Minna Jaffery, AB’15

July–Aug/15

A selection of recent faculty research news.

Sleep well, be well

The benefits of a sound night’s sleep may include a lowered risk of diabetes. A study coauthored by UChicago Medicine sleep researcher Esra Tasali and colleagues including Kristen Wroblewski, SB’00, SM’01; Magdalena Stepien, AB’10; and Khalid Sharif-Sidi, AB’10, focused on prediabetics, people whose blood sugar levels are above normal but not yet in the diabetes range.

Prediabetics often suffer from sleep apnea, episodes where the upper airway closes during sleep. This may lead to a lowered ability to regulate blood sugar levels, which increases the risk of full-blown diabetes.

The study, published online April 21 in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, followed two groups of patients with prediabetes, one given an oral placebo before bed and the other sleeping eight hours a night with the aid of a continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) device. Subjects who used the CPAP showed better blood sugar control, lower levels of the stress hormone norepinephrine, and lower blood pressure.

Pop science

Soda taxes have become a common but controversial public health policy in the United States, as sugary drinks have been increasingly linked to obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and gout. To find out whether those taxes lower consumption, Chicago Harris researcher Jeffrey Grogger, the Irving Harris Professor in Urban Policy, turned to Mexico, where a nationwide tax on all drinks with added sugar went into effect in January 2014. In a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper this May, Grogger analyzed prices in 46 Mexican cities before and after the soda tax began.

A tax of 9 percent led soda prices to rise even more, to a total of 12 percent higher. The prices of most untaxed drinks—bottled water, plain juices, and milk—remained largely unchanged. But diet sodas, untaxed because they are artificially rather than sugar sweetened, saw a jump in price, likely tied to increased demand. Grogger concludes that there is reason to believe that soda taxes can work over time to change consumption.

Hitting the pitch

For adults, it may not be too late to acquire perfect pitch, the rare ability to identify a note by hearing it. In a study of adults without perfect pitch, UChicago psychology professor Howard Nusbaum, LAB’72, found that subjects’ ability to pick up the skill was closely tied to their auditory working memory.

The greater its capacity, the better their chances of reaching perfect pitch, long thought to be out of reach for those who did not pick it up in childhood. Nusbaum and his collaborators trained participants of varying musical experience to recognize individual notes and found unexpected improvements in their ability. Retesting participants months later, the researchers found that their skills slipped slightly, but mostly held.

Coauthors on the study, published in the July Cognition, include Stephen C. Van Hedger, AB’09, AM’12; Shannon L. M. Heald, AB’02, AM’05, PhD’12; and College student Rachelle Koch, ’16.

Expending energy

Investments in energy efficiency don’t always add up to savings. In a study evaluating the federal Weatherization Assistance Program, which provides low-income households with money for upgrades such as new furnaces, wall and attic insulation, and weather stripping, a research team including UChicago economist Michael Greenstone, LAB’87, director of the Energy Policy Institute at UChicago, found that upgrade costs were double the households’ energy savings.

A randomized controlled trial of more than 30,000 Michigan households, a quarter of which received federal weatherization subsidies, showed that $5,000 in upgrades reduced energy consumption by 10 to 20 percent per month, but that translated to only $2,400 in savings over the lifetime of the upgrades. Researchers released their results in a June working paper.

A journey to the stage

jmiller — Thu, 25 Jun 2015 21:48:38 +0000

jmiller Thu, 06/25/2015 - 16:48

(Photo courtesy UChicago South Asian Students Association)

06.25.2015

A graduating fourth-year reflects on her final performance in the annual South Asian Students Association cultural show.

Every winter, tryouts and practices begin for the South Asian Students Association’s annual performance, a combination of song, dance, and acting. The SASA show, one of many cultural shows on campus, has been going on for 28 years. (It’s also a charitable event. A portion of the ticket proceeds went to this year’s cause: Indian literacy and education.) It began as a small-scale production; this year 200 students took part in the April sold-out show in Mandel Hall. I’ve danced in it for two years now, and it has been one of the most joyous and meaningful—and exhausting—experiences of my College career. Auditions for the show’s 10 acts began during first week of winter quarter. Dozens of students, including me, spent several days learning new choreography and trying to contort our bodies into unfamiliar or long-forgotten shapes; the delicate lotus hands, a one-legged balance. The auditions varied in intensity. Bhangra, a loud and bouncy Punjabi folk dance and one of the show’s most explosive and exciting acts, held auditions in the dance room in Bartlett. Auditioning students packed into the room. As a fourth-year, I signed up for the relatively quieter Seniors Act. The dance audition took place in Ida Noyes and slowly transitioned to the Pub, where we discussed possible ideas for the piece: we wanted more linguistic diversity and a broader range of dance styles that reflected our individual talents. Our nostalgia began kicking in as we discussed using South Asian songs that were popular when we were younger. Every year the show attracts a few comments about not being diverse enough—in the past it has been accused of promoting the India of Bollywood films and ignoring other aspects of diversity, especially from the other countries in South Asia. But the SASA show aims to represent all of the cultures of the region, in all their variety. This year’s production was titled “SASA Journey,” and its wanderings were not only geographical and cultural but also emotional, artistic, and political. Paras Mehta, ’16, one of the show’s scriptwriters, explained: “We decided early on that to give a holistic perspective we would include both entertaining scenes and scenes that were more politically charged.” The skits centered on a group of students on their way to the University of Chicago’s Center in Delhi for an internship. But their travels were thwarted by a storm, so instead the protagonists embarked on a road trip across the subcontinent, visiting historical sites such as the Hindu Dwarkhadish Temple in Gujarat, India, and the Jama Masjid mosque in Delhi. The show’s journey also took the students through Pakistan, Bhutan, Bangladesh, and Nepal. There were skits about fashion from Bhutan and Sri Lanka, the slums of Mumbai, and political violence in Pakistan. Dance performances have always been the epitome of the show. Fusion, one of the acts I was in, was a combination of Bollywood, classical, and folk dances. It also closed the show, and as the finale, it was a big number that required tons of energy. Every Sunday, 30 students practiced for hours. Our creative directors, Arushi Tomar, ’16, and Mythili Vinnakota, AB’15, danced alongside us and yelled out reminders as we ran through the performance. “Angles! Remember your angles!” “Don’t forget, we’re turning clockwise now!” “Pretty hands, pretty hands, fierce faces!” “Do the banana peel formation! Peel away!” And of course, the rallying cry of the show, “DON’T FORGET TO SMILE!” More emotional for me, though, was the Seniors Act. After weeks of work and sweat, we spent the final practice, days before the show, mostly goofing off and reminiscing. Twenty-five sentimental fourth-years, we joked about dance moves from past years and how we struggled to learn them, and we laughed about the hours spent putting on stage makeup, only to sweat it off onstage. We’d tried to make this year’s act different from that of previous shows, in part by including songs we’d grown up hearing and singing. One of them, Abhi Toh Party Shuru Hui Hai translates to “the party is just now starting.”

Dance

Student Life

College students

The College

Faculty research

jmiller — Thu, 07 May 2015 15:34:14 +0000

jmiller Thu, 05/07/2015 - 10:34

Jack Gilbert takes microbial samples from a vineyard. (Photo courtesy Kristin West/FMC Corporation and Jack Gilbert)

Kathryn Vandervalk, AB’16

May–June/15

Grapevines’ “microbial signature” may influence a wine’s taste and more, a blood pressure drug may help with multiple sclerosis, a UChicago bioethicist calls for more research into Muslims’ health behaviors, and a compound found in magnolia tree bark may prevent heart disease.

Through the grapevine

In a study that suggests why wines carry regional tastes and how farmers might grow healthier crops without chemicals, microbial ecologist Jack A. Gilbert found that grapevines may “recruit” bacteria from the soil that help them thrive. A researcher at Argonne National Laboratory and UChicago, Gilbert led a team that sampled microbes in the soil, roots, leaves, flowers, and grapes at five New York vineyards. Each had its own “microbial signature”—an interwoven community of hundreds of thousands of microbes—offering a clue to what makes up terroir, or grapes’ regional taste. While most bacteria they sampled came from the soil, the same bacteria were found in different amounts elsewhere on the plant, suggesting that different parts of the grapevine recruit specific bacteria. The next step, Gilbert says, is to find ways to encourage the growth of beneficial bacteria that help plants become more drought tolerant or produce more fruit. The findings were published March 24 in mBio, a publication of the American Society for Microbiology.

Multiple sclerosis preventative

An FDA-approved drug for high blood pressure might help alleviate multiple sclerosis, a disease with no known cure that affects more than 2.3 million people worldwide. A team led by UChicago neuroscientist Brian Popko found that guanabenz, an oral medication, seems to strengthen animal cells’ defensive machinery by temporarily blocking the reactivation of a protein. This helps prevent the loss of nerve-insulating myelin, a major hallmark of MS. The team tested guanabenz in mice and found that, administered early, it delayed the onset of MS symptoms. In about 20 percent of the animals, the drug prevented symptoms from appearing at all. Guanabenz also seems therapeutic after MS symptoms have appeared and peaked: giving the drug immediately after a cycle of severe symptoms, the researchers found a nearly 50 percent reduction in symptoms during the next relapse cycle. Guanabenz likely won’t work as a standalone treatment; it would be used in combination with other drugs, and researchers hope it could replace some of the riskier MS drugs. The findings were published March 13 in Nature Communications.

Muslim health disparities

Arguing that a lack of research on Muslim American patients puts them at risk for poor quality health care, UChicago physician and bioethicist Aasim Padela found that there are relatively few studies focusing on the country’s estimated 7 million Muslims. In an April 1 report in the Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice, Padela wrote that a search of 18 million research studies published in medical journals between 1980 and 2009 turned up only 171 with a focus on Islam. Padela, who also heads the University’s Initiative on Islam and Medicine, called for more research on the health effects of anti-Islamic discrimination and how religion influences Muslims’ health behaviors. “In the area of health disparities among American Muslims,” he says, “we know very little.”

Cure of the magnolia

The bark of the magnolia tree may help prevent certain kinds of heart disease. Mahesh Gupta, UChicago cardiac cell biologist and associate professor of cardiothoracic surgery, reported in the April 14 Nature Communications that honokiol, a compound derived from magnolia bark, can help prevent the thickening of the cardiac muscle often caused by chronic high blood pressure, which can lead to heart failure. Injected into mice, honokiol—an herbal remedy used for centuries in Asia—reduced excess growth of individual heart muscle cells; decreased the thickness of ventricular walls; stopped cardiac muscle cells from stiffening; and protected them from oxidative stress, which can damage DNA. The compound does this by activating SIRT3, a protein associated with slower aging, metabolism regulation, and stress resistance. Sedentary patients over age 60 have nearly 40 percent less SIRT3 than people who are younger. In mice, a small amount of honokiol nearly doubled SIRT3 levels in 24 hours

Open to enrollment

jmiller — Mon, 09 Mar 2015 18:51:48 +0000

jmiller Mon, 03/09/2015 - 13:51

The chalkboard after class. (Photography by Minna Jaffery)

03.09.2015

For a College student in her final undergraduate year, elective courses offer surprising risks—and rewards.

As a fourth-year in the College, I have grown a bit complacent. By now I know how to navigate the course selection websites and the multitudes of syllabi. I can analyze evaluations for courses and professors to find the information I need. And after three-plus years of work and planning, I am done with the requirements of the Core and my double major in English language and literature and Near Eastern languages and civilizations.

Finally, it is time for electives.

And suddenly I’m at a loss. Which department should I look at? What key words should I type in? What do I want? What do I need? Looking over my options for winter quarter, I decided to try a creative writing course. I had never taken one before—my English classes had all been focused on critical study more than creative exploration. The class I enrolled in was called Introduction to Creative Nonfiction Writing. Our instructor was David MacLean, an essayist and memoirist and a visiting faculty member. With little frame of reference for what to expect, I assumed our assignments would be similar to the papers I’d spent the rest of college writing. I was so wrong.

Creative nonfiction meant personal essays—lots of them. In MacLean’s class, we have written about everything from what it means to have a pet to the effects of a hunger strike on one’s spirituality. And we’ve done plenty of reading too. The syllabus contains memoirs, graphic novels, and anthologized essays. From Montaigne to Roxane Gay, the course traces the development of the personal essay from its origin in Greece, to the Enlightenment, to the present day. Learning about that history would give us the background, MacLean told us, to write our own. In a class of 12 students, all humanities majors, we grappled with what it meant to explore this personal side of ourselves. Some of my classmates had taken fiction-writing courses, but this was everyone’s first foray into our internal worlds.

Over the past nine weeks, the class has been demanding in ways that were new to me, asking us to be more vulnerable and less concerned about writing in perfect prose. It felt risky, and also liberating. Our shorter in-class writing assignments have been tremendously fun. In one we were asked to describe three things we’ve had smeared on our faces: among the examples people gave were face cream, makeup, and birthday cake icing. In another we wrote an internal monologue of an animal. I chose my dog, Taco, who glares at me when I eat chocolate that I can’t give to her.

The class isn’t a workshop per se, but we read the shorter pieces aloud in class. We generally don’t give any context first, launching into our assignments in whichever order we please. Then, as our abbreviated form of workshopping, the class and MacLean offer feedback: what worked, what didn’t, what connections were made or missed, and why. Not giving any context first means the essays have to stand on their own, but another benefit is that they come out sillier than they were perhaps intended—even the most serious essay sounds humorous when read in conjunction with a story about the plot of the worst movie you’ve ever seen. For me this takes some of the pressure off reading my inner ramblings out loud to the group.

Our homework assignments are far more challenging. The first essay MacLean asked us to write was about our names. I wrote about the Islamic and Pakistani heritage that mine carries and the common mispronunciations that get under my skin (it’s like “Minnesota,” but without the “-sota”; somehow, people always want to say “Meena”). Limiting myself to the assigned three pages was a challenge. How am I supposed to condense the only identifier I have known for 21 years into a mere three pages, double spaced with appropriate margins? It made me feel far more open—and a little exposed—than I had been in any writing assignment I’d done before. The essay was so intensely about me, not about a novel or author or critical theorist I was studying. The stakes are different when we are trying to articulate our lives and project outward what we are so used to internalizing.

Now, with only a couple of weeks left in the class, and one last quarter of electives to go, I am no longer complacent. I’m excited and curious and looking forward to the possibilities.

Faculty research

jmiller — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 22:23:10 +0000

jmiller Wed, 03/04/2015 - 16:23

(Photography by Narong Jongsirikul)

Lydialyle Gibson

Mar–Apr/15

“Genomic parasites” jumpstart the evolution of pregnancy, a UChicago economist recommends paying NCAA college athletes, some regulations make power plants less efficient, and neural responses predict generosity in three- to five-year-olds.

Evolution of the stork

The vast genetic shifts that marked the evolution of pregnancy in mammals involved thousands of genes recruited to the uterus from other systems—brain, digestive, circulatory—repurposed to new functions, such as suppressing the maternal immune system and sending signals between mother and fetus. Shedding light on how organisms develop novel structures, an international team including UChicago geneticist Vincent Lynch cataloged genes expressed in the wombs of 13 different animals, including mammals, reptiles, and amphibians. The emergence of pregnancy was driven by ancient “genomic parasites” called transposons: fragments of DNA that can jump around in the genome. Ancient mammalian transposons had binding sites for the reproductive hormone progesterone that regulated the recruitment of genes to the uterus and activated them. The research was published online January 29 in Cell Reports.

Play for pay

In a study calling today’s college athletic system “inefficient, inequitable, and very likely unsustainable”—as well as a possible violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act—UChicago economist Allen Sanderson and a Vanderbilt University colleague recommend paying college athletes. Published in the Winter 2015 Journal of Economic Perspectives, the study finds that NCAA remuneration caps—restricted to room, board, tuition, fees, and books—hold down benefits for top-performing athletes, while coaches and athletic department personnel receive disproportionately high salaries. They also note that students’ exemption from labor laws allows universities to dictate long work hours and the NCAA to steadily expand the number of regular-season and play-off games with minimal marginal operating cost. Recent lawsuits by student-athletes and pressure from regulators may help force a change, the authors argue, reducing the NCAA’s “monopoly power.”

Utility bills

Chicago Harris economist Steve Cicala, AB’04, investigated data on almost $1 trillion worth of power-plant fuel deliveries to analyze the effectiveness of state regulations. In the January American Economic Review, Cicala, also on the faculty of the Energy Policy Institute at Chicago, reported his results: deregulated power plants save roughly $1 billion a year compared to their regulated counterparts. That’s because unregulated power plants can shop around on the open market for cheaper coal. Also, political influence, poorly designed reimbursement rates, and a lack of transparency make coal purchases for regulated plants more inefficient. “It’s critical,” Cicala wrote, “to know what makes for ‘bad’ regulations when designing new ones.”

Little helpers

Young children are natural helpers, but their outlook on sharing is often more selfish than selfless. In a study in the January 5 Current Biology, UChicago neuroscientist Jean Decety and Jason Cowell, a postdoc in Decety’s Child NeuroSuite lab, analyzed generosity in three- to five-year-olds. They recorded brain waves and tracked eye movements of 57 children as they watched videos of cartoon-like characters helping or hurting each other. Then the children played a “dictator game,” deciding whether to keep or share stickers they’d been given. After seeing the helpful or hurtful behavior in the videos, the children exhibited both immediate, automatic neural responses and later, more controlled ones. The latter—choosing whether to share the stickers—was more indicative of generosity. The study was the first to identify specific brain markers that predict generosity and to link children’s implicit moral evaluations to outward moral behavior.

Institute of Politics

Celebration through service

jmiller — Thu, 29 Jan 2015 22:35:33 +0000

jmiller Thu, 01/29/2015 - 16:35

Alpha Phi Omega service fraternity members volunteered with the local nonprofit Community Builders as part of the University’s annual Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. (Photography by Minna Jaffery, ’15)

01.29.2015

The University’s annual day of service roused 350 students.

On a Saturday morning in mid-January, more than 300 sleepy students made their way to Ida Noyes to participate in the University Community Service Center’s (UCSC) Martin Luther King Jr. Day of Service. The annual event, organized by the service center staff, aims to connect students with the community around them. Days of service happen every month and offer a stepping stone to getting involved in the University’s wider volunteer efforts. As a three-year veteran of the MLK Day of Service, I was surprised to note about 100 more volunteers at what is already the UCSC’s largest such event. The volunteers ranged from adults and faculty to young children; this year, the UCSC opened the event up to volunteers from the Lab Schools. Volunteers boarded school buses that took them to some 20 different service sites scattered across Chicago’s South Side—soup kitchens, housing and economic development organizations, churches, and schools—where they cleaned, painted, organized, and built new relationships with community members. The buses were named after famous marches that King took—I rode the Washington bus; others were on buses called Montgomery, Birmingham, and Selma. Table decorations at Ida Noyes were black and gold, honoring King’s involvement in his fraternity, Alpha Phi Alpha, which influenced his role in the civil rights movement. Before the volunteers boarded the buses, UCSC staff members gave speeches about what we should take away from our morning of service. The theme of the day was to promote a two-way street for learning and growth. Amy Chan, associate dean of students, emphasized that the communities we were helping would benefit from our time, but that we should also strive to learn about the community that we are a part of. Those words stayed with us on the Washington bus, as I made my way to the Oakwood Shores housing development at 37th and Cottage Grove with Alpha Phi Omega, the service fraternity I am a member of. There we worked with Community Builders, a nonprofit that, according to its website, “uses stable housing as a platform for residents and neighborhoods to achieve success.” Last Saturday this translated into 20 UChicago volunteers helping set up amenities, including coffee bars and packets on how to go about renting a home from Community Builders. Youth-development program leaders at Oakwood Shores—a mixed-income community built on the grounds of a former public housing project—worked side by side with us as we cleaned and pieced together an indoor playground for the neighborhood’s children and as we set up a meeting room for the burgeoning neighborhood association. While we worked, youth program coordinators from Community Builders talked about how they got involved in public service. They explained how Oakwood Shores had been built after the Ida B. Wells Homes were demolished, and how the community evolved from public housing to mixed income. Hearing those stories as we built a playground helped bring home the idea that what we were doing mattered—we were helping create an environment in which the youngest residents would feel safe and would have a place for fun. More than other service experiences I’ve had, this one was particularly meaningful because we weren’t just cleaning or organizing; we were learning the history of a developing community, and we got to explain our reasons for participating in this day of service. The community leaders beamed as they told our group about the work that they did, and what remained to be done, while we gained a deeper understanding about what it means to shape a community.

volunteering

“Campus Celebrates MLK Legacy” (University of Chicago News Office, 01.22.2015) “More than 110 Labbies Participate in UChicago MLK Day of Service Partnership” (Laboratory Schools News Office, 01.22.2015)

Nuclear tide

rsmith — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 17:19:49 +0000

rsmith Tue, 12/23/2014 - 11:19

Photography by Robert Kozloff

Jan–Feb/15

Scientists have been at sea about how to extract uranium from the oceans, but a PhD student’s method shows promise.

The oceans are full of uranium. Altogether, they contain an estimated four billion metric tons of the silvery white metal—nearly 1,000 times more than all known terrestrial ores, and enough to fuel the nuclear power industry for centuries. And that’s important, given the growing need for energy sources to replace greenhouse-gas-emitting fossil fuels.

The uranium in the oceans could allow more use of nuclear power. The difficulty has always been finding a feasible way of extracting it from seawater. Carter Abney (above), a PhD student in chemistry, may have found one. Last fall he won a first place prize in the US Department of Energy’s 2014 Innovations in Fuel Cycle Research Awards competition for his contributions to a new method to harness uranium from seawater, using crystalline materials called metal-organic frameworks, or MOFs. These are compounds of metal ions and organic molecules; they function like proteins, with binding sites to attract uranium. MOFs have been designed for drug delivery within the body, gas separation and storage, and as catalysts for chemical reactions. Abney’s work, with UChicago chemist Wenbin Lin, was the first to use MOFs to extract uranium from seawater. In his study, they absorbed slightly more than 20 percent of their mass in uranium.

The same method can also help make nuclear power cleaner, by expediting its decay to safe levels. Materials made from MOF precursors can separate out highly radioactive elements called minor actinides. “You essentially consolidate the radioactivity into a condensed and stable form, which is more amenable to long-term storage and disposal than liquid waste,” Abney says.

Science & Medicine

Next Generation

“Uranium-extracting Technology for Seawater Earns Student a Fuel Cycle Research Award” (University of Chicago News Office, October 30, 2014)

Faculty research

rsmith — Tue, 23 Dec 2014 17:15:31 +0000

rsmith Tue, 12/23/2014 - 11:15

A dendritic cell, which works with T cells to fight tumors. (National Institutes of Health)

Kathryn Vandervalk, AB’16

Jan–Feb/15

Disrupting cancer-cell division, buzz as an economic commodity, surgery that relieves apnea and asthma, and a STING operation to fight disease.

Cancer cell division, disrupted

A new cancer drug developed by UChicago researchers can eradicate human lung cancer cells in mice and shows few side effects. Genetics and cancer researcher Yusuke Nakamura led the study, published October 22 in Science Translational Medicine and coauthored by colleagues Jae-Hyun Park and Houda Alachkar and scientists from a Japanese biopharmaceutical company. The drug destroys cancer cells by disrupting the process of cell division. Says Nakamura: “Everything within the cell spills out; they suffer and die.” In five of six mice, tumors completely disappeared within a month. Coating the drug in liposomes—microscopic bubbles—eliminated its toxicity to the mice’s healthy white and red blood cells.

Buzz feeds the economy

Buzz—the news, gossip, discussion, and excitement surrounding a cultural activity—is not so nebulous a phenomenon as it may seem. According to UChicago sociologist Terry Nichols Clark, buzz is a tradable commodity and political resource and is subject to its own kind of inflation. In Can Tocqueville Karaoke? Global Contrasts of Citizen Participation, the Arts, and Development (Emerald Group Publishing, 2014), the 11th volume in a series on urban policy, Clark, coauthor and series editor, and 18 other scholars analyze civic engagement worldwide and its generative buzz. Among other topics, authors explore how culture and the arts can drive civic participation and economic innovation. The book’s roots trace to Alexis de Tocqueville, who, during his American travels, found that civic groups encouraged democracy. Clark’s research, based in part on a 30-year international survey he coordinates, examines contexts that encourage civic participation and how they vary around the world.

Apnea surgery can ease asthma

Adding strong data to studies suggesting a connection between obstructive sleep apnea and asthma, UChicago researchers found that surgery to treat sleep apnea in children can also ease their asthma. A common pediatric disease, asthma affects an estimated 7.1 million US children under 18 and is the third most frequent cause of hospitalization in those younger than 15. Sleep apnea is also common, affecting 2 to 3 percent of children. In a study of more than 40,000 children between ages 3 and 17, UChicago Medicine researchers Rakesh Bhattacharjee, David Gozal, and Babak Mokhlesi discovered that removing the tonsils and adenoids—a standard therapy for apnea—decreased asthma severity. The surgery reduced acute asthma exacerbations in children by 30 percent, and reduced acute status asthmaticus—a medical emergency—by 38 percent. Asthma-related hospitalizations fell by 36 percent. Coauthored by Beatrix Choi, AB’09, of the UChicago Center for Health and Social Sciences, the study was published in the November PLOS Medicine.

Sting operation fights disease

A newly discovered protein complex in the immune system plays a big role in the body’s ability to detect a tumor and mount a response. Described in a pair of UChicago-based studies, both published November 20 in Immunity, this STING pathway—the acronym stands for Stimulator of Interferon Genes—opens new possibilities in the field of cancer immunotherapy. When the body detects a threat (whether from cancer or infection) marked by damaged or misplaced DNA, a series of chemical reactions activate the STING pathway, which alerts the immune system and helps it identify bad cells and begin to fight them. In one study, led by UChicago pathologist Thomas Gajewski, AB’84, PhD’89, MD’91, researchers identified and illuminated the “stumbling blocks” that sometimes prevent the immune system from destroying cancers. Drugs called “checkpoint inhibitors” can remove the stumbling blocks and take the brakes off the immune response. The other study, led by cancer biologist Yan-Xin Fu and cellular oncologist Ralph Weichselbaum, found that high-dose radiation therapy not only kills tumors but also boosts the body’s natural immune response by damaging cancer cell DNA.

Extraordinary discovery

jmiller — Mon, 15 Dec 2014 16:58:11 +0000

jmiller Mon, 12/15/2014 - 10:58

Professor Schloen’s gallery talk. (Photography by Minna Jaffery, ’15)

WATCH THE VIDEO ON YOUTUBE

12.15.2014

Professor David Schloen discusses a dig in southeastern Turkey with unexpected and exciting results.

In the lower city area of the Zincirli archeological site In southeastern Turkey, away from the bigger digs that unearthed palatial ruins, Professor David Schloen and his team tried to understand how ordinary people lived in the Iron Age city of Sam’al. In 2008 they discovered a stela, a large slab of stone with commemorative inscriptions, that shed light on the original purpose of the settlement—a gated community for the elites of the small kingdom. The large stela, of which a replica can be seen at the Oriental Institute, provided details on how the elite of the kingdom lived, especially on their dietary practices, which is the focus of the exhibit at the OI. At a gallery talk on December 4, Schloen recounted the circumstances around the monumental find, named one of the top ten archaeological discoveries in 2008 by the Archaeology. The stela, found only a few centimeters below the “modern-day surface,” bore inscriptions in Aramaic. Fortunately for the team, three of the PhD candidates on the site had taken a seminar on Aramaic the previous spring and were able to identify the significance of the object. A discovery of such salient importance to understanding the lives of the ancient inhabitants is itself a cause for celebration, but to have found the stela so early in the dig made it all the more important. The governor of the province was alerted to the discovery and visited the site “with a full security detail and a limousine … and a camera crew.” The discovery made the national news that night and seemed to be an indication of good relations with the Americans (though Schloen points out that most of his team were not American). Schloen also told the story of how he and his wife were prepared to guard the stela all night; his plans to keep watch were interrupted by the Turkish army emerging out of the desert to keep him company. “The governor was really excited,” Shloen chuckled. With his team of graduate students and colleagues, Professor Schloen wanted to learn about the lives of those who kept the small kingdom in Sam’al running, but instead, he found a society built for the upper class. The search for how the ordinary man lived in Zincirli continues this year, as Schloen gears up for another dig this summer.

Arts & Humanities

Archaeology

Oriental Institute

“Digital Dig” (Tableau, Spring/14) “Back, and to the Future” (Tableau, Spring/14)

Video

Watch a student’s aerial footage from a UChicago expedition to Zincarli.

Trivial matters

jmiller — Wed, 19 Nov 2014 20:04:08 +0000

jmiller Wed, 11/19/2014 - 14:04

Students and bartenders hang out in the Pub (above); portrait of Ed Martin (below). (Photography by Eric Buether/courtesy Chicago Maroon, University of Chicago Photographic Archive, apf7-02466, Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library [above]; photo courtesy Ed Martin [below])