ZOMBIE SLAYER • CANCELED FLIGHTS

S p r i n g 2 0 1 5

8.8 MILLION TONS OF PLASTIC ENTER OUR OCEANS EVERY YEAR

TRASHED

8 TRASHED

features

20 Zombie slayer By James Hataway

A distinguished UGA scientist committed to refuting the climate-change skeptics’ incorrect but enduring fantasies—“zombie theories”—serves as a science communicator to the people.

28 Canceled flights By Beth Gavrilles

For monarch butterflies, loss of migration means more disease.

ugaresearch 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.

Jere W. Morehead, PresidentPamela Whitten, Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Provost David C. Lee, Vice President for Research

ugaresearch staff

Editor: James Hataway (jhataway@uga.edu)Circulation: Carey LovelaceMedia Shelf: Molly BergContributing editor: Steven MarcusDesign: Lindsay Robinson

Writers: Molly Berg, Alan Flurry, James Hataway, Beth Gavrilles, Stephanie Schupska, Matt Weeks

Photographers: Nancy Evelyn, Paul Efland, Malin Jacob, Robert Newcomb, Dot Paul, Andrew Tucker

Articles may be reprinted with permission. For additional copies of the magazine or address changes, please contact Research Communications at 706-542-5222 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, 631 Boyd GSRC, Athens, GA 30602-7411.Call 706-542-5222; or email rcomm@uga.edu.

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On the cover: Plastic debris washed ashore on an island in Indonesia.

Photo by Lida Pet

By Stephanie Schupska A recently published study by UGA’s Jenna Jambeck says 8.8 million

tons of plastic enter our oceans every year. She hopes her research will help raise awareness and reduce the waste load.

Spring 2015 1

departments

26 interview Tianming Liu, associate

professor of computer science in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, is looking for new ways to understand the human brain.

18 media shelf A sampling of books, recordings and other creative

works by UGA faculty, staff, and students.

32 viewpoint By John M. Drake Georgia has the resources to

lead a new field, “computational epidemiology,” which helps researchers track epidemics like Ebola using advanced computer techniques.

Spring 2015 Vol 45, No. 1 ISSN 1099-7458

newsbriefs

2 Keep the rhythm

Beating the clock

3 Coffee perks

All work and no play

4 Water tight

5 Super slogans

Death becomes them

6 Muffling mosquitoes

7 Recipe for bioplastic: just add eggs

7 Learn from teaching

8 From forest to fuel tank

9 Electronic nose sniffs out disease

10 Every dogwood has its day

11 Stinker!

Neighborhood watch for Georgia waters

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newsbriefs

A long line of technological advances over the past century or so, beginning with the electric light bulb, has made it easier for people to burn the proverbial midnight oil. But disruptions in circadian rhythms—the repeated patterns created by our own internal 24-hour biological clock—may place women at an increased risk for breast cancer, according to UGA researchers.

Chunla He and Sara Wagner Robb examined studies on breast cancer and women employed in occupations that commonly disrupt circadian rhythms, such as flight attendants. Flight attendants typically intermix day and night shifts, making them particularly susceptible to disrupted circadian rhythms, which are heavily influenced by natural light (or the lack of it). He and Robb indeed found elevated incidence rates of breast cancer among flight attendants.

“Exposure to artificial light leads to a significantly higher risk for developing breast cancer,” said He, a biostatistics graduate student at the College of Public Health. “To decrease the use of artificial light, people should avoid working at night and implement earlier bedtimes.”

Robb, an assistant professor of epidemiology, recommends spreading this information to shift workers “so that they are aware of these risks and may make efforts to adjust their circadian rhythms.”

He and Robb documented their study in the December 2014 issue of International Archives of Occupational and Environmental Health.

Keep the rhythm Successfully treating rabies can

be a race against the clock. Those who suffer a bite from a rabid animal have a brief window of time in which to seek medical help. Otherwise, the virus will take root in the central nervous system, at which point the disease is almost invariably fatal.

But UGA researchers have successfully tested a new treatment on mice that often cures the disease even after the virus has spread to the brain.

“Basically, the best way to deal with rabies right now is simple: Don’t get it,” said Biao He, professor of infectious diseases and Fred C. Davison Distinguished University Chair in Veterinary Medicine at the UGA College of Veterinary Medicine. “Our team has developed a new vaccine that rescues mice much longer after infection than what was traditionally thought possible.”

In their mouse experiments, the animals were exposed to a strain of the rabies virus that generally reaches the brain of infected mice within three days. By day six, they begin to exhibit

the telltale physical symptoms that mean the infection has become fatal.

However, 50 percent of mice treated with the new vaccine were saved, even after the onset of physical symptoms on day six.

He and his colleagues developed their vaccine by inserting a protein from the rabies virus into another virus—parainfluenza virus 5, or PIV5—which is thought to contribute to upper respiratory infections in dogs but is completely harmless to humans.

PIV5 acts as the delivery vehicle that carries the rabies protein to the immune system so that it may create the antibodies necessary to fight off the rabies virus.

“This is the most effective treatment we have seen reported in the scientific literature,” He said. “If we can improve these results and translate them to humans, we may have found one of the first useful treatments for advanced rabies infection.”

The researchers’ paper is available in the Journal of Virology, which posted it online December 31, 2014.

Beating the clock

PETER FREYBiao He is also developing new vaccines and treatments for HIV and influenza.

Spring 2015 3

Coffee lovers, rejoice! A chemical compound in your favorite morning brew may help prevent some of the damaging effects of obesity, according to a study conducted by UGA’s College of Pharmacy.

The scientists found that chlorogenic acid, or CGA, was not only effective in preventing weight gain but also helped maintain normal blood-sugar levels and healthy liver composition in mice that were fed a high-fat diet.

“CGA is a powerful antioxidant that reduces inflammation,” said Yongjie Ma, a postdoctoral research associate in Dexi Liu’s laboratory in the department of pharmaceutical and biomedical sciences. “A lot of evidence suggests that obesity-related diseases are caused by chronic inflammation, so if we can control it we may offset some of the negative effects of excessive weight gain.”

But don’t conclude that an extra cup in the morning could replace exercise and proper diet—still the best ways to maintain a healthy weight. Mice in the study received a very high dose of CGA, much higher than what a human would absorb through regular coffee consumption.

Thus “we’re not suggesting that people start drinking a lot of coffee to protect themselves from an unhealthy lifestyle,” said Ma, who is also a member of UGA’s Obesity Initiative. “But we do think that we might be able to create a useful therapeutic, using CGA, to help those at risk for obesity-related disease as they make positive lifestyle changes.”

A paper on the researchers’ study results was published in the September 2014 issue of Pharmaceutical Research.

Coffee perks

There is nothing more wholesome than a hard day’s work, right? Not necessarily. If a person’s commitment to the job drifts into the murky waters of workaholism, this can be a bad thing for employees and employers alike, according to a study by UGA psychology researcher Malissa Clark.

Workaholism, a term coined by American psychologist Wayne Oates in 1971, is a condition in which someone’s need for work becomes so excessive that it adversely affects his or her health, happiness, interpersonal relations, and social functioning.

“Similar to other types of

addictions, workaholics may feel a fleeting high or a rush when they’re at work, but they soon become overwhelmed by feelings of anxiety,” Clark said. “Workaholics seem pushed to work not because they love it but because they feel internal pressure to do it.”

While promoting hard work is often seen in the United States and elsewhere as a viable route to rewards such as moving up in a company, workaholism can lead to more job stress, decreased physical health, and job burnout, which make workers less productive.

So what’s the difference between a workaholic and someone who just works hard? It all boils down to their motivations.

“If one is feeling driven to work because of an internal compulsion, where there’s guilt if you’re not working—that’s workaholism,” Clark said. “The other feeling is wanting to work because you feel joy in the work and you go to work every day because you take pleasure in it. I call that ‘work engagement.’”

Clark’s study was published in the February 28, 2014, issue of the Journal of Management.

All work and no play

NANCY EVELYN

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newsbriefs

Fresh water, a critical resource for life on Earth, may soon become dangerously scarce. Water use has been growing at more than twice the rate of population increase over the last century, and by 2025 the demand for fresh water will exceed supply for two-thirds of the world’s population, according to the United Nations.

Now, thanks to a $1.5-million collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation, researchers from UGA and other institutions are looking to Mother Nature for clues about (1) how plants such as agaves, yuccas, and orchids survive in water-limited environments, and (2) what people can do to engineer crops that require less of this precious commodity.

“If we can understand how these plants adapt to water stress at the molecular level, we can learn how to increase water efficiency in economically important plants such as biofuel and food crops,” said Jim Leebens-Mack, associate professor of plant biology in UGA’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and principal investigator for the project.

During normal photosynthesis, most plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through pore-like structures on leaves known as stomata. The CO2 combines with water and sunlight to produce oxygen as well as the carbohydrates a plant needs in order to grow.

The same pores that absorb CO2 also allow water to escape through evaporation. That’s not a problem for plants that receive plenty of rainfall or help from irrigation, but it could be fatal for vegetation growing in dry climates.

Using a unique process known as Crassulacean acid metabolism, or CAM photosynthesis, cacti, orchids and agaves living in water-limited conditions close these pores during the daytime when rising temperatures would cause significant evaporative water loss. In CAM species, the pores open and take in CO2 only during the cooler evening. The carbon is stored until the sun comes out when the plant can photosynthesize to make carbohydrates.

“It’s as if a plant is deeply inhaling CO2 at night and is doing photosynthesis while holding its breath during the part of the day when it is at greatest danger of losing valuable water,” said Leebens-Mack. “If we get a firm grasp of the genetics involved in this process, we may be able to transfer it to biofuel and food crops that are sensitive to water shortages.”

Water tight

Researchers at the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences are teaming up with IBM to work with farmers in Georgia’s Lower Flint River Basin—whose 27 counties contribute more than $2 billion in farm-based revenue annually to the region’s economy—in order to increase water efficiency by up to 20 percent.

Researchers are using IBM’s Deep Thunder precision weather-forecasting service to enhance farmers’ already successful irrigation models and water conservation practices. The added weather information should help farmers conserve even more water and improve crop yields.

The integration of complex data streams generated by GPS-enabled farm equipment, by in-field sensors, and by IBM’s Deep Thunder weather-forecasting technology—all delivered to mobile devices—will provide 72 hours’ advance notice of weather in the Flint region. This will allow farmers to be better prepared as they make decisions on when to irrigate, plant, fertilize, and deploy laborers and equipment.

UGA and IBM team up toreduce water use

Spring 2015 5

A recent study helps explain why consumers have reacted so favorably to slogans such as “Got milk?”—which was used with great success by, among others, the National Milk Processor Education Program on its celebrity print ads.

Slogans convey information about products and brands in pithy, bite-sized bits designed to be unforgettable. Yet slogans also offer companies another opportunity: to demonstrate likability.

“Managers want people to remember the slogan, but they also want them to like it, because if people like the slogan they’re apt to like the brand,” said Piyush Kumar, a professor of marketing at the UGA Terry College of Business and coauthor of the study.

For years, advertisers crafting slogans have relied on rules of thumb such as keep it short, add a jingle, or make it rhyme. But these standards don’t always result in likability.

In fact, the research shows that out of 14 possible characteristics of slogans, only three count when trying to achieve likability: creativity of phrasing, clarity of message, and inclusion of a benefit. The other factors, such as mention of a brand name and consumers’ familiarity with the product, matter very little in terms of likability.

“In the grand scheme of things, making a slogan likable is important because it’s not processed like a purely creative statement,” Kumar said. “People are also looking for a clear benefit. If recall becomes a problem, you can always pump more money into it and increase a slogan’s memorability. But you can’t pump in more money to make something likable once it has already been crafted. You have to be careful to build in likability from the start.”

The coauthors’ paper on this study was published in the December 2014 issue of the Journal of Business Research.

Melts in your mouth, not in your hand

The happiest place on the earth

Eat fresh

Think outside the bun

Get in the Zone

Just do it!

I’m lovin’ it

Have it your way

Mmmm-mmm good!

The ultimate driving machine

Super slogans

Extinction of most plants and animals is part of the usual order of things; more than 99 percent of all the species that have lived on Earth eventually died out. But humans are skewing the numbers.

Species are now going extinct 1,000 times faster than during pre-human times, according to a study involving UGA ecologists John Gittleman and Patrick Stephens. The scientists used fossil records, genetic analyses, and state-of-the-art computer models to reach the new estimate, which is an order of magnitude higher than what scientists had previously thought.

“We know that not everything is going to live forever,” said Gittleman, who is dean of the Odum School of Ecology and UGA Foundation Professor of Ecology. “Extinction is something that’s very natural, but the question that comes up in our work is ‘Have we made it unnatural?’”

The explosion of human life on Earth and our unparalleled command over the environment means that our actions have far-reaching consequences for other life forms. We can’t pinpoint a single cause for all loss of species, but disease spread, habitat destruction, disruption of ecosystem balances, pollution, and global climate change are major contributors, Gittleman said.

Perhaps more alarmingly, the researchers hypothesize that future rates of extinction could rise to as much as 10,000 times higher than pre-human levels if we do not take meaningful steps now to prevent further damage to the environment.

“The planet up to now has been a pretty resilient place, and animals and plants adapt, but they can’t adapt to really great extremes,” Gittleman said.

The researchers’ paper is available in Conservation Biology, which first published it online August 26, 2014.

Death becomes them

[Answers: M&M’s, Disneyland, Subway, Taco Bell, AutoZone, Nike, McDonald’s, Burger King, Campbell’s, BMW]

Can you match the slogan with its company?

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newsbriefs

A team of entomologists at UGA have unlocked one of the hormonal mechanisms that allow mosquitoes to produce eggs. Their discovery may one day help scientists reduce the spread of diseases like malaria by disrupting mosquito reproduction to control their populations.

The model for this research is the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. Females have to consume a blood meal before they are able to produce a batch of eggs. The blood meal triggers the mosquito’s brain to release two hormones known as ILP and OEH. These hormones activate processes in the female mosquito that result in mature eggs.

In 2008, study co-authors Mark Brown, a professor of entomology, and Michael Strand, a Regents Professor, also in entomology, characterized the receptor for ILP in

mosquitoes, which helped reveal many details about its role in egg formation. OEH plays an equally important role in female reproduction, but its receptor was more difficult to identify.

By identifying and comparing the sequences of more than 400 receptors in the genomes of two fruit flies and three mosquito species, they identified a single gene for a receptor with an unknown function within the species distribution they expected.

By targeting the gene encoding the receptor, the researchers found that disabling its expression inhibited the mosquitoes’ ability to produce eggs after a blood meal.

Their work was published in the April edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Muffling mosquitoes

Spring 2015 7

Recipe for bioplastic: just add eggs

What’s the best way to help a struggling student? It may seem counterintuitive, but a new study by University of Geor-gia researchers suggests that allowing students to try their hand at teaching could be a big help.

To test this “learn by teaching” concept, ChanMin Kim, an assistant professor in the College of Education and her former doctoral student, Seung Won Park, created a computer program that requires participants to teach course material to a virtual student.

Low-achieving students who were allowed to teach a virtual pupil performed better in their own courses, according to the study, and students in the study were more likely to feel enjoyment—and less anger and boredom—after teaching read-

ing assignments to avatars through virtual tutoring software.After tutoring the virtual pupil, students were assessed

based on how well the pupil learned. They also were surveyed on whether and how the tutoring system helped them engage in reading.

“Students reported that the virtual tutoring system helped them persist with the reading assignments even though they did not want to read,” Park said.

Park and Kim’s virtual tutoring software is several years in the making, and they plan to add spoken narration to the tutor-ing system in their next upgrade.

Their study was published in the March 2015 issue of Computers & Education.

You can’t make a plastic without breaking a few eggs. At least, that’s what researchers in UGA’s College of Family and Consumer Sciences found when they used a protein taken from egg whites to make a new kind of bioplastic that is resistant to disease-causing bacteria.

Scientists found that blending an egg protein called albumin with a traditional plasticizer created an antibacterial bioplastic that may one day be used to create medical equipment—such as wound dressings, sutures and catheter tubes—or food packaging that resist contamination.

“We found that the albumin-based bioplastic had complete inhibition, meaning no bacteria would grow on the plastic once applied,” said

Alex Jones, a doctoral student in the department of textiles, merchandising and interiors. “The bacteria simply aren’t able to live on it.”

The research team is planning more experiments to evaluate the albumin-based bioplastic’s potential for use in the biomedical and food packaging fields, but they also want to ensure that the product is environmentally friendly.

One of the researchers’ aims is to find ways to reduce the amount of

petroleum used in traditional plastic production; another is to find a fully biodegradable bioplastic.

“The albumin-blended bioplastic meets both these standards,” Jones said. “It’s basically made of pure protein, so if you put it in the soil for a month—at most two months—these plastics will disappear.”

The researchers published a paper describing their results in the May issue of the Journal of Applied Polymer Science.

Learn by teaching

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newsbriefs

Researchers at the University of Georgia have discovered that manipulation of a specific gene in a hardwood tree species not only makes it easier to break down the wood into fuel, but also significantly increases tree growth.

Decreasing the expression of a gene called GAUT12.1 leads to a reduction in xylan and pectin, two major components of plant cell walls that make them resistant to the enzymes and chemicals used to extract the fermentable sugars used to create biofuels.

“This research gives us important clues about the genes that control plant structures and how we can manipulate them to our advantage,” said study co-author Debra Mohnen, a professor of biochemistry and molecular biology in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences. “The difficulty of breaking down the complicated plant cell wall is a major obstacle to the cost-effective production of biofuels, and this discovery may pave the way for new techniques that make that process more economically viable.”

The researchers tested their hypothesis on a species of tree called Populus deltoides, more commonly known as the

eastern cottonwood. Working together with colleagues in the BioEnergy Science Center, they created 11 transgenic trees in which GAUT12.1 was reduced by approximately 50 percent.

This tree species is particularly attractive to the biofuel industry because it grows relatively quickly and produces large quantities of biomass in a short period of time.

The plants they tested also displayed between 12 and 52 percent increased plant height and between 12 and 44 percent larger stem diameter when compared to controls.

Faster growing plants would yield more biomass over a shorter period of time, making them more attractive to both growers and the biofuel industry, Mohnen said.

While the researchers emphasize that these are preliminary results, they and their colleagues in BioEnergy Science Center are already preparing new experiments that will test their transgenic trees in a variety of different environments.

A paper describing their research was published March, 2015 in Biotechnology for Biofuels.

From forest to fuel tank

Debra Mohnen’s lab found that manipulation of a gene in hardwood trees makes them easier to break down into fuel.

PAUL EFLAND

Spring 2015 9

Electronic nose sniffs out diseaseOnions had a Georgia farm value of more than $93

million in 2013, but some of the delectable veggies never made it to market because of diseases that develop when they are stored. Now, researchers in UGA’s College of Engineering have developed new technologies to help farmers and sellers detect diseases before they become catastrophic.

Changying “Charlie” Li, an associate professor in the College of Engineering, sought to identify diseases in onions that are not easily detected by the human eye.

“Most onions are harvested at the end of spring in Georgia,” Li said. “Some onions go to fresh markets, while others are stored for a few months. While in storage, some onions could already be infected with a postharvest disease. If it’s not caught, the disease can spread to the other onions in storage.”

With Glen Rains, an entomology professor in the College

of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences and adjunct professor in the College of Engineering, Li’s lab designed an electronic sensor, commonly known as the e-nose, to detect smells in the air.

Collaborating with Georgia farmers, Li and Rains successfully tested the e-nose on Vidalia onions, Georgia’s official state vegetable.

Li’s group also developed an imaging system for quick detection of onions with skin infections on packing lines. The imaging system prevents infected and low-quality onions from being packaged and sold to consumers.

“Our goal is to cut economic losses and reduce labor costs for onion growers and packers, and to provide quality products to consumers,” Li said.

Their study was published in the January 2015 issue of Sensors.

COURTESY OF VIDALIA® ONION COMMITTEE

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The flowering dogwood tree is associated with the beginning of spring throughout much of the U.S., and UGA researchers are asking dogwood lovers and science enthusiasts to help them understand the genetics of this iconic tree.

Their Dogwood Genome Project has teamed with the National Phenology Network, a collection of more than 6,000 citizen scientists across the U.S. who track the seasonal changes in plants throughout the year and share their findings through the Nature’s Notebook website.

“Dogwoods are one of the most popular ornamental trees in the country, but we don’t know a lot about its genetic makeup,” said Jim Leebens-Mack, the project leader and associate professor of plant biology at the University

of Georgia. “Once we unlock the genome and begin comparing different varieties and species of dogwood, we can help speed breeding of trees that have varied flowering times, different colored petals and the ability to resist devastating diseases.”

Nature’s Notebook provides all the instruction and tools an observer needs to participate. Once registered, participants can help scientists by tracking native flowering dogwoods in their own community. The information gathered will help researchers identify the genetic and environmental influences that give trees certain traits.

For more information about the Dogwood Genome Project or to register as a citizen observer, see usanpn.org/nn/dogwood_genome.

You don’t have to wear a lab coat or fumble with test tubes to make a meaningful contribution to science. Researchers the world over are turning to citizen scientists to help them collect data or monitor natural phenomena. Here are a few ways you and your family can help UGA scientists make the next big discovery.

Every dogwood has its day

citizenscience

Spring 2015 11

If you spend much time outdoors, you may have happened across a lake or pond topped with a thin film of green, red or yellow algae—a sticky-looking slime that floats like paint on the water’s surface. But what looks like nothing more than your run-of-the-mill pond scum may be caused by potentially dangerous organisms known as cyanobacteria.

Cyanobacteria generally exist in very low levels of concentration, but when their populations boom, they release toxins that can harm livestock, pets and people who drink or play in the water.

Now, University of Georgia researchers are developing an early warning system to track these blooms, and they need citizen scientists to help them. Their project—known as CyanoTRACKER—uses Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to help identify dangerous blooms across Georgia.

If you see algae growing in a pond or lake, simply upload a picture and location of the body of water via social media or the CyanoTRACKER website. This data will be compiled, analyzed and used to alert local authorities about potentially harmful algal blooms.

“The idea is to use citizen participation to capture the initiation of these harmful algal blooms, which can be very dangerous to humans and cattle and even pets,” said Deepak Mishra, associate professor of geography. “You can think of it as a neighborhood watch system for Georgia waters.”

For more information or to log a bloom near you, visit cyanotracker.uga.edu.

Neighborhood watch for Georgia waters

University of Georgia entomologists are asking Georgians to help track the brown marmorated stink bug, a foul-smelling insect that is a common household pest and a potential threat to the state’s cotton and blueberry crops.

Paul Guillebeau, an entomologist with the UGA College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences, decided to find out how many Georgians are unwillingly hosting the pest—which came to the U.S. from Asia in the late 1990s—after lying in bed at night and

counting the number of stink bugs crawling on the ceiling of his Athens home.

“On any given day, there are at least five or six on the ceiling and at least 20 throughout the rest of the house,” he said. “You could spray them, but then you’d have dead stink bugs to deal with. It really becomes tedious. They only stink if you handle them and they don’t do any damage, but they are annoying.”

The three-question tracking survey asks the user to count how many stink bugs they’ve seen in the past few weeks,

describe their home and record the county in which they live. Researchers will use the data to get a better idea of how quickly the invasive bugs are spreading throughout the state.

To learn how to identify the stink bug and to participate in the survey, visit surveymonkey.com/s/FCLPJLX.

Stinker!

A RECENTLY PUBLISHED STUDY BY UGA’S JENNA JAMBECK SAYS 8.8 MILLION TONS OF PLASTIC ENTER OUR OCEANS EVERY YEAR. SHE HOPES HER RESEARCH WILL HELP RAISE AWARENESS AND REDUCE THE WASTE LOAD.

BY STEPHANIE SCHUPSKA

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TRASHED

PHOTO BY MALIN JACOB

Plastic samples collected from a beach near Caleta de Famara, Canary Islands, Spain.

Spring 2015 13

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A pair of plastic grocery bags filled with various kinds of plastic waste crinkle under Jenna Jambeck’s grip; she has boiled years’ worth of research down into an easy-to-understand

metaphor. It is February 12, 2015, and Jambeck is in San Jose, California, in a windowless room at the American Association for the Advancement of Science’s annual meeting. Her task here is to present the first study to systematically calculate the amount of plastic waste—discarded beverage bottles, food wrappers, toys, and other bits of trash—that makes its way into the ocean from sources such as estuaries, seashores, streets, and uncontrolled landfills.

She glances at the roomful of reporters from national

and international media outlets, and then Jambeck, an assistant professor of environmental engineering in the UGA College of Engineering, holds up the grocery bags and explains their significance. “Eight million metric tons is the equivalent of finding five grocery bags like these, full of plastic, on every foot of coastline in the 192 countries we examined,” she says. Seth Borenstein from the Associated Press captures the moment with a click, and the photo that Jambeck doesn’t even realize is being taken becomes the image seen ’round the world. This relatively unknown environmental engineer who studies solid waste is soon to become regarded as a global expert on plastic marine debris; she appears in global media outlets from the BBC to the South China Morning News to TIME Magazine.

Spring 2015 15

Calculating the loadHow much plastic waste was winding

up in the ocean was a decades-long guessing game until Jambeck and her colleagues at the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis (Santa Barbara, CA) put a reliable number on this global problem. Their study, which appeared in the Feb. 13, 2015, edition of Science, found that between 4.8 and 12.7 million metric tons of plastics (with a midpoint of 8 million metric tons) entered the ocean in 2010 from people living within 50 kilometers of a coastline. During the same time period, the 192 coastal countries generated 275 million metric tons of plastic waste.

To determine this quantity, Jambeck developed “a very grand model of all sources of marine debris,” said study coauthor Roland Geyer, an associate professor at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Bren School of Environmental Science & Management. “It fairly quickly emerged that mismanaged solid waste dispersed was the biggest contributor of all of them,” he said. From there, the team focused on plastics. “For the first time, we’re accurately estimating the amount of plastics that enters the oceans in a given year,” said coauthor Kara Lavender Law, a research professor at the Woods Hole,

Massachusetts-based Sea Education Association.

The framework that the researchers developed isn’t limited to calculating plastic inputs into the ocean. “Jenna created a framework to analyze solid waste streams in countries around the world that can easily be adapted” by other analysts, Law said. “Plus, the model can be used to generate possible solution strategies.”

By mid-March, the story of the research by Jambeck et al. had run some 1,800 times in various media outlets. She is most proud, though, of the article published by the Pine City Pioneer, a tiny newspaper that serves a community of 3,000 along the banks of the Snake River in eastern Minnesota. Jambeck grew up in Pine City, where her mom still lives, and on an island off the coast of Florida, where her dad lives. In both locales, residents savor the outdoors, and the local water in particular.

“My childhood really made me appreciate the environment in every way,” she said, so much so that when she was asked to declare a field of study at the University of Florida, “I opened up the book of majors and went straight to E, for environment.” Even in high school, “I had goals of getting a graduate degree and making a difference in environmental realms.”

The new problem of plasticsPlastic pollution in the ocean was

first reported in the scientific literature in the early 1970s, but in the 40 years since that time there had been no rigorous estimates of the origins and amounts of plastic debris in the marine environment until Jambeck’s study.

Part of the issue was that plastics were a relatively new problem, as they first appeared on the consumer market in the 1930s and ’40s. Waste-management systems didn’t start fielding their current infrastructures in the United States, Europe, and parts of Asia until the mid-1970s. Prior to that time, trash was dumped in unstructured landfills—Jambeck has vivid memories from her rural Minnesota youth of dropping her family’s garbage off at a small dump and watching bears wander through, and scatter, pieces of furniture, tires, and other debris as they looked for food.

“It is incredible how far we have come in environmental engineering—

MALIN JACOB

Jambeck (front row, fifth from right) and her Exxpedition crewmates sailed the 72-foot Sea Dragon across the Atlantic from Lanzarote to Martinique in only 19 days.

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with advanced recycling and waste-management systems to protect human health and the environment—in a short amount of time,” she said. “But unfortunately these protections are not available to the same degree throughout the world.”

Some of the 192 countries included in the model have no formal waste-management systems, Jambeck said. Solid-waste management is often one of the last components of urban envi-ronmental engineering infrastructure to be addressed during a country’s development. Clean water and sewage treatment usually come first.

“The human impact from not having clean drinking water is acute, with sewage treatment often coming next,” she said. “Those first two needs are addressed before solid waste, because waste doesn’t seem to have any immediate threat to humans. And then solid waste piles up in streets and yards and it’s the thing that gets forgotten for a while.”

As the gross national income increases in these countries, so does the use of plastics. Consider, for example, plastic resin, which is used to make many one-use items such as wrappers, bags, and beverage bottles. In 2013, global plastic resin production reached 299 million tons, a 647 percent increase compared to 1975.

Advanced solutions

With the mass increase in plastic production, the notions that that waste can be contained in a several-acre landfill or dealt with later are no longer viable. That was the mindset before the onslaught of plastics, when most people piled their wastes—glass, food scraps, broken pottery, whatever—onto a corner of their land or burned or buried them. Now, the average American generates about 5 pounds of trash per day, 13 percent of it plastics.

But knowing the quantity of plastics going into the ocean is just one part of the puzzle, Jambeck said. Although 4.8–12.7 million metric tons are entering it, the researchers have found that only 6,350–245,000 metric tons float on the ocean’s surface.

“This paper gives us a sense of just how much we’re missing” in terms of cleanup, Law said. “Right now, countries are mainly addressing plastics that float. There are a lot of plastics sitting on the bottom of the ocean and on beaches worldwide.”

Jambeck with trash and debris at the Athens Clarke County Landfill

ANDREW DAVIS TUCKER

Spring 2015 17

812.74.8

6,350-245,000 metric tons**

Estimated mass of plastic waste floating at the ocean surface

Jambeck et al., Science 2015

The 192 countries with a coast bordering Atlantic, Pacific, and Indian oceans, Mediterranean and Black seas produced a total of 2.5 billion metric tons of solid waste. Of that, 275 million metric tons was plastic, and an estimated 8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste entered the ocean in 2010.

Plastic waste inputs from land into the

ocean in 2010

Generated by 2 billion people within 50 km (30 miles) of the coast

Mitigation options: Reduce plastic in waste stream

Improve solid waste managment

infrastructure

Increase capture

*Plastics Europe, "Plastics—the Facts 2013" (2010 data)**Cózar et al., 2014; Eriksen et al., 2014

million metric tonsGlobal plastic production*

270 275

99.5

31.9

Million metric tons of plastic waste goes into the ocean

million metric tonsTotal plastic waste

million metric tonsCoastal plastic waste

million metric tonsCoastal mismanaged

plastic waste

And the amounts are rapidly growing, year after year. Jambeck forecasts that the cumulative load on the oceans will equal 155 million metric tons by 2025. Moreover, the planet is not predicted to reach global “peak waste” before 2100, according to World Bank calculations.

“We are being overwhelmed by our wastes,” she said. “But [my team’s] framework can help—by evaluating mitigation strategies, such as improvements in global solid waste management and reduction of plastics in the waste stream, and by coordinating potential solutions at the local and global levels.”

Putting her findings to work

Since February, the effects of Jambeck’s research have reverberated around the world. As the media storm of stories peaked and died down, she was already starting up the next wave, heading to London in early March to screen the premiere of a documentary that charted another of her

life-changing adventures—an all-female scientific sailing eXXpedition across the Atlantic in November 2014. She was part of a 14-member crew that traveled from the Spanish island of Lanzarote to Martinique, an island in the eastern Caribbean Sea.

A week later, she was in the air again, flying to Washington, D.C., to participate in a panel discussion sponsored by Rep. Mike Honda of California and speak during various sessions on Capitol Hill. March 18, for example, was an especially full, and fulfilling, day as she attendedthe Global Ocean Commission’s conference on Marine Plastic Waste and the Circular Economy. There, Catherine Novelli, the U.S. undersecretary of state for economic growth, energy, and the environment, started the morning sessions by quoting Jambeck’s study. Later, Jambeck shared her research with some 90 top officials from government and industry. And to top it all off, the UK’s redoubtable Prince Charles spoke at the conference that afternoon—on his support of environmental initiatives, his attention to the ocean in particular, and plastics in the ocean, citing Jambeck’s paper as well. She is hopeful that such recognition will have been a prelude to effective action.

GRAPHIC ILLUSTRATION BY LINDSAY ROBINSON

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Women, Work, and Clothes in the Eighteenth-Century Novel

by Chloe Wigston Smith, assistant professor, department of English, University of Georgia (Cambridge University Press, 2013)

In a world in which print culture and textile manufacturing traded technologies, and paper was made of the rags, the novel, by contrast, resisted the rhetorical and aesthetic links between dress and express, style and sentiment. Chloe Wigston Smith shows how fiction exploited women’s work with clothing—through stealing, sex work, service, stitching and the stage—in order to revise and reshape material culture within its pages.

Political Culture, Political Science, and Identity Politics

by Howard J. Wiarda, Dean Rusk Professor of International Relations, School of Public and International Affairs (Ashgate Publishing, 2014)

Well-known comparativist, Howard J. Wiarda, traces the long and controversial history of culture studies, and the relations of political culture and identity politics to political science. Under attack from structuralists, institutionalists, Marxists and dependency writers, Wiarda examines and assesses the reasons for these attacks and why political culture went into decline only to have a new and transcendent renaissance and revival in the writings of Inglehart, Fukuyama, Putnam, Huntington and many others.

Transparency 2.0: Digital Data and Privacy in a Wired World

edited by Charles N. Davis, dean, Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication and David Cuillier, director of the Arizona School of Journalism (Peter Lang International Academic Publishers, 2014)

Transparency 2.0: Digital Data and Privacy in a Wired World investigates issues around the collision of information and personal privacy in a digital world. Delving into the key legal concepts of information access and privacy, contributors examine issues regarding online access to court records, social media, access to email and complications from government data dumps by WikiLeaks, Edward Snowden and others. They offer solutions to resolving conflict and look to the future as a new generation learns to live in an open digital world where the line between information and privacy blurs ever faster.

mediashelf

U.S. Latinos and Education Policy

edited by Pedro R. Portes, the Goizeuta Foundation Distinguished Chair in Latino Teacher Education, University of Georgia; Spencer Salas, associate professor, University of North Carolina at Charlotte; Patricia Baquedano-López, associate professor, University of California, Berkeley; and Paula J. Mellom, associate director of the Center for Latino Achievement and success in Education, University of Georgia (Routledge, 2014)

U.S. Latinos and Education Policy is organized round three themes: education as product and process of social and historical events and practices; the experiences of young immigrants in schools in both U.S. and international settings and policy approaches to address their needs; and situated perspectives on learning among immigrant students across school, home and community. This volume provides research-based policy directions and tools for change for U.S. Latino Education and other multicultural contexts.

Spring 2015 19

Send suggestions for Media Shelf of work by UGA

personnel to James Hataway at jhataway@uga.edu.

TOOLS

Georgia Funder

Like Kickstarter and GoFundMe, GeorgiaFunder is a kind of crowdfunding technology. Specifically for the University of Georgia, GeorgiaFunder allows its colleges, schools and academic units to reveal prospective projects and outline funding priorities. Donors can choose specific projects of interest at UGA to support. All gifts to featured projects are part of the annual Georgia Fund campaign, and GeorgiaFunder is a platform to allow donors to choose where their dollars make a direct impact at UGA. To learn more, visit www.dar.uga.edu/funder.

Marine Debris Tracker

Downloaded over 10,000 times, the Marine Debris Tracker allows users to track and report trash and debris. It has over 700 users and was named an “App We Can’t Live Without” at the 2014 Apple Worldwide Conference. The mobile app is a product of an initiative to use innovative technologies to add culturally relevant tools to the NOAA Marine Debris Division. The app is available through the Apple App Store and through Google Play.

Women’s Resource Initiative

A new web portal developed fall of 2014, the Women’s Resource Initiative offers University of Georgia women access to resources all over campus. The web portal is part of an effort to address contemporary issues that female students, faculty and staff face. On the website, users can find access to health and wellness options, community resources and crisis assistance. To learn more, visit women.uga.edu.

Organization Development: An Action Research Approach

by Laura Bierema, professor and associate dean for academic programs, College of Education (Bridgepoint, 2014)

Available in print and as an interactive eBook, Organization Development: An Action Research Approach introduces readers to organization development theory using strategies proven to help organizations plan change and respond to unplanned change at individual, group and system levels. Each chapter features a case study, assessment, feature on “who invented that” and “tips and wisdom” to aid practice.

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Spring 2015 21

A distinguished UGA scientist

committed to refuting once and for all

the climate-change skeptics’ incorrect

but enduring fantasies—“zombie

theories”—serves as a science

communicator to the people.

ZOMBIE SLAYER

By James Hataway

Marshall Shepherd has a deep and abiding fear of zombies.

You wouldn’t think a climate scientist has much opportunity to rub shoulders with the undead, but he runs into the shuffling ghouls more often than he would like, and he’s devoted a lot of time and energy to their eradication. They’re everywhere. He’s seen them in his local grocery store, and he’s fought them in his classroom. They have a nasty tendency to crash his public talks, and he’s even sparred with them on live TV.

The bogeymen he faces aren’t humanoid, however, but the misinformation he calls “zombie theories”—the litany of benighted arguments that human activities are not, after all, the root cause of global climate change. Time and time again, atmospheric scientists have countered these assertions—such as “The climate change we are now witnessing is natural,” “It’s not humans, it’s the sun,” and “The alarmist scientists just want grant money”—but in full zombie tradition, the theories simply will not die, at least not yet. Shepherd’s firm belief is that truth ultimately will prevail, so he fights the zombie theories, using the best weapons at his disposal: scientific evidence and public outreach.

NAN

CY EVELYN

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Shepherd had watched for years as the public debate surrounding climate change devolved into what he saw as bloody stalemates between two talking heads, where thoughtful analysis and scientific evidence took a back seat to conjecture and wild speculation.

“Why is there so much popular debate when the vast majority of climate scientists and most of the leading scientific organizations worldwide agree that warming trends of the past century are likely, in part, due to human activities?” he asked.

While certainly a number of factors were contributing to misguided public

opinion, Shepherd decided that a big part of the problem was communication—not enough of it, that is, by bona fide climate scientists.

Shepherd certainly qualifies as one of them. The Athletic Association Distinguished Professor at the University of Georgia and director of its Atmospheric Sciences Program, he spent 12 years as a research meteorologist in the Earth-Sun Division of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center and served as president of the American Meteorological Society. He also received the Presidential Early Career Award from George W. Bush in 2004 for his pioneering scientific research.

Beyond the ivory towerShepherd takes wind measurements on the roof of UGA’s Geography building.

PHOTO BY NANCY EVELYN

Spring 2015 23

Old-guard academics customarily find public outreach both daunting and distasteful; in their minds, it reeks of shameless self-promotion or sensationalism, Shepherd said. But something has to give as climate change continues unabated, together with the risks of rising ocean levels, water shortages, national security threats, declining agricultural productivity, and economic harm. So Shepherd has made it his business to set the public record straight.

“I believe that the academic model of teaching classes, publishing our papers, going to conferences, and coming back to our offices to do the same cloistered thing all over again is

an outdated concept,” Shepherd said. “The issues that UGA scientists are dealing with affect Georgia, our nation, the whole world. I have expertise that has direct impact on people’s lives, so I felt the need to get the message out in order to inform the conversations about climate change”

And out he went. Shepherd embarked on a zombie-slaying mission that has taken him to places where many scientists fear to tread. He is a frequent guest on a number of national and international news shows; he meets with community organizations to present the latest scientific findings to lay audiences; he briefs Congress and the White House; he writes guest

columns; he uses Twitter; and he even hosts his own weekly show on The Weather Channel called WX Geeks, where scientists discuss weather, climate, and new technology.

Speaking a new language

It’s easy for the professional scientist to decry the lack of scientific literacy among the general population; life would be so much easier if everyone knew how to assess geophysical fluid dynamics or radiative equilibria at home. But Shepherd’s bold step into the public sphere has forced him to think of new ways to talk about climate and weather.

WX Geeks airs every Sunday at 12:00 pm on The Weather Channel.

COURTESY OF THE WEATHER CHANNEL

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“This is complicated science, so why should I expect an investment banker or pastry chef to understand all the issues? After all, I don’t know anything about what they do for a living,” he said.

Shepherd began experimenting with new ways of presenting scientific observations that remain faithful to the data but also convey information in an easy-to-understand format. One of his go-to metaphors is a response to the oft-stated zombie theory that we could not experience persistently bone-chilling temperatures—as in the winter just past—if the planet were warming.

“People tell me all the time that there’s no such thing as global warming because it’s cold outside,” he said. “So I tell them to think of it this

way: weather is like your mood and climate is like your personality. Your mood shifts from day to day, just like our weather. But climate is the big picture; it’s what’s happening in the long term.”

Even as a frequent guest on TV news shows, Shepherd has a real problem with the way climate debates are orchestrated. “It’s a point/counterpoint kind of format with a scientist on one side and a climate-change skeptic on the other,” he said. “That’s a false equivalency. It would be like going into Sanford Stadium during a UGA football game, plucking out one Georgia fan and one Tennessee fan, and telling everyone that the support for both sides is equal. It’s just not an accurate portrayal.”

Just the facts

Perhaps his favorite zombie theory is that scientists are only pushing climate change because they want more grant money. Shepherd likes to quote the great American author Upton Sinclair, who famously said, “It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.” So how can we trust scientists when so much of their career success depends on the grants that support their research agendas?

“I love this one, because the reality is that I could get far more grant money than I have now if I had evidence that our climate models and observations were flawed,” Shepherd said. “It would shake the very foundations of the science community, and I’d probably win awards for it. But I don’t have any evidence that we’re wrong.”

Like any good scientist worth his salt, Shepherd is an “equal opportunity” zombie slayer—a refuter of fantasies, whether they come from climate-change skeptics or quarters closer to home. For example, in their zeal to raise awareness and secure early action, some may point to the devastation wrought by a single storm, drought, or heat wave and imply it was due to global warming emissions from human activities.

But science doesn’t work that way, Shepherd said. “I can’t point to a single event and say that it was caused by climate change,” he said. “This is where I’ve found another useful analogy. Think of bad storms like home runs in baseball’s recent steroid era. Sure, the big hitters have always hit home runs, and I can’t say that any one homer resulted from steroid use. However, I can make the argument that steroids made a lot more balls go over the fence than normal.”

“Climate change is no different. You have to have multiple data points to make a solid argument, and I

Shepherd talks with Jane Goodall last year after they were both named Protectors of the Earth by the Captain Planet Foundation.

JOHN AMIS

Spring 2015 25

Shepherd said he’s a UGA professor first and a TV show host second. Students always get first priority.

PHOTO BY NANCY EVELYN

think that we will probably see more violent storms because of rising global temperatures. But it’s disingenuous to suggest that one storm is the result of climate change.”

The long road ahead

Shepherd insists that his zombie slaying is no publicity stunt. While he has found some success as a public champion of science, his first and foremost job will always be as a

researcher and educator.“When I speak somewhere, people

will sometimes introduce me as the host of Wx Geeks, and I always correct them,” he said. “I am a professor at the University of Georgia, and my students always get first priority. I don’t want to be known as a TV show host.”

But he hopes that his foray into the public sphere will serve as a catalyst for more honest, evidence-based discussions about the issues we face as a global community. And he is optimistic. Yes, climate change is a serious

problem, but it is not insurmountable, he said. Humans have a lot of hard decisions to make, and Shepherd is fully prepared to share his knowledge so that the public can better distinguish between fact and fancy.

“I want to show that it’s possible to be both a productive scientist and a good communicator,” he said. “I really like what I’m able to do right now. I’ve established myself professionally, earned the respect of my peers, and it’s a wonderful thing to be able to share knowledge with new groups of people.”

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interview

ROBERT NEWCOMB

The Liu FileAssociate Professor of Computer Science, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences

Education: BA in Automation, Northwestern Polytechnic UniversityMS in Automation, Northwestern Polytechnic University PhD in Computer Science, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

At UGA: Since 2008. Also affiliated with UGA’s Bioimaging Research Center, the Institute of Bioinformatics, the Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute and the College of Engineering.

Research and teaching interests: Brain architecture and computer science.

Recent honor: Recipient of a 2014 Creative Research Medal, awarded for outstanding research or creative activity within the past five years that focuses on a single theme identified with the University of Georgia.

Spring 2015 27

Q: What makes the brain so difficult to study?

A: People often compare the brain to a machine in which every section has a specific job to do. But that’s not quite the case. We can make generalizations about different sections of the brain, like the frontal lobe, which we commonly associate with reasoning, speech, movement and emotions. But the parts that make up the human brain don’t work independently; they are connected through an incredibly complex series of circuits that control everything from our mood to our involuntary muscle movements. There is a massive amount of data to piece together, so we’re only just beginning to understand how this circuitry works.

Q: What is your lab doing to tackle this problem?

A: A large collaboration of researchers called the Human Connectome Project is creating incredibly detailed fMRI maps of human brains, which we use as the foundation for our research. These MRIs show us the various circuits in the brain that control different functions. But the human brain has about 100 billion neurons, and each one has the ability to transmit information, so we are developing new computational methods to organize this extraordinarily complex web of brain activity to discover how these circuits work together control everything from our movements to our ability to solve problems.

Q: That sounds like a lot of data. How do you handle it all?

A: It would have been impossible for us to process it all just three or four years ago. Thankfully, computer technology is advancing very quickly, and it’s because of these recent improvements that we can examine such large datasets.

Q: Once you have the data, how do you begin to make sense of it all?

A: The first thing we want to do is identify and characterize a large number of functional networks in the brain, including those involved in specific tasks, like voluntary movements, as well as those that we see when a person is at rest. Once we have this baseline and we’re confident that we understand some of the brains most basic circuitry, we can begin to explore how these different networks overlap. You can think of it like a group of people lifting a heavy object. Everyone is involved, but we have to understand how they cooperate to complete the task. It is a kind of roadmap, a set of fundamental networks that tell us how different parts of the brain work together to complete essential processes.

Q: How can you be sure that these networks will be the same for every person?

A: That’s a big problem in brain science, but it’s one that we think we can overcome. Every person’s brain

undergoes changes. Some of those changes result from injury, and some are part of normal aging. For several years now, our laboratory has developed something called Dense Individualized and Common Connectivity-base Cortical Landmarks, or DICCCOL. We compared normal, healthy brains with those that have been altered through mild cognitive impairment or drug abuse. These datasets will prove invaluable for our research going forward, because we can compare the new brain networks we discover with those we have evaluated in the past. If there is no fundamental change, we can be reasonably sure that these networks are essential and that they would remain unchanged even in extreme circumstances.

Q: What will all this new information mean to the average person? Could it change our daily lives?

A: Absolutely. There are a number of diseases that affect the brain, and we only have a rudimentary understanding of a lot of them. If we knew how all these different regions of the brain work, we might be able to improve how we diagnose and treat Alzheimer’s disease, seizures, stroke and many other disorders. This is an exciting frontier in the scientific world, and I think we could improve the lives of a lot of people if we can successfully unlock some of the brain’s mysteries.

Tianming Liu, associate professor of computer science in the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences,

is looking for new ways to understand the human brain. Along with a team of computer scientists

and physicians from across the United States, Liu is developing new computational methods that

may one day help us unlock the mysteries of the body’s most complex organ. Liu sat down with

ugaresearch to talk about his work and the future of brain science.

28 ugaresearch

Canceled flights

Spring 2015 29

For monarch butterflies, loss of migration means more disease

By Beth Gavrilles

The common monarch butterfly, a regular visitor to gardens, parks and forests across North

America, is responsible for one of Mother Nature’s most dazzling displays. Every year, as the days grow shorter and cooler air signals the approach of autumn, millions of the tawny-winged insects take flight for a long and perilous journey from their breeding grounds in the eastern U.S. and Canada to the warm mountain air of central Mexico.

Although normally a solitary creature, the monarchs will often travel in great flocks that fill the skies and cover vegetation with a sea of orange. It’s a phenomenon that naturalists have observed for centuries, but something is wrong. A 2014 report from the World Wildlife Fund shows that the area occupied by migratory monarchs wintering in Mexico in 2014 was the second-smallest area occupied since record-keeping began in 1993, and researchers at the University of Georgia’s Odum School of Ecology are worried.

“Monarchs in the past have repeatedly bounced back from years of low abundance,” said Sonia Altizer, Odum School associate dean and UGA Athletic Association Professor in Ecology. “The problem is that if you look at the numbers over time, the height of their ‘bounce’ is getting smaller and smaller.”

Changing agricultural practices and land use patterns have reduced the availability of milkweed, the plant on which monarchs lay their eggs. In response, concerned gardeners have started planting milkweed to help replace some of the butterflies’ lost breeding habitat. Up until recently, the most readily available commercially grown milkweed sold by garden centers was the exotic species Asclepias curassavica, or tropical milkweed. Monarchs love it, but tropical milkweed does not naturally die back in fall like perennial milkweeds native to North America.

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In fact, in parts of the southern U.S. from the Gulf Coast to the Atlantic, tropical milkweed can produce foliage and flowers year-round. This allows monarchs in those areas to stay put and keep breeding all winter. And that’s how problems with disease arise.

Doctoral student Dara Satterfield and her colleagues processed more than 5,000 samples taken from monarchs at over 100 sites across the U.S., Canada and Mexico, testing them for infection by a debilitating protozoan parasite. The non-destructive samples, about half of which were collected by citizen scientists through Project Monarch Health, were taken by gently pressing clear tape against the butterfly’s abdomen; the samples were then viewed under a microscope.

The researchers found that the non-migratory, winter-breeding monarchs in the southern U.S. were five times more likely to be infected with parasites than migratory monarchs sampled in their summer breeding range or at overwintering sites in Mexico.

Satterfield said that previous studies showed that for some wildlife species, including monarchs, long distance migration helps to reduce infectious disease transmission.

“Long distance migration can reduce disease in animal populations when it weeds out infected individuals during the strenuous journey, or when the migrating animals get to take a break and move away from contaminated habitats where parasites accumulate,” she said. “Our non-migratory monarchs don’t have those benefits of migration, so we see that in many cases the majority of monarchs at winter breeding sites are infected.”

Satterfield said that this pattern is part of a larger problem.

“Many animal migrations are changing in response to human activities, whether climate change, habitat destruction or barriers to migration,” she said. “Some migrations are changing in terms of timing or distance traveled. Some animals have stopped migrating altogether. So in these animals, some pathogens that have been historically kept in check by migration might now become a problem.”

Fortunately for the monarchs, there is a large and dedicated core of gardeners and citizen scientists eager to help.

“It was members of the public and citizen scientists who alerted us to the winter breeding behaviors of monarchs in their gardens to begin with,” Satterfield said. “So the public has helped us recognize the shift in monarch ecology and document the disease outcomes in a scientific way. And I think they can now help us manage monarch habitats in ways that might reduce disease problems.”

Because the monarchs’ winter-breeding behavior is made possible by the presence of tropical milkweed, Satterfield recommended that gardeners gradually replace it with native milkweeds as they become available.

“We encourage the planting of native milkweeds whenever possible,” she said. “But if you do have tropical milkweed, we recommend cutting it back every few weeks to within 6 inches of the ground in fall and winter. That’s especially important in coastal areas of the southern U.S. where we now know

A monarch caterpillar munches on tropical milkweed in a garden at The Landings in Savannah, Ga., in January 2014.

DARA SATTERFIELD/UGA

Spring 2015 31

disease is a problem.” Some locations such as the extreme southern portions of Texas and Florida have supported tropical milkweed for many decades or longer, and Satterfield said that tropical milkweed there can be left in place.

Satterfield’s recommendations are now being tested by Altizer and Ania Majewska, an Odum doctoral student and Wormsloe Fellow at the UGA Center for Research and Education at Wormsloe in Savannah, where they are observing butterflies’ responses to native and non-native host plants in a series of experimental pollinator gardens.

Satterfield said that while the chief driver of the monarch’s decline is the loss of native milkweeds in the U.S. and Canada, it’s important to tackle the issue of pathogen transmission in winter-breeding populations. “Things could get worse for the monarchs if we don’t solve this problem now with the tropical milkweed supporting high levels of disease,” she said.

More information about monarchs, parasites and milkweed is available online at www.monarchparasites.org.

SO

NIA ALTIZER

/UG

AD

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“Monarchs in the past have repeatedly bounced back ... but the height of their ‘bounce’ is getting smaller and smaller.” —Sonia Altizer

Monarchs take flight at a wintering site in central Mexico.

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Georgia has the resources to spearhead a new interdisciplinary field, “computational epidemiology,” which borrows

concepts and methods from computer science, population ecology, physics, geography, engineering, statistics, and public health to deepen human understanding of the transmission and evolution of infectious diseases. I came to computational epidemiology from an ecology background. Ecologists study the interactions of species, their fluctuations over time, and their places in landscapes. To an ecologist, it is natural to think of infection as an interaction between two species—a parasite and a host. We want to know how the infection modifies the host’s physiology and behavior; how interactions among hosts result in the transmission of infection; how hosts and parasites co-evolve in response to their interactions;

and how larger environmental forces, such as climate change, affect these relationships. These are all critically important considerations for the effective management of new diseases, and computers are helping us do this in new ways.

From bats to Ebola

Emerging infectious diseases represent a serious threat to human health and safety. They almost always arise from animals, and some parasites infect multiple species. This means that identifying the conditions for “emergence” (origination and spread of a new parasite) and for “spillover” (the transfer of a parasite from one species to another) requires the expertise of ecologists who specialize in the relationships between organisms and their surroundings. Last fall, my colleagues and I participated in a network of disease modelers as part of the worldwide effort to contain Ebola in West Africa. Among our tasks was addressing questions such as “What path was the epidemic most likely to take?” “How fast would it spread?” and “What were the effects of the interventions to date?” Our efforts were greatly assisted by our prior work on the ecology of white-nose syndrome (WNS), an emerging

A new epidemiology for old and new threatsBy John M. Drake

viewpoint

ANDREW TUCKER

disease of bats that has been spreading in North America since 2006. WNS is found principally in bats that hibernate in caves, in particular limestone formations such as those of the Appalachian Mountains. To understand the spread of WNS, we found it necessary to map these formations. We then used computer simulations of a transmission model to project how the disease would spread throughout the country. It turned out that the computer code we had developed for understanding WNS—and the lessons learned about how to construct a large-scale model of this kind—were immediately useful in modeling Ebola. Substituting the known locations where Ebola had emerged for the documented sites of WNS, and substituting demographic/geographic information about human populations in West Africa for the ecological variables governing white-nose syndrome’s spread in bats—our very first model for projecting Ebola’s spread was up and running.

Computing the risks

In computational epidemiology, we use computer models similar to those we developed for Ebola to better understand where diseases come from, how they spread and what we might do to control them. Computer models are especially valuable for studying disease risk under rapidly changing conditions, such as during epidemics. An epidemic is a chain reaction—one infection begets others, which beget yet others—and this process continues until either the epidemic self-limits (after having infected essentially all the susceptible persons in a population) or containment is achieved through public interventions such as prophylaxis, education about safe practices, or travel restrictions. Computer models are needed to quantify such fluctuations in infection risk. Computer models are also used to simulate collective properties, such as herd immunity, that only emerge when the population is considered as a whole. Another important application of computer models is their combination with data to get a handle on unobservable properties—such as the propensity of a virus to transmit—that are important for informing intervention strategies. Other algorithms may be used to discover patterns in data. “Machine learning”—inspired by theories about how humans learn from experience—is an approach that sifts through data to recognize common features, identify relationships, and tease apart subtle interactions. Machine learning may be used to find patterns and risk factors that we might otherwise miss. But it is not just patterns that computers can identify. Algorithms that mimic the process of genetic adaptation by mutation and selection have been used to optimize intervention strategies, such as when booster vaccinations should be given.

Marshalling strengths

Despite its great promise, there are currently only a few places in the world where computational epidemiology is being heavily advanced. Georgia is one such place, and right now the state is positioned to potentially become a world leader in this field. The University of Georgia already has outstanding programs in infectious disease, public health, and ecology. Georgia Tech is virtually unequaled in computer science and industrial and systems engineering, which are greatly needed in computational epidemiology. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, based in Atlanta, is arguably the most sophisticated infectious-disease research institute on Earth—the “global 911” for pandemic threats. Georgia’s actual achievement of world leadership in computational epidemiology requires three things, however: the marshalling of Georgia’s intellectual resources and those of other outstanding state institutions to optimize the ways in which each propels the others forward; bringing additional expertise to the state; and finally, investing more in training researchers in these new approaches. Computational epidemiology is advancing rapidly – but so are threats like emerging infectious diseases. We need to move fast if we are to stay ahead.

“An epidemic is a chain reaction—one infection begets others, which beget yet others…”

The Drake FileAssociate professor in the Odum School of Ecology

Education: BA in Biology, Covenant CollegeMA in History and Philosophy of Science, University of Notre DamePhD in Biological Sciences, University of Notre Dame

At UGA: Since 2006. Also a member of UGA’s Biomedical and Health Sciences Institute and the Faculty of Infectious Diseases.

Research and teaching interests: Population dynamics, ecology and evolution of infectious diseases, epidemiology, niche theory, extinction.

Recent honor: Recipient of a 2014 Creative Research Medal, awarded for outstanding research or creative activity within the past five years that focuses on a single theme identified with the University of Georgia.

Researchers at UGA have developed a new small molecule drug that may serve as a treatment against multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, a form of the disease that cannot be cured with conventional therapies.

Nine million people contracted tuberculosis in 2013, and 1.5 million died from the disease, according to the World Health Organization. While standard anti-TB drugs can cure most people of Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection, improper use of antibiotics has led to new strains of the bacterium resistant to the two most powerful medications, isoniazid and rifampicin.

“Multi-drug resistant TB is spreading rapidly in many parts of the world,” said Vasu Nair, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Drug Discovery in the UGA College of Pharmacy. “There is a tremendous need for new therapies, and we think our laboratory has developed a strong candidate that disrupts fundamental steps in the bacterium’s reproduction process.”

Just like other living organisms, the genetic information contained in M. tuberculosis undergoes a complex process known as transcription in which the bacterial enzyme, DNA-dependent RNA polymerase, or RNAP, produces TB RNA. This molecule is involved in processes that

produce critical bacterial proteins that the organism needs to survive.

“The compound we developed strongly inhibits the growth of the bacterium and renders it incapable of reproducing and spreading infection,” said Nair. “More importantly, the compound shows very low levels of cytotoxicity, which means that it is not harmful to the body.”

While Nair and his colleagues were pleased with their new compound, they were surprised to discover through preliminary experiments that it also exhibited strong

anti-HIV properties, opening the door for dual therapeutic applications.

A dual-purpose drug would be a windfall for clinicians, because the risk for developing TB is between 26 and 31 times greater in people living with HIV than those without HIV infection, according to the WHO.

“This discovery of dual activity against both retroviruses and drug-resistant gram-positive bacteria is unique and opens a new chapter in drug discovery in this area,” Nair said.

Nine million people contracted tuberculosis in 2013. JAMES ARCHER

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