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November 2017

Gamez Presents at Conference in Japan

Gerardo Gamez, Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, received a $500 International Travel Fund (ITF) award from Texas Tech University to give his invited talk entitled "Ultra-high Throughput Elemental Mapping via Glow Discharge Optical Emission Spectroscopy" at the Asia-Pacific Winter Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry in Matsue, Japan, Nov. 12-17.

Kendall Named SETAC Fellow, Klaine Awardee

Ron Kendall, Professor in the Department of Environmental Toxicology and founding director of The Institute of Environmental and Human Health (TIEHH), received two major awards from the Society of Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry (SETAC) during the organization's 38th annual meeting Nov. 12-16 in Minneapolis. Kendall was named a SETAC Fellow and also receive the 2017 Stephen J. Klaine Environmental Education Award. "To be elected a SETAC Fellow is a significant honor and recognition from my colleagues at SETAC in terms of my long-term scientific contribution to the field of environmental toxicology. I am very appreciative of this recognition," Kendall said. The SETAC Fellow designation represents only the top 1 percent of members in the organization. Being elected a SETAC Fellow is among the highest honors the SETAC scientific organization can bestow. The identification and appointment of Fellow status is intended to provide additional recognition of excellence and contributions of SETAC members to ecotoxicology, environmental chemistry, risk assessment and life cycle assessment. "Receiving the Stephen J. Klaine Environmental Education Award from SETAC is also deeply appreciated. When you spend a career being part of developing programs and educational materials for the field of environmental toxicology, it is a significant honor to be recognized by your colleagues for this contribution," Kendall said. The Stephen J. Klaine Environmental Education Award was established to identify outstanding contributions of either individuals or organizations contributing to environmental education. "It is a great honor for any academic program to have a faculty member selected for such a prestigious award as the Stephen J. Klaine Environmental Education Award," said Steve Presley, Chair of the Department of Environmental Toxicology. "This award not only recognizes Dr. Ron Kendall's significant and long-term contributions to environmental education through educating other educators, but also reflects great credit upon his many colleagues and alumni of the Department of Environmental Toxicology and The Institute of Environmental and Human Health at Texas Tech University." Kendall was chosen for his leadership in establishing three successful graduate programs in environmental toxicology, including programs at Western Washington University, Clemson University and Texas Tech. In addition, Kendall has provided leadership in developing 12 textbooks related to environmental toxicology and chemistry. Many current members of SETAC emerged from graduate programs Kendall provided leadership in establishing during his 37-year career. Kendall has been a pioneer in the area of wildlife toxicology in SETAC. He is a past-president of SETAC and has served on the editorial board of the scientific journal Environmental Toxicology and Chemistry for more than 30 years. SETAC is a global organization with more than 6,000 members engaged in the study, analysis and solution of environmental problems; the management and regulation of natural resources; environmental education; and research and development. Its mission is to support the development of principles and practices for the protection, enhancement and management of sustainable environmental quality and ecosystem integrity.

Phillips Receives Grant to Study Cotton Rat

Caleb Phillips, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and Curator of Genetic Resources Collection at the Natural Science Research Laboratory, received grant funds of $99,588 from the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service/Texas Parks & Wildlife Department for his research project, "Status, Distribution, Morphology and Genetics of Sigmodon fulviventer dalquesti [tawny-bellied cotton rat] in the Chihuahuan Desert Ecoregion." The grant was announced by TTU's Office of Research Services the week ending Nov. 8.

Lewis Gets Grant for Workforce Education

Col. David Lewis, M.A. (USAF Ret.), Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Political Science, received incremental grant funds of $9,100—with an anticipated total funding amount of $36,400—from the HRSA/TTUHSC for his work on the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training (BHWET) Program. The grant was announced by TTU's Office of Research Services the week ending Nov. 8.

Maloney Gets Grant to Study Campus Carry

Patricia Maloney, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology & Social Work, received grant funds of $7,982 from the American Sociological Association for her research project, "Longitudinal and Contagion Effects of Campus Carry on Faculty and Students at a Large Southwestern State University." The grant was announced by TTU's Office of Research Services the week ending Nov. 8.

Davis Studies Reasoning of Disease Spread

Tyler Davis, Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, is lead author of the study, "Can you catch Ebola from a stork bite? Inductive reasoning influences generalization of perceived zoonosis risk." On Nov. 8, Science Daily published an article about the study, in which Molly Ireland and Jason Van Allen, both Assistant Professors in the Department of Psychological Sciences; Micah Goldwater from the University of Sydney's School of Psychology; and independent research consultant Nicholas Gaylord also took part. Science Daily summarized the study this way: "Psychologists have applied science to health communication and found that the way the message is conveyed can have a significant impact on awareness about diseases, like Ebola, that jump from animals to people. The researchers found that the more animals that are known to carry a virus, the more people will perceive a risk from any animal." The story, provided to Science Daily by the University of Sydney, continued: "We've been interested for a while in how everyday people reason about risks associated with animal contact," Davis said. "An overwhelming number of new emerging diseases come from animal sources and get introduced to the human population as a result of animal contact. Thus, everyday people without expertise in infectious diseases or how to interact with animals are at the front lines of potential future pandemics, yet very little is known about how they reason about the risks of animal contact." Davis said this study tested whether people use knowledge about the range of animals that are susceptible to a disease when judging their own risks of contact with a specific type of animal. The researchers measured this in a variety of ways, including the likelihood of reporting animal bites to a health professional and the perceived safety of eating different animals' meat. The study found that risk perception increases in two different scenarios. First, if the animal you encountered is similar to a type of animal you believe may carry a disease—for instance, encountering a coyote when you know that local foxes can carry a disease—you may perceive a greater risk to your own health. Second, if you know that a particular disease is found in a wide variety of animals, you may perceive a greater likelihood that the animal you encountered could carry it—for example, if bats, cats and birds all carry a disease, then the coyote you encountered may well pose a risk, as well. "Although there has been a lot of research on inductive reasoning, this research has not been widely applied to health behaviors in general and perception of disease risk from animals in particular," Davis said. "We're also very hopeful that this work can inform better public health messaging in the developing world, where awareness of risks can be very low and responses to outbreaks are often slow and costly."

Hayhoe a Lead Author of Climate Report

Katharine Hayhoe, Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of TTU's Climate Science Center, is one of the lead authors of the Climate Science Special Report (CSSR), released Nov. 3 by The U.S. Global Change Research Program, a consortium of 13 federal agencies and a 60-member federal steering committee. It's the most comprehensive look at climate science and its effects to date. The CSSR is part one of the Fourth National Climate Assessment (NCA4), a required quadrennial assessment authorized in 1989 by Congress in the Global Change Research Act (GCRA) of 1990. Hayhoe authored the chapter on climate models, scenarios and projections, and co-authored the chapters on temperature trends and the potential for surprises in the climate system. "This report is the most up-to-date summary we have on how the climate is changing and what that means for our planet," Hayhoe said. "The main findings of this report confirm what we've known for decades—climate is changing, humans are responsible and the risks are serious. However, it also quantifies new science—what's happening in the Arctic and the oceans, and the potential for unforeseen impacts. It puts numbers on how much carbon we can produce if we want to limit how much and how fast the world warms." Also released Nov. 3 was the public review draft of the second part of NCA4, which addresses regional and sectional impacts. Hayhoe served as a lead author on this report as well, authoring chapter two, "Our Changing Climate." She previously authored the Second and Third National Climate Assessments, and NCA4 builds on those findings.

Mechref Co-Chairs Glycosciences Panel

Yehia Mechref, Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, co-chaired the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Special Emphasis Panel at the  National Career Development Consortium for Excellence in Glycosciences (K12), 2018/01 ZHL1 CSR-J (F1) 1, Nov. 3.

Mayer Co-Authors Analysis of Project

Greg Mayer, Associate Professor of Molecular Toxicology in the Department of Environmental Toxicology, is co-author of "A communal catalogue reveals Earth's multiscale microbial diversity," published online Nov. 1 in the journal Nature. The abstract reads thusly: "Our growing awareness of the microbial world's importance and diversity contrasts starkly with our limited understanding of its fundamental structure. Despite recent advances in DNA sequencing, a lack of standardized protocols and common analytical frameworks impedes comparisons among studies, hindering the development of global inferences about microbial life on Earth. Here we present a meta-analysis of microbial community samples collected by hundreds of researchers for the Earth Microbiome Project. Coordinated protocols and new analytical methods, particularly the use of exact sequences instead of clustered operational taxonomic units, enable bacterial and archaeal ribosomal RNA gene sequences to be followed across multiple studies and allow us to explore patterns of diversity at an unprecedented scale. The result is both a reference database giving global context to DNA sequence data and a framework for incorporating data from future studies, fostering increasingly complete characterization of Earth's microbial diversity." Further into the main body of the paper, the authors explain more fully the purpose of the Earth Microbiome Project (EMP),  which was "...founded in 2010 to sample the Earth's microbial communities at an unprecedented scale in order to advance our understanding of the organizing biogeographic principles that govern microbial community structure. We recognized that open and collaborative science, including scientific crowdsourcing and standardized methods, would help to reduce technical variation among individual studies, which can overwhelm biological variation and make general trends difficult to detect. Comprising around 100 studies, over half of which have yielded peer-reviewed publications, the EMP has now dwarfed by 100-fold the sampling and sequencing depth of earlier meta-analysis efforts; concurrently, powerful analysis tools have been developed, opening a new and larger window into the distribution of microbial diversity on Earth. In establishing a scalable framework to catalogue microbiota globally, we provide both a resource for the exploration of myriad questions and a starting point for the guided acquisition of new data to answer them."

Morales Receives Visiting Professorship in Brazil

Jorge A. Morales, Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry, has received a visiting professor position at the level of full professor in the Department of Chemistry at the Federal University of Pernambuco, Recife, Pernambuco, Brazil. This is a six-month position starting on June 1, 2018. During his stay in Brazil, Morales will conduct theoretical chemistry research with several groups in the University of Pernambuco and will teach a graduate course on theoretical chemistry.

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Recent Books

"True Sex: the Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century"

Emily Skidmore, Assistant Professor in the Department of History, uncovers the stories of 18 trans men who lived in the United States between 1876 and 1936 in "True Sex, the Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century." At the turn of the 20th century, trans men were not necessarily urban rebels seeking to overturn stifling gender roles. In fact, they often sought to pass as conventional men, choosing to live in small towns where they led ordinary lives, aligning themselves with the expectations of their communities. They were, in a word, unexceptional. Despite the "unexceptional" quality of their lives, their stories are nonetheless surprising and moving, challenging much of what we think we know about queer history. By tracing the narratives surrounding the moments of "discovery" in these communities—from reports in local newspapers to medical journals and beyond—this book challenges the assumption that the full story of modern American sexuality is told by cosmopolitan radicals. Rather, "True Sex" reveals complex narratives concerning rural geography and community, persecution and tolerance, and how these factors intersect with the history of race, identity and sexuality in America. (NYU Press, September 2017)

"The Restless Indian Plate and Its Epic Voyage from Gondwana to Asia"

Sankar Chatterjee, Horn Professor in the Department of Geosciences, writes that the fossil history of animal life in India is central to our understanding of the tectonic evolution of Gondwana, the dispersal of India, its northward journey, and its collision with Asia in "The Restless Indian Plate and Its Epic Voyage from Gondwana to Asia" . According to a review in Phys.org, "This beautifully illustrated volume provides the only detailed overview of the paleobiogeographic, tectonic, and paleoclimatic evolution of the Indian plate from Gondwana to Asia," and quotes Chatterjee and his colleagues as saying, "The tectonic evolution of the Indian plate represents one of the most dramatic and epic voyages of all drifting continents: 9,000 kilometers in 160 million years. ... The extensive reshuffling of the Indian plate was accompanied by multiple temporary filter bridges, resulting in the cosmopolitan nature of tetrapod fauna." The review goes on to conclude that "This thorough, up-to-date volume is a must-have reference for researchers and students in Indian geology, paleontology, plate tectonics, and collision of continents." (The Geological Society of America, July 2017)

"Modern Sport Ethics: A Reference Handbook, 2nd Edition"

Angela Lumpkin, Professor and Chair of the Department of Exercise & Sport Science, offers, in "Modern Sport Ethics: A Reference Handbook, 2nd Edition," descriptions and examples of unethical behaviors in sport that will challenge readers to think about how they view sport and question whether participating in sport builds character—especially at the youth and amateur levels. Sport potentially can teach character as well as social and moral values, but only when these positive concepts are consistently taught, modeled, and reinforced by sport leaders with the moral courage to do so. The seeming moral crisis threatening amateur and youth sport—evidenced by athletes, coaches, and parents alike making poor ethical choices—and ongoing scandals regarding performance-enhancing drug use by professional athletes make sports ethics a topic of great concern. This work enables readers to better understand the ethical challenges facing competitive sport by addressing issues such as gamesmanship, doping, cheating, sportsmanship, fair play, and respect for the game. A compelling read for coaches, sport administrators, players, parents, and sport fans, the book examines specific examples of unethical behaviors—many cases of which occur in amateur and educational sports—to illustrate how these incidents threaten the perception that sport builds character. It identifies and investigates the multiple reasons for cheating in sport, such as the fact that the rewards for succeeding are so high, and the feeling of athletes that they must behave as they do to "level the playing field" because everyone else is cheating, being violent, taking performance-enhancing drugs, or doing whatever it takes to win. Readers will gain insight into how coaches and sport administrators can achieve the goals for youth, interscholastic, intercollegiate, and Olympic sport by stressing moral values and character development as well as see how specific recommendations can help ensure that sport can serve to build character rather than teach bad behavior in the pursuit of victory. (ABC-CLIO, December 2016)

"Introduction to Physical Education, Exercise Science, and Sport" 10th Edition

Angela Lumpkin, Professor and Chair of the Department of Exercise & Sport Science, gives college students a wide-angle view of physical education, exercise science, sport, and the wealth of careers available in these fields in the 10th Edition of "Introduction to Physical Education, Exercise Science, and Sport." The textbook provides the principles, history, and future of physical education, exercise science, and sport. Lumpkin's clear writing style engages the reader while covering the most important introductory topics in this updated introduction to the world of physical education. (McGraw-Hill, July 2016)

"God's Foolishness"

William Wenthe, Professor in the Department Of English, explores painful and fleeting emotions within the 96 pages of "God's Foolishness." Here, he mines the feelings of human uncertainty in matters of love and desire, time and death, and uncovers difficult truths with transformative insights. These are poems of crisis. Wenthe examines our conflicting urges to see nature as sustenance and to foolishly destroy it. His poems shift from close observation to panorama with cinematic fluidity, from a tea mug to an ancient monument, from a warbler on an elm branch to the specter of imminent natural disaster. Offering passion and intellect balanced with a careful concern for poetic craft, Wenthe's "God's Foolishness" gives us fine poems to savor and admire. Watch the YouTube video here. (LSU, May 2016)

"Before the Gregorian Reform: The Latin Church at the Turn of the First Millennium"

John Howe, Professor in the Department of History, challenges the familiar narrative that the era from about 1050 to 1150 was the pivotal moment in the history of the Latin Church. The status quo states it was then that the Gregorian Reform movement established the ecclesiastical structure that would ensure Rome's dominance throughout the Middle Ages and beyond. In "Before the Gregorian Reform," Howe examines earlier, "pre-Gregorian" reform efforts within the Church—and finds that they were more extensive and widespread than previously thought and that they actually established a foundation for the subsequent Gregorian Reform movement. The low point in the history of Christendom came in the late ninth and early tenth centuries—a period when much of Europe was overwhelmed by barbarian raids and widespread civil disorder, which left the Church in a state of disarray. As Howe shows, however, the destruction gave rise to creativity. Aristocrats and churchmen rebuilt churches and constructed new ones, competing against each other so that church building, like castle building, acquired its own momentum. Patrons strove to improve ecclesiastical furnishings, liturgy, and spirituality. Schools were constructed to staff the new churches. Moreover, Howe shows that these reform efforts paralleled broader economic, social, and cultural trends in Western Europe including the revival of long-distance trade, the rise of technology, and the emergence of feudal lordship. The result was that by the mid-eleventh century a wealthy, unified, better-organized, better-educated, more spiritually sensitive Latin Church was assuming a leading place in the broader Christian world. "Before the Gregorian Reform" challenges us to rethink the history of the Church and its place in the broader narrative of European history. Compellingly written and generously illustrated, it is a book for all medievalists as well as general readers interested in the Middle Ages and Church history. (Cornell University Press, March 2016)

"New Developments in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures"

Ronald J. Kendal, Professor of Environmental Toxicology; Steven Presley, Professor of Immuno-toxicology; and Seshadri Ramkumar, Professor of Countermeasures to Biological Threats, all from the Department of Environmental Toxicology, have co-edited the newly published textbook, “New Developments in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures.” The volume compiles a decade's worth of research through TTU's Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr. National Program for Countermeasures to Biological and Chemical Threats, and updated many changes in the field since an earlier book, “Advances in Biological and Chemical Terrorism Countermeasures,” came out in 2008. “It's not just for college students,” Ramkumar said. “It's a tool for people in the field, from first responders all the way to policy makers.” (CRC Press, February 2016)

"Psychoanalytic Treatment in Adults: A Longitudinal Study of Change"

Rosemary Cogan, Adjuct Professor in the Department of Psychological Sciences, is co-author of "Psychonalytic Treatment in Adults: A longitudinal study of change." The book draws from 60 first-hand case studies to explore the outcomes of psychoanalytic treatment, providing examples of the long-term effectiveness of psychoanalytic and psychodynamic work as it delineates negative therapeutic treatment and discusses crucial changes in care. Outcomes of psychoanalysis, as with other psychotherapies, vary considerably. Cogan and her co-author, J.H. Porcerelli, used the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure to describe a patient at the beginning of psychoanalysis and every six months until the analysis ended. This allowed the authors to learn about changes over analysis and, in turn, improved treatment planning and practice for the well-being of other patients. Findings will be of interest to researchers and academics in the fields of psychoanalysis, psychotherapy, psychodynamic therapy, psychoanalytic education, psychiatry and psychology, and should also help clinicians recognize potential problems early in analytic treatments in order to work more effectively with patients. (Routeledge, February 2016)

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