Mason Media Blog

Could the end of the smallpox epidemic have contributed to the spread of HIV years later? One Mason researcher has spent the last several years investigating this possibility.

Raymond Weinstein

Raymond Weinstein, research professor in the Public and International Affairs Biodefense Program, recently concluded a study that suggests that the eradication of smallpox and the end of smallpox vaccination in the mid-20th century may have caused a loss of protection that contributed to the rapid spread of HIV in the 21st century.

The results of the investigation – conducted in collaboration with researchers from George Washington University, the University of California at Los Angeles and AFG Biosolutions – were published on May 18 in the open source journal BMC Immunology.

According to Weinstein, who was the study’s principal investigator, the relatively sudden appearance and explosive spread of HIV throughout Africa and around the world beginning in the 1950s has never been adequately explained.

“There have been several proposed explanations for the rapid spread of HIV in Africa, including wars, the reuse of unsterilized needles and the contamination of early batches of polio vaccine. However, all of these have been either disproved or do not sufficiently explain the behavior of the HIV pandemic,” says Weinstein.

To learn more, visit http://news.gmu.edu/articles/2952.

Mason professor and physician Lynn Gerber works with a patient in the new Functional Assessment Laboratory located at Inova Health System’s Center for Integrated Research, an outgrowth of the Mason-Inova partnership. Photo by Evan Cantwell

What do you get when you mix a world-class health system with an innovative, entrepreneurial university? A very successful research collaboration.

For more than a decade, researchers at Northern Virginia’s Inova Health System and George Mason University have been collaborating on groundbreaking research on obesity, liver disease and cancer. In 2009, the two took the relationship one step further with the establishment of the Inova Life Sciences Research Collaboration Fund – George Mason University in which Inova Health System provided Mason with $1 million to stimulate and enhance collaborative research in the life sciences.

This trailblazing joint venture is funding 16 research teams as they investigate chronic disease management, obesity, heart disease, stroke, end-of-life provisions, genomics, proteomics, ethical issues and patient experience.

The second installment of the fund was presented by Zobair Younossi, vice president of research at Inova Health System, to Roger Stough, vice president for research and economic development at Mason, on May 13. The 2010 funding program is now open and accepting applications until July 1. To view this year’s guidelines, visit http://research.gmu.edu/grants_studyleaves.html.
 
“The hope of this fund is to encourage additional areas of research collaboration between investigators at Mason and Inova and it has been very successful so far in doing so,” says Younossi. “Our research results will be used to implement discoveries in new disease biomarkers and develop individualized treatment protocols and outcomes research projects that we hope will help our patients in the long term.”

For an update on the research collaboration between George Mason University and Inova Health System, visit http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsroom/822/.

Most people know the safe speed to drive when the weather is sunny and clear, but when you throw rain or snow or loose gravel roads into the mix, things get more complicated.

That’s why psychology students in George Mason University’s Human Factors and Applied Cognition Program developed the Speed Limit for Inclement Conditions (SLIC) system, an augmented speedometer that could be incorporated into automobile dashboards and activates when road conditions worsen due to bad weather.

“Most people base their driving speed on their experience, the posted speed limit, and traffic flow,” says Kidd. “But when things get nasty outside, what are you supposed base your speed on? Our device helps to provide a more objective speed limit for drivers when conditions are bad.”

This safety technology uses a suite of vehicle-based sensors to determine when poor roadway conditions necessitate that drivers adopt a speed below the posted speed limit. The SLIC device was one of three North American finalists at a design competition sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration at the 21st International Technical Conference on the Enhanced Safety of Vehicles.

The students—David Cades, Jane Barrow, David Kidd, Erik Nelson and Dan Roberts, along with faculty advisor Christopher Monk—concentrated on the design of the device, which they tested to make sure was as user-friendly as possible. “We needed a simple design that wouldn’t overwhelm people,” says Cades. “There are so many bells and whistles in cars that our design needed to be minimal but effective.”

The speedometer is designed to turn on when car sensors detect unsafe road conditions. A gradation of yellow and red marks easily shows the driver a recommended speed limit for safe driving. The students submitted their idea for the SLIC to Mason’s Intellectual Property Office, and the office filed a patent application on their behalf.

Preliminary testing of the device showed that participants, naïve to SLIC’s purpose, reduced speeds dramatically when the SLIC system was activated. This suggests that the system is both effective and easy for the driver to understand.

Jack Hadley, professor and senior health services researcher in the College of Health and Human Services. Creative Services photo

A study conducted by researchers from George Mason University and the Urban Institute that was published today in the New England Journal of Medicine found that variations in Medicare beneficiaries’ health across geographic areas account for a significant share of Medicare costs that vary widely by region.

“A substantial body of prior research has identified variation across geographic areas in how much Medicare spends per beneficiary—in the highest cost areas Medicare spends about 50 percent more per beneficiary than in the lowest cost areas, even after adjusting for basic demographics such as age, gender and race, and differences in medical care practices,” says Jack Hadley, professor in the College of Health and Human Services’ Department of Health Administration and Policy at Mason and senior author of the study.

To learn more, visit http://eagle.gmu.edu/newsroom/821/.

While “Save the Whales” was a very popular movement in the early 1970s, it seems that whaling conservation is not on the public radar anymore, especially in young people. A new survey by George Mason University Environmental Science and Policy professor Chris Parsons shows that American youth are very uninformed about current whaling policies and which species are most endangered.

Photo by Alan Whaley

The majority of 18-26 year olds who were surveyed had never heard of the International Whaling Commission and did not know its function. Only four percent of those surveyed were able to correctly identify that a right whale is the most endangered whale species on Earth—almost half chose the humpback whale, one of the few whale species that has showed clear signs of recovery since the prohibition of hunting it in 1966.

Also, just as the International Whaling Commission is about to propose a resumption of commercial whaling and an end to the IWC international whaling ban—a move that the U.S. government supports— the survey found that a majority of those surveyed thought that the U.S. government’s policy for whaling is either complete opposition to all whaling or opposition to whaling but with an exception for subsistence whaling by indigenous people.

“If the awareness of the current status of endangered whale species is so bad, with such a high media profile of these animals, then it’s likely that public awareness of other threatened species is going to be much, much worse,” says Parsons. “Environmental and animal groups, as well as government agencies dealing with whaling issues, may need to increase their outreach campaigns to the general public.”

The report, “Awareness of Whale Conservation Status and Whaling Policy in the U.S.—A Preliminary Study on American Youth,” was published in the current issue of Anthrozoös. Mason students J. Patrick Rice and Laleh Sadeghi also contributed to the report.

Sports play many roles in our lives and as part of a U.S. Department of State cultural exchange program are even being used to promote awareness and understanding of diverse cultures in foreign countries. Through a grant awarded by the SportsUnited Division of the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, Mason professors of sport management Bob Baker and Craig Esherick are not only looking to develop awareness of basketball in India but also to increase cultural awareness.

Through a series of combined coaching clinics and youth basketball camps, Baker and Esherick hope to provide a formative experience in the lives of participating Indian boys and girls. During their current trip, their second since November 2009, the pair, along with consultant J.D. Walsh, will hold clinics and camps in Chennai and Bangalore. Baker and Esherick will provide direct instruction, cross-cultural exchanges and hands-on experiences for players, coaches and league administrators that will not only enhance skill development, but also broaden participants’ understanding of diverse cultures.  Baker, Esherick and Walsh have also identified 10 sports leaders to travel to the United States in summer 2010 to attend a Coaching Academy at Mason.

To hear more about what they hope to accomplish through their grant, as well as more information about their previous trip to India, check out the video below and read the full press release online.

When you think of people suffering from social anxiety, you probably characterize them as shy, inhibitive and submissive. However, new research from psychologists Todd Kashdan and Patrick McKnight at George Mason University suggests that there is a subset of socially anxious people who act out in aggressive, risky ways—and that their behavior patterns are often misunderstood.

In the new study, “The Darker Side of Social Anxiety: When Aggressive Impulsivity Prevails Over Shy Inhibition,” published in Current Directions in Psychological Science, Kashdan and McKnight found evidence that a subset of adults diagnosed with Social Anxiety Disorder were prone to behaviors such as violence, substance abuse, unprotected sex and other risk-prone actions. These actions caused positive experiences in the short-term, yet detracted from their quality of life in the longer-term.

“We often miss the underlying problems of people around us. Parents and teachers might think their kid is a bully, acts out and is a behavior problem because they have a conduct disorder or antisocial tendencies,” says Kashdan. “However, sometimes when we dive into the motive for their actions, we will find that they show extreme social anxiety and extreme fears of being judged. If social anxiety was the reason for their behavior, this would suggest an entirely different intervention.”

Kashdan and McKnight suggest that looking at the underlying cause of extreme behavior can help us understand the way people interact within society.

“In the adult world, the same can be said for managers, co-workers, romantic partners and friends. It is easy to misunderstand why people are behaving the way we do and far too often we assume that the aggressive, impulsive behaviors are the problem. What we are finding is that for a large minority of people, social anxiety underlies the problem,” says Kashdan.

The researchers suggest that further studies of this subset group can help psychologists better understand and treat the behaviors. “Recent laboratory experiments suggest that people can be trained to enhance their self-control capacities and thus better inhibit impulsive urges and regulate emotions and attention,” says McKnight. “Essentially, training people to be more self-disciplined—whether in physical workout routines or finances or eating habits—improves willpower when their self-control is tested.”

For a full copy of the study, or to interview Kashdan or McKnight, contact Tara Laskowski, Office of Media and Public Relations, at 703-993-8815 or tlaskows@gmu.edu.

What happens when you put a computer inside a human brain? That is a question Mason bioengineer Nathalia Peixoto is trying to answer.

Peixoto and her students are testing a voice-activated wheelchair. Creative Services photo

In a lab filled with equipment straight out of the space age, such as remote-control robots, a voice-activated wheelchair and a glove that interprets sign language, Peixoto is perfecting the art of mixing biology with engineering to help improve people’s lives.

Peixoto has dedicated her career to combining biological, physical and mathematical knowledge to solve problems in medicine. By implanting devices that send out electrical currents in the brain, Peixoto hopes to combat such devastating conditions as epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease.

She also is working with prosthetic devices and assistive technology to improve the quality of life for those with disabilities. One such device is a voice-controlled wheelchair. The chair was donated by a company that makes custom wheelchairs and was modified by Peixoto’s students to interface with a computer.

“The basic idea is that you talk. You say ‘forward’ and ‘backward’, and the chair goes back and forth,” says Peixoto. To control the chair’s speed, they added an accelerometer that the user can control by humming, something almost everyone can do.

“We hope that once the chair is patented and on the market, it will help a lot of people,” says Peixoto.

To learn more, visit http://news.gmu.edu/articles/1999.

A T-shirt design for the researchers. Image courtesy of Ginny Espina

Can a drug that has been used to treat malaria for years possibly be used to treat breast cancer before it becomes invasive?

That’s what researchers at Mason’s Center for Applied Proteomics and Molecular Medicine (CAPMM) and Inova Breast Care Institute (IBCI) are trying to find out.

In January, the IBCI and CAPMM launched the PINC Trial, short for Preventing Invasive Breast Neoplasia with Chloroquine.

This three-year clinical trial will test the effectiveness of the anti-malarial drug chloroquine in treating 90 women with ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS), a type of breast cancer in which the cancer cells start in the milk ducts but have not yet become invasive and spread in the breast.

 To read more, visit http://news.gmu.edu/articles/1943.

George Mason University geologist Mark Uhen published a paper this week in Science that shows a strong link between the diversity of organisms at the bottom of the food chain and the diversity of mammals at the top.

Throughout the last 30 million years, changes in the diversity of whale species living at any given time period correlates with the evolution and diversification of diatoms, tiny, abundant algae that live in the ocean. In other words, the more kinds of diatoms living in a time period, the more kinds of whales there are.

What does it all mean? According to Uhen, “This study shows that if we look at the bottom of the food chain, it might tell you something about the top,” says Uhen. He believes that other similar links might be found in other animal groups, and hopes that future research can prove that.

Uhen is a term assistant professor in Mason’s Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Earth Sciences and is an expert in marine mammal fossils. In the future, he hopes to conduct research on how the body size of whales changes over time, and how whales became the largest living organisms in the world.

You can read the full press release here.

For a full copy of the study, or to interview Mark D. Uhen, please contact Tara Laskowski, Office of Media and Public Relations, at tlaskows@gmu.edu or 703-993-8815.