a philosopher in northern alaska • a question of latitude

a sweet spot for sleuthing sugars

10 a sweet spot for sleuthing sugars

features

18 a philospher in northern alaska

By Helen Fosgate UGA’s Chris Cuomo teams

up with scientists to study the effects of climate change on the North Slope’s indigenous peoples.

26 a question of latitude: oyster reefs differ up and

down the southeast coast

By Beth Gavrilles Jeb Byers is studying the

ecological roles oysters play in the environment and factors that affect them.

ugaresearch is published by the Office of the Vice President for Research at the University of Georgia. The magazine is printed with funds from the University of Georgia Research Foundation, Inc., a nonprofit foundation that supports UGA research.

Michael F. Adams, PresidentJere Morehead, Senior VP for Academic Affairs/Provost David C. Lee, Vice President for ResearchTerry Hastings, Director, Research Communications

ugaresearch staff

Editor: Helen Fosgate (hfosgate@uga.edu)Circulation, Media Shelf: Laurie AndersonContributing editor: Steve MarcusDesign: Lindsay Robinson/UGA Public AffairsPhoto Liaison: Paul Efland/UGA

Writers: Charles Seabrook, Beth Gavrilles, April Sorrow, Helen Fosgate, Mary Landers, Sam Fahmy, Don Church, Denise Horton, Sonia Hernandez.

Photographers: Stefan Eberhard, Peter Frey, Paul Efland, Dot Paul, Chris Cuomo.

Articles may be reprinted with permission. For additional copies of the magazine or address changes, please contact Research Communications at 706-583-0599 or rcomm@uga.edu. Access the electronic edition at www.researchmagazine.uga.edu.

POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Research Magazine, OVPR, University of Georgia, 708 Boyd GSRC, Athens, GA 30602-7411.Call 706-583-0599; or email rcomm@uga.edu.

In compliance with federal law, including the provisions of Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Sections 503 and 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, the University of Georgia does not discriminate on the basis of race, sex, religion, color, national or ethnic origin, age, disability, or military service in its administration of educational policies, programs, or activities; its admissions policies; scholarship and loan programs; athletic or other University-administered programs; or employment. In addition, the University does not discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation consistent with the University non-discrimination policy. Inquiries or complaints should be directed to the director of the Equal Opportunity Office, Peabody Hall, 290 South Jackson Street, University of Georgia, Athens, GA 30602. Telephone 706-542-7912 (V/TDD). Fax 706-542-2822

On the cover: Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of an Arabidopsis thaliana flower, also commenly known as thale cress. Arabidopsis was the first plant to have its entire genome sequenced and is widely used as a model organism in molecular and plant biology. Image by Stefan Eberhard.

By Charles Seabrook

UGA’s state-of-the-art CCRC sets the pace for research on complex carbohydrates and application of its results.

departments

24 interview understanding addiction

from genetics to treatment James MacKillop talks about

the nature of addiction and his research aimed at more effective treatments.

8 media shelf A sampling of books, recordings and other creative works by UGA faculty, staff, and students.

32 viewpoint When the cat’s away, small critters pay Sonia Hernandez studies the risks

that free-roaming cats pose to native wildlife—and to themselves.

spring 2013 Vol 43, No. 1 ISSN 1099-7458

newsbriefs2 Bone of extinct whale found off georgia coast

3 LEDs better suited to indoor lighting

4 Hopes for quick recovery from colds lead to overuse of antibiotics

5 Extinct-in-the-wild toad comes home

6 Elderly Georgians: Choosing between food and prescription drugs

7 Teens report dating violence

Want to support uGa research?If you would like to support research featured

in this issue, contact Keith Oelke, executive director of corporate and foundation

relations at: koelke@uga.edu

To see back issues of ugaresearch, visit us online at: www.researchmagazine.uga.edu

2 ugaresearch

newsbriefs

A bone embedded in an ancient shell bed on JY Reef, an area north of Gray’s Reef National Marine Sanctuary, caught

the eye of researchers from the University of Georgia and the Sanctuary.

“I thought it was from a wooly mammoth,” said Scott Noakes, a UGA research scientist.

Noakes and his colleagues were studying the structure of a reef where others had previously found bison teeth and mammoth fossils, which is why he was predisposed to think of those prehistoric beasts.

The divers knew the bone was old because of its placement in the shells, thought to be more than 30,000 years old. As more of the bone was uncovered, its shape pegged it as a whale bone, though the researchers figured it was from a North Atlantic right whale, a species that still migrates to Georgia waters to give birth.

In a series of 30-minute dives over two years, researchers painstakingly removed the bone in sections, chiseling away hard-packed silt and finally cutting through the ancient scallop shells. “It was like unwrapping a present a few peeks at a time,” Noakes said.

Analysis at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C., identified the nearly five-foot long bone—a jawbone—as that of an Atlantic gray whale. The

find was published in the November 2012 issue of Palaeontologia Electronica.

Atlantic gray whales, which grew to 50 feet long and were known as “devil fish” for their feistiness, were sought after for their high oil content. They were hunted to extinction in the 1700s, researchers believe.

This particular animal, however, was not killed by humans. Carbon dating put the whale bone at 36,000 years old. Humans lived then but weren’t yet whaling, said Gray’s Reef Deputy Superintendent Greg McFall, who helped excavate the find.

The area where the jawbone had lain, about 20 miles off the coast of St. Catherine’s Island, was likely shallow water or beach when the whale died. Casts made of the bone and painted to replicate the fossil will go to the Smithsonian, the UGA campus in Athens, the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, and the Marine Extension Aquarium on Skidaway Island.

Noakes hopes the story of the find will bring attention to the plight of the north Atlantic right whale, which has only about 400 individuals and is in danger of following the grays into extinction.

Contact Scott Noakes by email at: snoakes@uga.edu —Mary Landers

Courtesy of the Savannah Morning News

Bone of extinct whale found off Georgia coast

The gray whale mandible as seen on the ocean floor (lower right), and (above) after removal and cleaning.

Scott NoakeS, UGa

Spring 2013 3

LEDs better suited to indoor lighting

Light emitting diodes, or LEDs, used mainly in flashlights and automotive lamps, are long lasting and energy efficient.

But LEDs’ stark bluish-white light leaves consumers cold when it comes to using them in their homes, especially for indoor lighting.

Now an international team of scientists led by Zhengwei Pan, associate professor of physics at the UGA Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and at the College of Engineering, has fabricated the first LED to emit a warm white light—well suited for illumination—by using a newly engineered phosphor material. The researchers reported their results in the January 18, 2013 issue of the journal Light: Science & Applications.

Pan notes that two main variables are used to assess the quality of artificial light. The first, called correlated color temperature, measures the light’s coolness or warmth. Color temperatures of less than 4,000 kelvins are best for indoor lighting, while those above 5,000 kelvins give off the “cold” light typical of commercially available LEDs. The second variable, color rendition, is the ability of a light source to replicate natural light. A correlation value of greater than 80 is best for indoor lighting, while lower values produce colors that don’t seem true.

The material that Pan and his colleagues fabricated meets both thresholds for warm light, with a correlated color temperature of less than 4,000 kelvins and a color-rendering temperature index of 85.

Pan says the other way to achieve warm white LED light is by coating a conventional LED chip with light-emitting

materials, or phosphors, of different-emitting colors. But while this method may create so-called phosphor-based white LEDs, it’s difficult and costly to combine source materials in an exact ratio. “The resulting color often varies,” said Pan, “because each of the materials responds differently to temperature variations.”

The teams’ use of a single phosphor solves the problem of color stability “because the color quality doesn’t change with increasing temperatures,” said lead author Xufan Li, a doctoral student at the College of Engineering.

Although the researchers’ results are promising, Pan points out that hurdles must still be overcome before the material can be used in homes, businesses, and schools. For example, the efficiency of the new material is much lower than that of today’s bluish-white LEDs. And producing the phosphors on an industrial scale will be challenging as well, because even slight variations in temperature and pressure during the synthesis process results in materials with different luminescent colors.

Thus the team is currently working to discern how the ions in the new phosphor’s lattice structure are arranged, in hopes that understanding the compound at the atomic level will allow them to improve its efficiency and manufacturability.

The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the National Basic Research Programs of China, and the U.S. Department of Energy.

Contact Zhengwei Pan by email at: panz@uga.edu

— Sam Fahmy

The University of Georgia’s Zhengwei Pan (center), an associate professor of physics and engineering, holds a prototype of a single-phosphor LED,

which emits a warm white light. Feng Liu, left, and Xufan Li look on.

JoHN PaUL GaLLaGHeR, UGa

4 ugaresearch

People who develop a chest cold ex-pect to be over the coughing within

seven to nine days at most. So when they’re still coughing after two weeks, they often seek out a doctor—and a drug that will somehow make the cold go away.

In reality, it can take the average person 18 days or longer to rid the body of an acute bronchial illness, said Mark Ebell, a physician and associate profes-sor of epidemiology at UGA’s College of Public Health. Ebell believes this discrepancy between expectation and reality is an important factor in the over-prescription of antibiotics. He published his research on the phenomenon in the January/February 2013 issue of Annals of Family Medicine.

Ebell analyzed 19 separate studies, which ranged from 23 to 1,230 patients, in the United States, Europe, Russia, and Kenya, and he determined from untreat-ed control groups that bronchitis or acute cough illness actually lasts an average of 17.8 days.

According to the Centers for Disease

Control and Prevention (CDC), acute cough illness accounts for two to three percent of physician visits. Over half of these patients leave with a prescription for antibiotics, though this fraction should be much lower, according to Ebell.

“We know from clinical trials there is little, if any, benefit to antibiotic treat-ments for acute cough because most of these illnesses are caused by a virus [as opposed to bacteria],” he said. Addition-ally, over-prescription of antibiotics leads to bacterial resistance, which may severely limit the types of medicines physicians can prescribe when a serious health threat—one that might be treat-able with antibiotics—arises.

“We are already seeing types of [bacterial] infections that don’t respond to antibiotics anymore,” said Ebell, “and a real concern among public health officials is that we will get to a point where we no longer have antibiotics that work.”

Moreover, the unnecessary health-care costs are another issue of concern. Seeking medical attention can escalate

the cost of a chest cold from some $20 for an over-the-counter cough medicine and pain reliever to $200 or more for diag-nostic tests and prescriptions.

“We spend two times more per person on health care than any other country, yet we don’t achieve better outcomes overall,” he said. “In fact, many of our outcomes are worse than those of the Western European nations. Educating patients about the natural progression of illnesses will help to adjust their expectations.”

Toward that end, Ebell is currently pulling data from the CDC, family physicians, and local health departments in order to create a Web portal for helping people decide about whether and when to seek medical attention. He hopes this effort will increase self-care and keep people from seeking antibiotics unnecessarily.

Contact Mark Ebell by email at: ebell@

uga.edu

— April Sorrow

Hopes for quick recovery from colds lead to overuse of antibiotics

Spring 2013 5

Extinct-in-the-wild toad comes home

Scientists from UGA’s Savannah River Ecology Laboratory (SREL) have helped reintroduce a species of toad, declared extinct in the wild,

to its native range—the world’s first such restoration of an amphibian. Ecologists Kurt Buhlmann and Tracey Tuberville were part of this team, which released 2,500 Kihansi spray toads last October into their historic habitat—a five-acre waterfall-spray zone in Tanzania’s Kihansi Gorge.

Discovered by scientists in 1996, this thumbnail-sized gold-colored amphibian was restricted to the smallest known range for any vertebrate species and its population numbered fewer than 17,000 individuals. By 2009, the International Union for the Conservation of Nature declared the tiny toad extinct in the wild.

The toad’s rapid decline followed construction of an upstream hydroelectric dam that destroyed the species’ “spray meadow” habitat. Another factor was the emergence of the amphibian chytrid fungus, a disease also implicated in other amphibian extinctions throughout the world.

In 2000, the Tanzanian government invited scientists to initiate a captive breeding program for Kihansi spray toad. The scientists collected some 499 remaining individuals, which they took to the Wildlife Conservation Society’s Bronx Zoo and later to the Toledo Zoo. Over the next decade, the program produced more than 6,000 of the tiny toads.

In 2010, a captive colony of Kihansi spray toads was established in Tanzania by the University of Dar es Salaam and by researchers from the National Environmental Management Council of Tanzania, which constructed facilities specifically for the conservation of the small toad in Dar es Salaam. Meanwhile, prior to its reintroduction into the wild, several initiatives were undertaken to restore the Kihansi Gorge ecosystem. They included the installation of an expansive misting system, funded by the World Bank and the Government of Norway that replicates the spray zone lost after dam construction. This system helps maintain the native vegetation that the toads live in as well as the invertebrates they eat.

The Savannah River Ecology Laboratory has been an important center for herpetological research since 1967, with emphases on ecotoxicology, wetlands ecology, and conservation management. Buhlmann and Tuberville, both expert in species conservation and reintroduction, also are associate conservation scientists with the nonprofit Global Wildlife Conservation (GWC), which helped coordinate the project.

According to GWC, a third of the world’s approximately 7,000 amphibian species are threatened with extinction, and hundreds of species have gone extinct in the past four decades due to habitat loss, disease, and other factors. But, as in the case of the Kihansi spray toad, there are victories. “It is extremely exciting,” Buhlmann and Tuberville said in an email, “to be involved in returning an extinct[-in-the-wild] species to its native habitat.”

Contact Kurt Buhlmann at buhlmann@uga.edu or Tracey Tuberville at tubervil@uga.edu

— Don Church

A tiny Kihansi spray toad (top). Ecologists Tracey Tuberville and Kurt Buhlmann (above) release toads in Tanzania’s Kihansi Gorge, the world’s first restoration of an extinct-in-the-wild amphibian.

FILe PHotoS/SReL

6 ugaresearch

As they struggle to pay for prescription drugs and other out-of-

pocket expenses required by Medicare, a fear of going hungry is leading many older Georgians to skip medications and cancel doctors’ appointments, according to two new studies led by Jung Sun Lee, an associate professor of foods and nutrition at UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences.

The first study, published in the March 2013 issue of the Journal of Nutrition in Gerontology and Geriatrics, asked older Georgians whether the cost of prescriptions had caused them to skip doses, take a smaller dose, delay refills,

stop taking medications, or avoid new prescriptions.

Among the entire sample, 30 percent fell into the persistent non-adherence category during the study period, regardless of whether or not they were food-secure or -insecure. Among those who were persistently food-insecure, however, the percentage of persistent non-adherence jumped to 48.7.

“Engaging in medication-restriction behaviors, such as skipping doses, creates problems both for individuals and society,” Lee said. “The exacerbation of diseases, adverse health events, and avoidable hospitalizations result in

increased health care costs for all of us.“However, when you’re not sure

you’ll have enough money to refill your prescription and buy groceries, it’s easy to understand why someone would skip a dose … or split a heart medication in half,” she added.

Issues of cost-related medication non-adherence existed despite the fact more than 83 percent of participants were enrolled in a prescription-medication insurance plan. Nevertheless, most plans require some sort of copayment.

The second study, published in the October 2012 issue of the Journal of Nutrition, is the first to examine the relationship between food insecurity, health status, and health care expenditures in older adults.

Lee and her colleagues reviewed surveys that compared Medicare and out-of-pocket expenses of 1,377 older Georgians (mean age: 77 years), half of whom were food-insecure.

In examining the Medicare expenditures, Lee found that Medicare expenses were $1,875 lower for the food-insecure. Similarly, out-of-pocket payments for the food-insecure were $310 less than for the food-secure. These are not small differences, Lee said. “Our findings suggest complex problems in access, choice, and actual use of different types of needed medical care among food-insecure compared with food-secure older adults.”

Other researchers on the project included Rahul Jain, an assistant professor in the College of Pharmacy; and Vibha Bhargava, an adjunct faculty member in the College of Family and Consumer Sciences’ housing and consumer economics department.

Contact Jung Sun Lee by email at: leejs@fcs.uga.edu

— Denise Horton

Elderly Georgians: Choosing between food and prescription drugs

Spring 2013 7

Teens report dating violence

Nearly a third of students who date in middle school and high school report abusive relationships, according to

new research from the University of Georgia, and 90 percent of that group are both victims and offenders.

“For two-thirds of the kids, dating aggression is just not an issue, but among those who report violent relationships, this problem starts early and is stable over time,” said Pamela Orpi-nas, professor and head of the department of health promotion and behavior in UGA’s College of Public Health. She is also a member of the Institute of Public Health and the youth-vio-lence-prevention work group at UGA.

In their Healthy Teens Longitudinal Study, Orpinas and her colleagues followed a cohort of 624 students, attending schools from six districts of northeast Georgia and ranging in grade from sixth to twelfth. Participants were surveyed once a year for seven years. Each spring, students were surveyed about whether they had dated or were in a relationship. If so, each was asked to specify any acts of violence in the relationship, as well as their degree of acceptance of such behaviors.

Among the sixth-graders who said they were dating, 14 percent of boys and 24 percent of girls reported committing at least one act of physical aggression. For that grade, nearly 38 percent of boys and 22 percent of girls reported being victims of dating violence.

Among high-school seniors, 14 percent of boys and 32 percent of girls reported perpetrating dating violence, while 32 percent of boys and 26 percent of girls reported being victims of such violence. And yet, the overall rating of care from the partner was high, suggesting that these relationships offer some support in spite of the violence.

Using the same data set, the Orpinas team found that stu-dents who date in middle school have significantly worse study skills, are four times more likely to drop out before graduating from high school, and report twice as much alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana use than their non-dating classmates.

Investigators used two indicators of students’ success at school: the high school’s dropout rate and yearly teacher-assessed study skills (teachers completed questionnaires about the students’ academic performance). Orpinas says the study, published recently in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, sug-gests that “dating should not be considered a rite of passage in middle school.”

The research was funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Injury Prevention and Control.

Contact Pamela Orpinas by email at: porpinas@uga.edu

— April Sorrow

8 ugaresearch

Magic Lantern Empire

by John Phillip Short, assistant professor of history, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences(Cornell University Press, 2012)

From a multitude of 19th and early 20th century sources—including police files, spy reports, pulp novels, popular science writing, and daily newspapers—Short presents a picture of the emergence of the modern German perception of the world and Germany’s place in it.

Hummingbird Sleep: Poems, 2009-2011

by Coleman Barks, professor emeritus of English, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences(University of Georgia Press, 2013)

Barks, best known for his translations of thirteenth-cen-tury mystic poet Jalal Al-Din Rumi, has a significant body of original work as well. In this collection, he juxtaposes the ideas of the mystics Greg-ory of Nyssa, Rainer Maria Rilke, Rumi, and other noted philosopher-poets against such everyday images as basketball, fishing, and sitting by a creek. The result is a quiet, some-times humorous examination of the meanings of identity, language, and perception.

Pharmaceutical Marketing

by Matthew Perri III, profes-sor and director, Pharmacy Care Administration Graduate Program in the department of clinical and administrative pharmacy, College of Pharma-cy, University of Georgia, and Brent Rollins, assistant profes-sor of pharmacy administra-tion, Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine (Jones & Bartlett Learning, 2013)

This book provides students and new industry professionals who don’t have a health care background with a thorough overview of the general principles of marketing in the pharmaceutical environment. Topics include marketing brand and generic drugs with special emphasis on direct-to-consumer advertising, and the impact of social media and technology. Each new hard copy includes an access code for a companion website not available with the eBook format.

Militant Citizenship: Rhetori-cal Strategies of the National Woman’s Party, 1913-1920

by Belinda Stillion Southard, assistant professor of commu-nication studies and women’s studies, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences (Texas A&M University Press, 2011)

In the early years of the 20th century, the National Woman’s Party embraced a strategy of “militant agitation” on behalf of women’s suffrage that included heckling President Woodrow Wilson and publicly burning his speeches. The group’s members endured arrests, beatings, and force-feedings in response to hunger strikes. Despite this, the NWP eventually was endorsed by prominent politicians—includ-ing Wilson. Stillion Southard’s book was recognized by the National Communication Association for its outstanding quality of research, originality and intellectual creativity.

mediashelf

militantcitizenshipRHETORICAL STRATEGIES OF THE NATIONAL

WOMAN’S PARTY, 1913–1920

BELINDA A. STILLION SOUTHARD

Spring 2013 9

Send suggestions for Media Shelf of

work by UGA personnel to

Laurie Anderson at: laurie@uga.edu.

MULTIMEDIA

Athens Revisitedproduced and directed by Terrell Austin, MA ’95 political science, and Tim Dowse, communications production manager, Institute on Human Develop-ment and Disability, College of Family and Consum-er Sciences; researched and written by Terrell Austinhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pJGWuS-rz7I

Filmed at Oconee Hill Cemetery and in the historic Ware-Lyndon House in Athens, Georgia, this meticulously researched 21-minute film imagines an anecdote-filled interview with doctors Edward Ware (1807-1873) and Ed-ward Lyndon (1839-1917).

Improving Mangrove Management to Protect the Ocean’s Tropical Nurseriesby Virginia Schutte, doctoral student, Odum School of Ecology http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2wCP9FsMq6o

Schutte gives a brief underwater tour of a mangrove forest’s rich flora and fauna, where viewers can ob-serve small octopi, a stingray, vermillion sponges and

colorful sea anemones. The film was a finalist in the National Science Foundation’s 2012 Creating the Future video contest, and was shown at the 2013 Beneath the Waves Film Festival in Savannah, Georgia.

The Future Files: Pandemic Threat executive producer/director: Joshua Seftel, Seftel Productions; written by Jesse Sweet (Georgia Public Broadcasting, 2012)http://gpb.org/The-Future-Files

Imagine a time when flu outbreaks can be stopped within days of their appearance. David Stallknecht and Ralph Tripp, professors in the Col-lege of Veterinary Medicine, are among several Georgia researchers featured in this film who explain different approaches they are exploring toward halting influenza epidemics. The half hour program, intended for a general audience, is the pilot episode for a pro-posed series on research in Georgia.

AUDIO

Street Songperformed by University of Georgia Wind Ensemble, directed by John Lynch, professor of music and director of bands, Hugh Hodgson School of Music, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences (Naxos, 2012)

This collection of wind band classics captures the dynamism and variety of 20th and 21st century works for woodwind, brass, and percussion. Pieces include Street Song by Michael Tilson Thomas; Igor Stravinsky’s Concerto for Piano & Wind Instruments featuring Anatoly

Sheludyakov, UGA collaborative pianist; Aaron Copland’s Fanfare for the Common Man; Vaughan Williams’s Toccato Marziale; Jim Mobberly’s Words of Love; Ricardo Lorenz’s El Muro; and Wayne Oquin’s Tower Ascending, which was commissioned for the ensemble and features D. Ray McClellan, professor of clarinet.

TOOLS

WeRecycledeveloped by Jenna Jambeck, assistant professor of environmental engineering, and Kyle Johnsen, assistant professor of computer systems engineering, College of Engineering, and Aryabrata Basu, doctoral student, computer science, Franklin College of Arts and Scienceshttp://werecycle.engr.uga.edu/

WeRecycle is a mobile application that communities can use to map the locations of outdoor and special event trash cans and recycle bins. It was developed with funding from the Environmental Research and Education Foundation.

10 ugaresearch

A small signaling protein, RANTES (green and yellow), is shown here interacting with heparin (magenta), a complex carbohydrate. When bound, RANTES and heparin cause migration of immune system cells, such as white blood cells, to sites of infection. RANTES is also known to suppress HIV activity.

ImaGe by LacHeLe FoLey

Spring 2013 11

UGA’s state-of-the-art CCRC sets the pace for research on complex carbohydrates and

application of its results.

By Charles Seabrook

What students fondly call the “sugar shack” is no place to

satisfy a sweet tooth. It’s the University of Georgia’s Complex Carbohydrate Research Center (CCRC), one of three premier facilities in the world dedicated to studying nature’s substances—complex carbohydrates—made of sugars.

In this 140,000-square-foot state-of-the-art facility off Riverbend Road in south Athens, 17 interdisciplinary research groups are seeking to unravel of some of nature’s most elusive mysteries. The sleuthing began in 1985, when the CCRC was founded to meet a pressing need for research in the fledgling field of glycoscience, or the study of sugars and their structures and functions. Now the field is on the verge of making great strides. A deeper understanding of complex carbohydrates promises major steps in medicine, biofuels, and light but super-strong materials. “The potential benefits are enormous,” says Carl Bergmann, UGA assistant vice president for research and a CCRC senior scientist.

Indeed Complex, but Essential to Life

The ubiquitous complex carbo-hydrates, also called glycans, are real superstars of the biochemical world, often playing more roles like their bet-ter known and understood cousins the proteins and nucleic acids (RNA and

DNA). High-school biology students learn, or should learn, that complex carbohydrates are essentially the body’s main energy source. But it also turns out that these compounds are involved in virtually every known biological process, from photosynthesis in green plants to fertilization in animals.

Simple carbohydrates such as sucrose (table sugar) and fructose consist of one or two sugar units. But complex carbohydrates, such as cellulose, starch, and glycogen, are indeed complex. They occur in thousands of different three-dimensional shapes and structures that often branch into baffling twisting patterns that flex and bend like a Slinky toy. And they rarely act alone: complex carbohydrates readily attach to proteins and lipids to create other compounds—glycoproteins and glycolipids, respectively—that have their own litany of functions.

Their intricate structures and other properties, Bergmann says, have made the study of complex carbohydrates a serious challenge. This is why many scientists over the years have focused instead on proteins and nucleic acids, whose less-complicated structures and clearer chemical blueprints render them easier to scrutinize in the laboratory.

Nevertheless, researchers say that a comprehension of the wide realm of complex carbohydrates is essential if they are ever to fully understand how plants, animals, and microbes grow and

Alan Darvill is director of the CCRC and Regents Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. His major research focus is the structure and function of plant cell walls.

A Sweet Spot for

Sleuthing Sugars

PaUL eFLaND

12 ugaresearch

develop; how green plants harness the sun’s energy; and how and why diseases occur.

“There is hardly a human disease that doesn’t involve complex carbohydrates,” says Alan Darvill, the CCRC’s founder and director. “We want to know how they are involved.” New revelations at the CCRC about relationships between disease and carbohydrates have opened the door for powerful new vaccines, antibiotics, and other therapies—perhaps future cures—for cancer, infectious diseases, and chronic maladies such as diabetes and rheumatoid arthritis.

To Fight at the Cellular Level

Fundamental to this research and development is the fact that most human ills begin at the cellular level, where complex carbohydrates perform multiple and diverse tasks, most of which are not yet fully understood. Inside a cell, complex carbohydrates help regulate gene expression and configure proteins to do their work correctly. And on every living cell surface, a tangled web of thousands of complex carbohydrates—like fuzz on a peach—helps trigger an immune response against marauding viruses, bacteria, and other microbial invaders. This carbohydrate-rich layer is called the “glycocalyx,” one of nature’s most versatile

inventions. For example, when attacking microbes try to enter a cell, they grab onto specific carbohydrates in its glycocalyx, which then sends out 911 calls that prompt the body’s defense system to deploy forces for wiping out the invaders.

The glycocalyx also determines blood type, and even dictates whether a cell will be a blood cell, skin cell, or some other. Moreover, though the glycocalyx can be like Velcro by helping cells stick together to form tissues, it will turn them loose at other times to travel elsewhere in the body. That can be good if the freed cells are, say, infection-fighting white blood cells from bone marrow; it can be bad if the cells are cancerous and may initiate new tumors.

Scientists know that many glycocalyx carbohydrates change structurally and chemically when the cell becomes cancerous—changes unique to cancer cells. Exploiting that uniqueness is the objective of several CCRC scientists who are pursuing the development of potent new drugs and vaccines that detect tumors early and zap malignancies selectively.

“We hope to have therapies that can teach our immune system to fight what is uniquely found in and on cancer cells,” says Geert-Jan Boons, professor of chemistry. For instance, a new carbohydrate-based vaccine he is helping develop at the CCRC shows promise in treating a particularly aggressive and hard-to-treat form of breast cancer known as a “triple-negative tumor,” which affects some 35,000 women annually. Human trials of the vaccine

Carl Bergmann, CCRC associate director (above), studies the biological roles of the matrix polysaccharides in plants and animals. Despite the difficulties, he sees promise for extraordinary advances through carbohydrate research.

Michael Pierce, Professor of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and director of UGA’s Cancer Center is collaborating with CCRC scientists in exploring new diagnostic tests and new treatments. “We need a diverse group of researchers,” says Pierce, “because there are so many different ways to affect the multiple problems of cancer.”

PaUL eFLaND

PeteR FRey

Spring 2013 13

are expected to begin within a year in collaboration with the Mayo Clinic, says Boons.

Other CCRC researchers are well along in developing early-detection markers for the particularly lethal pancreatic and ovarian cancers. The ability to detect these types of tumors in their earliest stages would save many lives. About 22,000 new cases of ovarian cancer, for example, are diagnosed annually, most of them discovered at an advanced stage and needing aggressive, though often futile, treatment. Yet “almost every cancer can be successfully treated if it is diagnosed early enough,” says Michael Pierce, a professor of biochemistry and head of UGA’s Cancer Center.

Intervention at the Stem-Cellular Level

At other times, changes in cell-surface carbohydrates are not necessarily bad–and may even be necessary. In life’s earliest stages, the molecular structures of carbohydrates on the perimeters of embryonic stem cells begin to change when the cells start transforming into myriad specialists: eye cells, liver cells, nerve cells, skin cells, and hundreds of other different bodily types. The altered carbohydrates appear to help regulate the transformation process. Still not understood is what triggers the carbohydrate changes and how they help govern stem-cell transformation.

A scanning electron microscope (SEM) view of trichomes, a hair-like outgrowth on the surface of an Arabidopsis leaf. Trichomes are single cell structures, and like all plant cells, are surrounded by a carbohydrate-rich cell wall.

Distinguished Professor in Biochemical Sciences Geert-Jan Boons has created a vaccine that—in mice—trains the immune system to recognize and attack cells bearing carbohydrates that are unique to tumors.

Dot PaUL

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But future revelations could speed up the development of stem-cell-based therapies, including the manipulation of stem cells to grow new bones, nerves, or other tissues to replace those damaged by disease, injury, or genetic disorders.

Pursuing that goal are CCRC scientists Michael Tiemeyer and Kelley Moremen, professors of biochemistry and molecular biology. In a recent discovery, they identified specific enzymes from stem cells that appear to dictate at least some of the changes in surface carbohydrates. This finding, Tiemeyer says, is a major step toward fully understanding stem-cell transformation—knowledge that could electrify the fields of biomedicine and glycoscience.

An earlier finding by CCRC scientists shed light on nervous-system development: they identified a novel carbohydrate that binds to a protein and guides nerve-cell wiring. An upshot of this advance might be more effective methods to treat disorders ranging from Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease in adults to autism in children. It also sparks hope that methods could be devised to regenerate nerve cells in people disabled by spinal-cord injuries.

Extracting Much More Energy from Plants

Other new findings by CCRC researchers are changing some long-held notions in plant science. Debra Mohnen, professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, and her group have found an integral link between two types of carbohydrates and a protein in a plant’s cell wall—the tough outer layer of a plant cell that provides strength and stability and is critically involved in growth and development. Because such a connection had not been seen before in a cell wall, Mohnen’s discovery challenges the conventional wisdom that protein and carbohydrate networks exist separately in cell walls. She says the revelation could force scientists to change their perceptions of how plants are

The goal of Debra Mohnen (above), professor of biochem-

istry and molecular biology and director of plant biomass formation and modification in

the BioEnergy Science Center is to understand the structure and biosynthesis of plant cell walls.

She and her research team study plants such as poplar, switch-

grass (right) and Arabidopsis to decode the tremendous complex-

ity of the cell wall (below) and to improve plants as renewable sources of biomass for biofuel

and biomaterial production.

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put together—which in turn could lead to new and efficient techniques for breaking apart plants’ cell walls.

Deconstructing cell walls would free up tremendous amounts of sugar-laden carbohydrates, which make up some 90 percent of a wall, mostly in its cellulose. The released sugars, in turn, could be fermented into ethanol and other biofuels. The cell wall, however, is one of nature’s toughest barriers. Current methods to break it down are difficult and prohibitively expensive. But if cell wall “recalcitrance” was overcome with more efficient methods, the result could be plentiful supplies of low-cost biofuels to help meet the nation‘s energy demands. That’s a main goal of the U.S. Department of Energy BioEnergy Science Center, a major supporter of Bioenergy research at UGA including Mohnen’s group and

other CCRC Professors, Hahn, Bar-Peled and York.

Research led by Michael Hahn, professor of plant science, also is unmasking cell-wall secrets. He and his group have developed a “toolkit” of some 170 monoclonal antibodies that can zero in on specific carbohydrates and reveal their locations and structures within the cell wall. A possible application: Armed with data from antibody screenings of plant samples, scientists may be able to determine which enzymes might be used to more efficiently dismantle a cell wall.

As a service to other institutions and universities, the CCRC now performs monoclonal antibody screenings on plant samples sent in from scientists around the world. A full screening once took several days, but a robotic system

developed by Hahn’s lab reduced the time to about six hours. “We are trying to order another robot to meet the demand,” Hahn says.

Bringing the Action to Athens

It was Darvill and colleague Peter Albersheim who, while at the University of Colorado in the early 1980s, conceived the idea for a research center to meet the pressing need to demystify complex carbohydrates. They knew that probing the immense complexity of nature’s sugars—and learning how to exploit them for the betterment of humankind—would require advanced research facilities devoted exclusively to those purposes.

Not long after, the University of Georgia recognized the potential benefits of complex carbohydrate research and got into the act—beginning with acquisition. UGA recruited Darvill, Albersheim, and their 16-member research team from Colorado in 1985 to establish the CCRC in Athens. As a spate of key discoveries emerged from the center, and scientists came more and more to appreciate the universal importance of complex carbohydrates, the CCRC underwent a series of expansions and upgrades. In 2004, it moved into its spacious facility off Riverbend Road—designed from the ground up for carbohydrate-related pursuits.

The CCRC is now regarded as a world model for complex carbohydrate research. Its array of precise analytical tools—mass spectrometry, nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR), computational modeling , and the like—allows scientists to delve ever deeper into sugars to elucidate their intricate three-dimensional structures and often-sophisticated functions. The instrumentation costs almost as much

Dr. Michael Hahn, professor of plant biology, has developed a large collection of monoclonal antibodies that recognize structural features of plant cell wall polysaccharides. These antibodies allow scientists to see where polysaccharides are located in plant tissues. The cell walls colored in bright green (shown on the computer screen) have been labeled with an antibody.

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as the $40 million CCRC facility itself. The centerpiece is a 900-megahertz spectrometer, one of the largest and most powerful NMR instruments in academia. No less significant is the ready availability of mass spectrometry. At first, CCRC researchers thought they would need only seven or eight “mass spec” machines. “We now have 32,” says Bergmann, who oversaw the CCRC’s design and construction.

The powerful tools, however, would be of limited use without highly qualified experts to devise and run useful experiments and interpret their results. Complex carbohydrate research “requires a team approach—there is just too much to know, too much to learn,” says Darvill. That’s why the CCRC also assembled its cadre of diverse experts—in biochemistry, molecular biology, plant science, organic chemistry, computer modeling, electron microscopy, physics, and other disciplines—critical to unlocking the mysteries of complex carbohydrates.

Cellobiose, seen above in crystallized form under polarized light, is a disaccharide, consisting of two glucose molecules, and is the basic building block of cellulose. Cellulose is the major carbohydrate in plant cell walls. A photomicrograph of glucose (below), a simple sugar, or monosaccharide. Glucose is the smallest unit of carbohydrates such as starch, cellulose and glycogen.

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Potential for Growth, in the Science and in Georgia

Still, the study of complex carbohydrates is hardly home free. The current status and future of research in this field was outlined in a recent National Research Council report, “Transforming Glycoscience: A Roadmap for the Future.” While noting substantial achievements in studying carbohydrates, it also points out that glycoscience is still not fully integrated into the science

mainstream. The report sets a 10–15 year agenda to help move the field from relative obscurity into the spotlight.

Darvill and Boons were two of the report’s coeditors, a reflection of the CCRC’s eminence in complex carbohydrate research. Its researchers are collaborators in more than 130 endeavors with scientists at universities and corporations in Georgia, across the nation, and around the world. The CCRC is home to four federally designated centers for various aspects

of complex carbohydrate research, and it brings in some $15 million annually in research dollars from federal, state, industrial, and foundation sources. In addition, the CCRC provides training and analytical services to university, government, nonprofit, and industrial laboratories. Few, if any, other such facilities in the world can match the CCRC in providing such services, says Parastoo Azadi, the center’s technical director.

Entrepreneurs are taking notice. Some business forecasters foresee a string of new biotechnology companies starting up in Georgia to take advantage of the CCRC’s expertise and willingness to help in the development of new pharmaceuticals and other marketable products. One firm, Galectin Therapeutics based in Norcross, was lured to Georgia from Massachusetts because of the CCRC. The company recently established a drug-discovery program with Boons’ laboratory to find new disease-fighting carbohydrate molecules. “There is no better place in the world to conduct these investigations than the University of Georgia,” says company president Peter G. Traber.

(Charles Seabrook is long-time science writer and book author who has written several cover stories for ugaresearch. His latest book, The Life of the Salt Marsh, was published in 2012 by UGA Press.)

The center piece of the NMR (Nuclear Magnetic Resonance) spectroscopy facility is a 900-megahertz spectrometer.

The 140,000-square-foot-state-of-the-art Complex Carbohydrate Research Center is nestled along the banks of the Oconee River off of Riverbend Road.

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A philosopher in

Northern Alaska

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UGA’s Chris Cuomo teams up with scientists to study the effects

of climate change on the North Slope’s indigenous peoples.

By Helen Fosgate

Photos providedby Chris Cuomo

Nowhere on the planet is climate change more apparent

than on the North Slope, the vast swath of tundra and shallow lakes that stretches across the top of Alaska. Average mean temperatures in Barrow, the North Slope’s largest town—and the northernmost municipality of the United States—have risen by more than 40 degrees Fahrenheit in the last three decades, nearly double the global average.

Storms have become so strong and coastal erosion so damaging that many residents, no longer shielded by the shore ice that used to buffer their homes from such weather, have moved inland. Sea ice is thinner and forms later each year. More tundra lakes are draining, taking fresh drinking water with them. And what used to be a trickle of visitors to the Barrow area has turned into a torrent as scientists flood to the North Slope to study the course of rapid climate change.

Bowhead whale bones and upturned umiaqs (canoes) sit on the edge of the Beaufort Sea, in winter (above)

and summer (right). The native Iñupiaq community has thrived for generations

in harsh conditions, supported by subsistence hunting on land and sea,

and cultural values that emphasize sharing and respect for other species.

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Scientists dig core samples to study the history of environmental change on the North Slope (left), but gaps in the physical data can only be addressed by consulting human accounts and memories. Interdisciplinary and community-centered approaches are therefore indispensible.

“Overall, the situation on the North Slope demonstrates how environmental changes have real impacts on health, food security, culture, land stability, and future economics in the region.”

— Chris Cuomo

Along with the scientists is Chris Cuomo, a philosopher from the University of Georgia. Her research team, which includes Wendy Eisner and Kenneth Hinkel, who are prominent physical geographers at the University of Cincinnati, and Benjamin Jones, a geologist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Alaska Science Center, had already worked on the North Slope for several years, studying the history and resilience of permafrost.

But the scientists wanted to include local knowledge in their research, and so in 2002 they invited Cuomo to join their team. Her role was to develop methods for integrating

Spring 2013 21

interviews into scientific research, and to document how climate changes are affecting the indigenous Iñupiat (pronounced “In-NEW-pee-at”) people, who are culturally and linguistically connected to Canada’s Iñuit people. Cuomo was an inspired choice: she has written widely on environmental ethics and is a pioneer of “field philosophy,” an emerging research technique in which philosophers join physical scientists to conduct empirical research.

Supported by funds from the National Science Foundation’s Small

Grants for Exploratory Research program, Cuomo collaborated with the Iñupiat, who recounted, among other things, how environmental markers such as the once-predictable caribou and geese migrations are now “out of whack.”

“They told us about all sorts of disruptions to normal patterns,” said Cuomo. “For example, overland travel is more dangerous as the permafrost thaws, yet hunters must now travel farther from home to find the caribou herds.” As a result, accidents occur that until recently were unthinkable. “Two years

ago a prominent and beloved community leader died when his snowmobile plunged into a creek that should have been frozen at that time of year,” she said. “His passing was a great loss to his community, because he knew this land and its weather cycles as intimately as anyone alive.”

Thus Cuomo points out that “for a people whose subsistence and cultural identities are deeply tied to their environment, this kind of radical ecological change directly threatens basic welfare and traditional ways of life.”

The permafrost landscape of the North Slope is covered by thousands of shallow lakes (right) that thaw in summer, providing fish, freshwater, and habitat

for subsistence species. Because the permafrost also sequesters carbon, understanding it is crucial for anticipating the impacts of global climate change.

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Threatening a whole way of life

Cuomo began her part of the research by meeting with Iñupiaq elders. She videotaped and archived the interviews not only for her work but also for the community’s younger and future generations, in effect preserving the voices and experiences of a culture. Some of that knowledge could also be fixed in space: the team eventually developed an online Geographical Information System (GIS) for mapping the location of certain information the Iñupiat shared—for example, where and when a thaw lake suddenly drained; or where fishing boats pulled in fish species usually found in warmer waters.

But Cuomo felt it was also important for the archive to include knowledge that isn’t expressible as a GIS point, including Iñupiat cultural information, history, memories, legends, and a whole range of themes that elders wanted

to record, especially as changes in the Arctic environment accelerate. “We discussed with elders how to make the project beneficial beyond furthering the research, because we wanted to generate something of practical value to the local community,” she said.

Cuomo said the tundra, so desolate in the winter, comes alive in the North Slope’s brief summer. Its delicate grasses and flowering vegetation support polar bears, Arctic fox, and caribou, which the Iñupiat depend on for their survival. The ocean provides seals, walruses, fish, and the endangered bowhead whales. Central to Iñupiaq culture and diet, bowheads migrate between the Bering Sea and the Beaufort Sea every spring and fall, which takes them by Barrow.

The Iñupiat are still permitted to hunt the bowheads in the traditional way—by canoe, a dangerous vocation, especially as the whalers must now venture farther from shore between

thawing ice sheets to pursue them. Even so, Iñupiaq whaling captains fear that whale migration patterns may change altogether with rising temperatures.

Cuomo said that as subsistence hunters, the Iñupiat share their bounty with every member of the community—even those who work in faraway cities such as Anchorage. The remaining meat is stored in ice cellars dug out of the permafrost. But as the permafrost thaws, so does the meat, sometimes rendering it unsafe to eat. And while packaged food is available in Barrow, it is prohibitively expensive. Besides, she added, “many Iñupiaq consider it far inferior to their traditional food sources.”

“Overall,” she said, “the situation on the North Slope demonstrates how environmental changes have real impacts on health, food security, culture, land stability, and future economics in the region.”

A climate change protest in Copenhagen. Cuomo’s research highlights the need for climate justice, including policies and methods focused on community needs and local expertise.

Northern communities face potentially devastating climate change impacts, including severe erosion (above), and increased influence from corporations that hope to profit from changing environmental conditions (bottom).

Spring 2013 23

A community of survivors

Colleagues point out that it is highly unusual for philosophers to collaborate with physical scientists. Even within philosophy itself, they say, collaboration is still quite rare. And yet Cuomo has taken her work beyond gathering data to include outreach in the form of multiple workshops, community meetings on the North Slope, and presentations about her experiences with the Iñupiat at colleges and universities across the United States. Her innovative research was recognized earlier this year when she was awarded a prestigious Creative Research Medal by the University of Georgia Research Foundation.

Cuomo’s colleague Wendy Eisner said she is struck by the ease with which Cuomo bridges the gap between the sciences and the humanities. “Chris’s expertise in environmental ethics and eco-feminism make her an important contributor to our endeavor, and she is so insightful in her ability to formulate new paradigms for research in the environmental sciences.”

Cuomo also has become insightful with regard to the Iñupiaq themselves, noting that their ability to adapt to climate change will be complicated by the constant exploration for oil and natural gas on the North Slope—and by these fuels’ extraction. In a great irony, the Iñupiat benefit from improved schools, libraries, and community facilities funded by the oil companies, yet many Iñupiaq see the buildup of energy infrastructure as an affront to their sacred environmental ethic, which has ensured their survival in this harsh region for more than 1,000 years.

“As a student of human morality and ethics, it’s been interesting to work with people who live in such an ethically motivated society,” said Cuomo. “I have great respect for the resiliency of the Iñupiaq. They certainly don’t consider themselves an endangered people. They’re strong, close-knit, and have always found a way to deal with problems. And they’ll deal with climate changes as well.”

But the Arctic is a complex region that includes powerful member states, among them the United States, Canada, Russia, and Norway; numerous indigenous communities, such as the Iñupiat; and the oil companies. And because the region’s ecological health holds consequences for the entire global climate system, the risks posed by thawing sea ice—and the release of large amounts of greenhouse gases held within the rich peat of the permafrost—are of concern to all.

(Helen Fosgate is editor of ugaresearch.)

Cuomo (above right) conducted extensive interviews with Arnold Brower, Sr., a respected whaling captain and community leader who walked the northern Alaskan landscape, herding reindeer in his youth, and who remained an active hunter into his eighties.

The Meade River winds from the Arctic Sea and through the inland village of Atqasuk. An early thaw or late winter freeze-up creates dangerously unpredictable conditions for individuals and families traveling over formerly reliable routes.

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interview

The MacKillop FileHometown: Irvington, NY

Education: State University of New York at Binghamton (BA ’97, MA ’02, and PhD ‘05)

Research areas: Addiction, especially alcoholism and nicotine dependence

Research funding: National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism; National Institute on Drug Abuse; Alcoholic Beverage Medical Research Foundation; Robert Wood Johnson Foundation

Courses taught: Psychology 3100: Special Problems in Psychology (addiction)

Family: Married to Dr. Emily MacKillop, a clinical neuropsychologist at Kaiser Permanente; we recently had a baby girl, Annabelle

Hobbies/passions outside work: Formerly avid runner, but parenthood reined that in quite a bit!

Book or movie you’d recommend: More so than the book on which it’s based, Danny Boyle’s movie Trainspotting is a classic for anyone interested in the paradox of addiction.

Spring 2013 25

James Mackillop: understanding addiction from genetics to treatment James Mackillop, associate professor of psychology in the franklin College of arts and sciences, talks with april sorrow of the uGa news service about the nature of addiction and his research efforts aimed at more effectively treating it.

q: Why do you study addiction?

a: Addiction is both a major public health problem and a prism for studying aspects of psychology—desire, compulsion, and self-control—that I find compelling.

q: You use behavioral economics and neuroeconomics to study addiction; what does that mean?

a: Behavioral economics is a hybrid of psychology and economics that focuses on understanding the choices people make, especially choices that are irrational. Addiction is an extreme example of irrational decision-making, which makes it a natural fit for this approach. Neuroeconomics further integrates the tools of cognitive neuroscience to understand how the brain makes decisions. We’re interested in the pathological decision-making that underlies addiction at both a behavioral and neurobiological level.

q: What role does willpower play in addiction?

a: Willpower is essentially our capacity to inhibit our impulses. We’re particularly interested in people’s ability to inhibit impulses for instant gratification. Willpower is largely a function of the prefrontal cortex, which doesn’t develop until later in life. That is why children are terrible at delaying gratification and controlling themselves and why adults tend to be much better. It is also why adolescents engage in a lot of risk-taking behavior; we see individuals who have fully formed adult drives but not fully formed frontal lobes, so they are all gas pedal and no brakes.

q: Can people naturally change an addictive behavior?

a: They can. For example, there is a spike in excessive drinking among young adults. For a lot of people this is time-limited, and they will age out of this behavior. For others, the party doesn’t end; they continue to drink heavily and ultimately develop longstanding alcohol problems. One focus in my lab is understanding what determines those two divergent outcomes. More generally, many people do successfully give up addictions on their own. That being said, many others try to do so and are not successful. Those people are the ones for whom formal treatment may be necessary.

q: Your lab uses a ‘translational’ approach to alcoholism and other addictions. What do you mean by that?

a: Translational research tries to connect basic research with clinical research to accelerate improvements in public health. It’s also called ‘bench-to-bedside’ research because the goal is to rapidly translate basic bench science to new treatments. In my lab, translational research refers to studying the same core decision-making variables across levels of analysis, from neural and genetic correlates to predicting treatment response.

q: You mentioned genetics; are some people innately predisposed to develop addiction?

a: Genetic factors play a major role in addictive behaviors, but we don’t yet definitively know which genes are involved or how they exert their influence. We examine individuals’ choices on our behavioral economic variables and link those preferences to genetic variation. If we can identify

genetic variants that are responsible for innate differences in reward preferences, it could help us identify which people are most vulnerable to developing these disorders.

q: Why don’t people seek treatment?

a: Partly because they’re ambivalent. Part of them still loves to drink, smoke, or do drugs, while another part wants to stop. It is also a function of people not having been successful at stopping in the past. Only one in five individuals is successful at quitting smoking, and it often takes multiple attempts to quit. People can get discouraged. And there’s a big disconnect between what clinical research has shown to work and what help is actually available out there.

Meanwhile, we try to identify improved treatments by finding ways to address those characteristics that cause addicted people to fail in their attempts to quit. We quantify the effectiveness of existing strategies, such as medicinal and behavioral strategies, and we also explore possible new strategies.

q: Today is National Margarita Day. Is it safe to celebrate with alcohol?

a: Alcohol, in moderation, is one of the ways we take pleasure in life, so I don’t think there is anything wrong with celebrating with a margarita. But, I don’t think it is a good idea to have 10 margaritas today, and I don’t think every day should be National Margarita Day. For the people who struggle with drinking, I am interested in understanding how to help them, but I am not advocating for a world without alcohol.

Contact James MacKillop by email at: jmackill@uga.edu

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A Question of Latitude: Oyster reefs differ up and down the Southeast coast By Beth Gavrilles Photos by Peter Frey

When most of us think about oysters, it’s generally in the context of a meal—on the half shell with a squeeze of

lemon juice, perhaps, or hot and steaming, fresh off an open fire. But it isn’t oysters’ culinary status that chiefly interests marine ecologist Jeb Byers, an associate professor at the Odum School of Ecology at UGA. He is far more concerned with the ecological roles they play and the environmental factors that affect them.

Found along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts of North America, the Eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica) lives primarily in shallow and brackish waters, mostly in reefs formed by young oysters settling upon the shells of earlier generations. Con-sidered a “keystone” species—one that other species depend

Oysters reefs along the Georgia/South Carolina coast (above) typically consist of a narrow band of oysters situated between the low-tide line and Spartina cordgrass. These reefs stabilize the shoreline and protect the fragile salt marsh. Juvenile oysters, called “spat” (inset) thrive in this environment.

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Peaky in Georgia

With funding from the National Science Foundation, Byers and colleagues from the University of North Carolina and Florida State University have been conducting a multiyear study of southeastern oyster reefs, exploring how physical, chemical, and biological factors affect reef health and function, gauging how such influences vary across a large spatial scale.

The researchers chose reefs in 12 estuaries, from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, to Cape Canaveral, Florida, for their study. Byers in particular and his students focused on reefs at

on to survive and thrive—oysters play several essential roles in the functioning of coastal and estuarine ecosystems. Their reefs serve as habitat for other marine creatures, including fish, shrimp, and crabs, which can feed there and hide in the reefs’ crevices from larger predators. The oysters are a food source for some of these creatures too.

Oysters are also known to filter a tremendous amount of water as they feed—by some estimates, up to 50 gallons a day—removing sediment and nutrients that they recycle into food for the smallest marine organisms. Reefs also help reduce the energy of wave action, stabilize shorelines, and prevent bank erosion. “They’re really a foundational species,” says Byers.

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Sapelo and Skidaway Islands in Georgia and the ACE Basin and North Inlet in South Carolina.

“We spent the first year just sampling all kinds of things on the reefs,” Byers says. “We measured, for example, the structure of the reef, how steep it is, whether the oysters are upright, how much topography there is on the reef, flow—the shape of the reef affects how water moves over it—temperature, and salinity.”

The Byers team also took biological measurements to determine how other organisms were responding to the physical and chemical characteristics of each reef. “We measured everything from microscopic organisms (such as phytoplankton and benthic algae) to small prey items that live in the reef (little crabs and crustaceans, for example) to resident predators (shrimp and small fish) to the

really big transitory predator fish that move in and out,” says Byers.

The data soon began yielding some intriguing patterns.

“We found that a lot of things we measured—such as the steepness of the reefs, the tidal inundation, productivity, flow, even transitory-fish abundance—had their peaks in Georgia and South Carolina,” he says.

One of those peaks is in the rate of oyster recruitment, or delivery of oyster larvae to the reefs, which seeds the next generation. “We have this high recruitment that’s the envy of just about every other place on the East Coast,” says Byers. “It’s actually a problem for aquaculture here in Georgia, because the recruits glom onto the live oysters and basically smother them—there are just so many recruits. But it’s a problem that everyone else would love to have!”

Location, location, location

Another Georgia peak that jumped out at the researchers involved predators. “Our sites had a huge abundance of sharks and crabs, for example,” Byers says. “So we wondered how much the different predator environments influenced the functioning of the reef.”

To find out, researchers designed an experiment. Choosing locations on mud flats near their sampling sites, the UGA researchers first built a series of new and similar reefs from scratch, enclosing the reefs in cages so that they could control what happened on each one. They then applied three different “treatments,” each replicated three times at each site.

For the first treatment, the researchers added juvenile oysters to one set of reefs. To the second group of reefs they added juvenile oysters and two kinds of oyster

Doctoral student Jenna Malek (above) checks one of the experimental reefs off Skidaway Island. The mud crab (inset) is a voracious and determined oyster predator.

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mesopredators (medium-sized predators)—namely, mud crabs and oyster drill snails. For the third treatment they added juvenile oysters, mesopredators, and top predators (in this case, blue crabs and toadfish) to the final set of reefs.

“The idea was to find out how the predators influenced both the direct qualities of the oysters, such as how much they grew and how well they survived, and the indirect qualities of the oysters—their ecosystem functions, such as how much they filtered the water,” says Byers. “[The latter influences are] sometimes called the ‘ecology of fear.’”

The ecology of fear (see sidebar on Zack Holmes’s research) refers to how predators affect ecological communities by scaring—rather than eating—their prey. The researchers found that in general the top predators influenced the behavior of the mesopredators by frightening them so that they tended to remain in hiding, which suppressed their ability to prey on oysters. Although the top predators ate some oysters themselves, Byers says, “the net effect of having the top predators in there was actually good for oysters.”

Again, however, location proves to be important: the degree to which top predators help the oysters depends on latitude. It turns out that top predators’ effect on oyster survival is much less pronounced in Georgia and South Carolina than in North Carolina and Florida. “We think that’s because there’s such high recruitment in these reefs in Georgia and South Carolina,” Byers explains. “In an environment where food is scarce, if the mesopredator wants to hide because it’s afraid of top predators, it has to take a very dangerous risk to come out in the open to eat something. So the predators keep the mesopredators running scared. But in an environment like Georgia’s, where oyster larvae are everywhere, mesopredators can eat while in hiding, and thus there are fewer opportunities for those top predators to exert their protective indirect influence on the oysters.”

Oyster reefs fringe the marsh near the research team’s Skidaway Island lab (above). Jeb Byers (inset)

retrieves a blue crab--a predator of both mud crabs and oysters--from inside one of the experimental reefs.

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Oyster reefs provide huge ecosystem value

Why do Georgia’s waters have this latter effect? Byers suspects that the deeply concave shape of the Georgia coast is chiefly responsible for the physical, chemical, and biological patterns that are emerging from the data.

“We think these patterns are driven by the higher tidal amplitudes we have in Georgia, which is a function of the indentation of our coastline,” he explains. “We have substantially higher tides than places on the extreme ends of our sampling distribution, which mean that our reefs are inundated for longer amounts of time and that there’s more force and power to those inundations. That could influence all the things we’re seeing, including oyster recruitment, as the higher tidal amplitudes bring more productivity to our reefs.”

Another factor that may be helping Georgia’s oysters thrive is the lack of coastal development relative to other East Coast states. “Water quality, disease, and overharvesting comprise the triple whammy that has hit oysters hard in a lot of places,” says Byers. “Georgia is easier on oysters probably because we don’t have the same kind of coastal population and our beaches aren’t as developed; we haven’t had quite the water quality and overharvesting issues that other places have had.”

The researchers are continuing to analyze results, and Byers and his students, working with partners that include the Georgia Marine Extension Service, Georgia Sea Grant, and the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography, are meanwhile exploring

additional coastal questions: How do oyster disease patterns vary with latitude? What are the impacts of parasites on coastal and marine animals and ecosystems? How does a recently arrived invasive seaweed affect general estuarine health?

As for Georgia’s oyster reefs, Byers says that the good news is that they’re much better off than most—but we shouldn’t take them for granted. “The healthiest site in the whole study is in the ACE Basin, South Carolina,” he notes, “which has a huge protected area upstream and good water quality. There is a decent oyster harvest that goes on there, but it’s not out of control.”

And healthy oyster reefs are important. “Oysters affect erosion and sedimentation, provide essential fish habitat, help with water quality because they filter such large volumes of water, and provide a human food source too. They’ve got huge ecosystem value,” says Byers. As a result of the study, “we’re pointing out that these services the reefs provide potentially vary with latitude, and are affected by the tidal range, and the predatory environment. Understanding how these things interact helps us better understand how the oyster reefs are performing and why they might be performing differently in different places. But they’re having important effects no matter where they are.”

Contact Jeb Byers by email at: jebyers@uga.edu

(Beth Gavrilles is a science writer and public relations coordinator in UGA’s Odum School of Ecology)

To monitor the growth and survival of juvenile oysters, researchers glue them to numbered tiles and place them inside the experimental reef enclosures.

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Have you ever decided not to do something because you were afraid of the possibly fatal consequences? Most of us have—and humans are not the only ones.

Ecology major Zack Holmes, an honors undergraduate student from Atlanta, explored the ecology of fear in a series of experiments he conducted while working on the southeastern oyster reef study with Jeb Byers. He examined the influence of bonnethead sharks—a locally important top predator—on the behavior of creatures that frequent the reefs in Georgia’s waters.

Holmes notes that bonnethead sharks are abundant in Georgia coastal sites and in some surrounding estuaries, but they are barely present at many of the main study’s other sites. That makes them important for understanding how Georgia’s reefs function.

Bonnetheads, smaller relatives of hammerheads, prey heavily on blue crabs, which constitute most of their diet. Would the fear of this predator influence the behavior of blue crabs—just as the fear of blue crabs influences the behavior of the smaller mud crabs?

Holmes designed a laboratory experiment to test this idea. “We set up four tanks, each a little over nine feet in diameter, and about three feet deep,” says Holmes. “All the tanks had juvenile oysters—half on an artificial reef structure and half just on their own. One tank had only oysters; one had oysters and mud crabs; one had oysters, mud crabs, and blue crabs; and one had all three plus a bonnethead shark.”

Sure enough, the blue crabs behaved very differently in the presence of the shark. “In the tank with the bonnethead, the blue crabs would hunker down, usually within the structure that the oyster reef provided so that the shark couldn’t get at them,” Holmes says. “That allowed the mud crabs often to return to the behavior they exhibited when the blue crabs were not present—that is, eating a lot more oysters.”

Holmes’s research was supported by the National Science Foundation’s Research Experiences for Undergraduates program.

— Beth Gavrilles

The ecology of fear

Researchers quantified the effects of transitory predator fish like the bonnethead shark as well as mud crabs and blue crabs like the one above.

32 ugaresearch

There are nearly 90 million pet cats in the United States, and we estimate that half of them roam outside for at least some portion of the day. Because cats are instinctive predators, biologists

and other observers worldwide share concerns about the “conservation impacts”—e.g., caught (and usually killed) birds—of such roaming. People also have concerns about the safety and welfare of the roaming cats themselves. Factors contributing to the reduced longevity of roaming cats include vehicular accidents, aggression from other cats, and exposure to poisons, infectious diseases, parasites, and domestic dogs.

Most reports, however, are anecdotal. To address controversial questions related both to cats’ hunting activities and their own risky behaviors, my colleagues and I undertook to identify their daily predatory and risk experiences while roaming in suburban environments and to quantify the frequency of these occurrences.

We partnered with the National Geographic Society to monitor pet cats with animal-borne video cameras. These point-of-view devices, called “KittyCams,” provided

When the cat’s away, small critters pay

viewpoint

By Sonia M. Hernandez and Kerrie Anne Loyd

UGA study quantifies the risks that free-roaming cats pose to native wildlife—and to themselves

J.P. BOnDSonia Hernandez

definitive information about the activities of roaming cats and the vulnerable lives they lead. The cameras also helped us quantify the percentage of pets that engaged in hunting behaviors as well as the types of suburban prey frequently captured.

The technology we used to capture cats’ outdoor adventures was a type of National Geographic Crittercam (which, appropriately tailored, can monitor a wide variety of species). The KittyCam is the smallest and lightest Crittercam system deployed in research to date—given that cats, with their finicky natures, would not likely tolerate anything cumbersome. The KittyCam, designed to be comfortably worn on a collar, included a motion sensor and LED lights, which allowed us to watch the subjects’ activities even in low-light or dark environments.

We investigated the activities of free-roaming cats in suburban Athens-Clarke County during all four seasons. Seven to ten days of video footage were collected over a four-week period from 55 free-roaming cats, and we identified, and counted, both risk- and predation-behavior events while the cats were outdoors. Cat owners were invaluable to our research; they put cameras on the cats—not always an easy task—each recording day and then downloaded the resulting video to a hard drive.

We collected a per-cat average of 38 hours of video footage, which yielded useful data. We learned that cats made successful wildlife captures about 30 percent of the time, and that on those occasions they consumed or left behind their dead prey 77 percent of the time. This is important new information, given that all previous studies of pet-cat predation counted prey returns to households; our results suggest that those studies missed a huge proportion of captures from hunting cats. Reptiles (such as lizards and small snakes) were the most common prey in Athens, but cats also killed a wide variety of other animals, including voles, insects, and birds. Cat hunting behavior was independent of the pets’ age or sex.

KittyCams revealed as well that 85 percent of these suburban free-roaming cats exhibited at least one risky behavior—such as crossing roads, interacting with other cats, or entering storm drains or crawl spaces—per week of roaming. Their most common risky behaviors, in descending order, were crossing roads (45 percent of our sample), encountering strange cats (25 percent), eating or drinking substances away from home (25 percent), exploring storm drainage systems (20 percent), and entering crawl spaces (20 percent). We found that young male cats were more likely to exhibit risky behaviors than female or older cats.

While not all of our cat participants captured local wildlife, nearly half stalked and chased these animals—behaviors that negatively affect the species’ reproductive

The KittyCam, designed to be comfortably worn on a collar, included a motion sensor and LED lights, which allowed researchers to watch the cat’s activities even in low-light or dark environments.

and parental care. On the other hand, some cats proved to be very efficient hunters, capturing as many as four or five animals over one week.

Our research, published in the April 2013 issue of Biological Conservation, supports the advisability of keeping one’s cat indoors, especially if it is young and male, for the benefit both of the cat and native wildlife. The research also suggests that cat owners should supervise their pets when outdoors, such as by investing in a CatBib—designed to prevent cats from catching birds—if their cat hunts (www.catgoods.com).

Meanwhile, our website (www.kittycams.uga.edu) offers helpful suggestions in addition to downloadable materials, such as video images, that can serve as educational tools.

In our next project we hope to study stray cats, whose number in the United States rivals that of pet cats. We are currently seeking funds to research the predation rates of such feral cats and to examine the types of prey they capture in diverse geographical locations.

(Sonia M. Hernandez is an assistant professor of wildlife ecology in UGA’s Warnell School of Forestry and Natural Resources and the Southeastern Cooperative Wildlife Disease Study. Kerrie Anne Loyd, who worked on the KittyCam project as a PhD candidate at UGA, is now a life sciences lecturer at Arizona State University, Lake Havasu City.)

PRovIDeD by SoNIa HeRNaNDez

Recent research by assistant professor of chemistry Tina Salguero is bringing renewed importance to the world’s oldest artificial pigment.

A bright blue pigment used 5,000 years ago is giving modern scientists clues for developing nanomaterials with potential uses in medical imaging devices, television remote controls, security inks, and other technologies. That’s the conclusion of an article on the pigment, Egyptian blue, in the February 6, 2013, issue of the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

Salguero and her colleagues point out that Egyptian blue, regarded as humanity’s first artificial pigment, was used in paintings on tombs, statues, and other objects throughout the ancient Mediterranean world. Remnants have been found, for example, on the Parthenon and in Thebes (on frescos within the tomb of Egyptian “scribe and counter of grain” Nebamun).

The researchers say they were surprised to discover that the calcium copper silicate in Egyptian blue breaks apart into nano sheets so thin that thousands would fit across the width of a human hair. The sheets produce invisible infrared (IR) radiation similar to the beams that enable communication between remote controls and TVs, car door locks, and other devices.

“Calcium copper silicate provides a route to a new class of nanomaterials that are particularly interesting with respect to state-of-the-art pursuits like near-IR-based biomedical imaging, IR light-emitting devices (especially telecommunication platforms), and security ink formulations,” the report states. “In this way we can reimagine the applications of an ancient material through modern technochemical means.”

Contact Tina Salguero by email at: salguero@uga.edu

behind the scenes

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(Above) A typical ancient Egyptian coffin painting.

(Right) Egyptian blue pigment (40x

magnification) prepared by UGA chemistry

graduate student Darrah Johnson-McDaniel.