in studying the connection between machine learning and human learning,” Morley Stone, senior vice president for research at Ohio State, said. “This provides us with a springboard to delve deeper into the understanding of human performance in esports.”

100-year-old Ohio State alumnus Anthony Violi of Steubenville, Ohio, a lifelong music educator who played trumpet in the band from 1937-1942, dotted the i in the home-side Script Ohio at the conclusion of halftime.

While sousaphone players are typically the only ones to dot the i, both in the student and alumni bands, on rare occasions exceptions are made for exceptional individuals.

Violi joins the ranks of other honorary i-dotters selected by the band’s alumni for the reunion game, including former band directors Jack Evans and Paul Droste (along with their wives Carol and Anne, respectively), John and Annie Glenn, and Les Wexner.

Others selected as i-dotters for the student band over the years include former coaches Woody Hayes and Earle Bruce, Bob Hope, Jack Nicklaus, and former band director Jon Woods. In all, the honor has been extended to fewer than 20 individuals over Script Ohio’s 82-year history.

Buckeye Precious Plastic joined teams from Purdue University, the University of California, Berkeley and other colleges around the country as one of 10 winners of the challenge. The program, sponsored by the Ford Motor Company Fund, invites students from around the world to create innovative solutions to problems and improve their community in the process.

“Community engagement is a big motivator for us,” said John Schlichting, a third-year environmental engineering major and member of the Buckeye Precious Plastic team. “That’s how we’re going to enact change, is by engaging the community.”

Based in the College of Engineering, Buckeye Precious Plastic is working on better ways to recycle plastic and to cut down on plastic pollution. They model their effort on the Precious Plastic program started by David Hakkens in 2013.

The project uses open source technology to build machines that turn used plastic into usable products. So plastic bottles or plastic remnants are turned into artwork, building material or office products like drink coasters.

The machines are also part of the recycling effort. The machines are made by hand by the Buckeye Precious Plastic team using instructions found online.

“We get most of our materials from recycling places so we’ve been junk diving a few times,” said Brian Waibl Polania, a third-year mechanical engineering major and team member.

The grant from the Ford Motor Company Fund will allow Buckeye Precious Plastic to build and refine the recycling machines and help raise the profile of the group. The team is also looking for a new workshop after using the Center for Automotive Research as a home over the summer.

Waibl Polania said the group members want to add their voices to Ohio State’s commitment to sustainability. They want the Buckeye Precious Plastic team to continue long after they graduate.

“I think the Ford grant really focused our idea of what we wanted to do here because it asked a lot of questions that we never really thought of – like how do we keep the group going after we’re gone,” Chris Chia, a third-year biochemistry major, said.

Schlichting said they eventually want to take their project into classrooms to show how plastic can be reused and to encourage thought beyond putting plastic in a recycling container.

“We realized that the machines we are making are primarily for recycling and while that’s good, it would be better to just not have to recycle in the first place,” Schlichting said. “So there’s that reduce and reuse part before the recycling, and I think the Ford grant allows us to tackle that goal or tackle the issue more effectively.

“One of our big mantras through this whole process is understanding that people forget about recycling as soon as they throw that bottle away.”

With Saturday’s 52-3 victory over the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, the Ohio State football program earned its 900th victory in program history, becoming only the second team to reach that plateau.

“Nine hundred wins in Ohio State football history – it’s humbling to be part of a tradition like that. To see our student section out there, to all the Buckeye Nation coming out to a game like this in the rain in the fourth quarter, the student section on both sides is going crazy, chanting and they're staying in there having a blast,” acting head coach Ryan Day said following the game. “Again, really honored to be representing such a great university and a great football tradition.”

To learn more about the milestones in Buckeye football history, click here for a timeline detailing the number of times the team has hit the century mark.