Redrawing the Poverty Line

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Danny| Leave a comment

For those who help the poor, a bit of math is exposing a kaleidoscopic view of poverty.

The formula composed by Dr. Foster and Dr. Alkire to help measure and alleviate poverty has also inspired art. In this painting, the formula weaves among a flock of canaries. (Art by Regina Glassman Foster)

The formula composed by Dr. Foster and Dr. Alkire to help measure and alleviate poverty has also inspired art. In this painting, the formula weaves among a flock of canaries. (Art by Regina Glassman Foster)


By Andrew Eder

On the wall of economist James Foster’s office hangs a painting of blossoming roses, connected by a stem. Woven into the dark background is a repeating string of letters and symbols—a piece of a mathematical formula.

Muted and gray, the equation would seem a strange accompaniment for the vibrant red roses. But like the roses, it hints at a brighter future.

The formula—developed by Dr. Foster, a GW professor of economics and international affairs, and Sabina Alkire of Oxford University—is redefining the meaning of poverty and, with it, reshaping our understanding of how to ease that burden. It’s used to measure “multidimensional poverty”—the concept that poverty and well-being are defined by factors such as education, health, and housing, not just income. The United Nations Development Program has made use of it, as have the governments of Mexico and Colombia, and other organizations looking to extend their definition of poverty beyond the traditional “dollar-a-day” measure.

See the story in the Spring 2013 issue of GW Research magazine.

See the story in the Spring 2013 issue of
GW Research magazine.

“Education, health, sanitation, asset-building, quality of jobs—these are all dimensions of poverty,” says Dr. Foster, who is director of the Institute for International Economic Policy (IIEP) at the Elliott School of International Affairs.

That kind of data, he says, can generate a comprehensive, three-dimensional image of poverty capable of helping policy hit its mark.
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Posted in Economics, GW Research magazine, International Affairs

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Study: Brain Region Tied to Empathy in Humans Equally Present in Other Primates

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Danny| Leave a comment
GW biological anthropologist Chet Sherwood holds a specimen in his lab. (Photo by Jessica McConnell Burt)

GW biological anthropologist Chet Sherwood holds a specimen in his lab.
(Photo by Jessica McConnell Burt)

The part of the human brain that is linked to mankind’s unique sense of empathy also grows to the same scale in an array of other primates, according to a new study.

The findings, which came as a surprise to researchers, don’t suggest chimpanzees will be getting talk shows anytime soon. Instead the study shows that “the difference between us and great apes is incremental,” said lead researcher Amy Bauernfeind, a GW doctoral candidate. “That, in fact, we’re just seeing an expansion of an already present pattern that exists in primates.”

The study, published in the April issue of the Journal of Human Evolution, was co-led by GW anthropology professor Chet Sherwood.

In these sketches from the renowned medical text Gray's Anatomy, the left insula of a human brain is exposed (top) and shown in a cross section (bottom) of the brain, with highlights added. (Images via Wikimedia Commons) In these sketches from the renowned medical text Gray’s Anatomy, the left insula of a human brain is exposed (top) and shown in a cross section (bottom) of the brain, with highlights added. (Images via Wikimedia Commons)

The research team studied a part of the brain called the insula in 30 species of primates, from humans and gorillas to the wide-eyed slender loris.

Wedged between lobes on both sides of the brain’s main processing hub, the insula has been associated with functions that include recognition of oneself and emotions, empathy, and the processing of music and language—the kinds of cognitive advances, the authors wrote, that may have helped distinguish mankind and its social interactions.

In particular, the group was interested in measuring the volume of the whole insula as well as each of its components. For all 30 species they examined the left insula; for humans and great apes, they looked at both left and right insulae.

What the researchers expected to find, Ms. Bauernfeind said, was that the volume of the whole insula would be uniquely large among humans—and it was, but only because humans have the largest brains of the group. (For example: Despite having roughly the same body size as chimpanzees, mankind’s closest living relatives, the human brain is three times as large the chimp’s, she said.)

Once the researchers adjusted for overall brain size, a pattern emerged across the primates: as the size of the brain increased, the insulae grew slightly more than the rest of the brain. The pattern was strong enough that it could be used to predict measurements.
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Posted in Anthropology, Biology

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A Checkup on Spending

Posted on March 7, 2013 by Danny| Leave a comment

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The number of D.C. physicians who in 2011 received 52 or more meals at the expense of drug companies—on average, enough for at least one industry-funded meal per week, according to a new analysis of pharmaceutical marketing expenses led by School of Public Health Professor Susan F. Wood.

Free meals, GW Today reports, were a piece of nearly $19 million-worth in gifts (including grants, speaking fees, product samples and promotional items) given to individuals, hospitals, clinics and organizations in D.C. in 2011. “There is nothing inherently wrong with such gifts,” said Dr. Wood. “However, this report draws attention to the amount being spent on marketing drugs and raises questions about whether some heavily marketed drugs may be prescribed more extensively than is appropriate.”

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Posted in Health Policy

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The Godmother of Rock and Roll

Posted on February 22, 2013 by Danny| Leave a comment

Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing in New York’s Café Society in 1940. (Image by Charles Peterson; courtesy Don Peterson)

Sister Rosetta Tharpe performing in New York’s Café Society in 1940.
(Image by Charles Peterson; courtesy Don Peterson via American Masters)

Before there was Bill Haley, rocking around the clock, before there was Elvis Presley, shaking his hips and tearing it up on the guitar, before there were the Beatles and their lyrics and their haircuts—before there was rock and roll, there was Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

If that name isn’t familiar to you, you’re not alone, said GW Professor of English Gayle Wald, author of the 2007 book Shout, Sister, Shout: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

Ms. Tharpe, an African American gospel musician, became one of gospel music’s biggest stars and most celebrated guitarists, and inspired a diverse set of musicians who followed her. But because she enjoyed none of the privileges of white male musicians, she has remained relatively unknown to modern audiences despite the commercial success of her recordings. Now Ms. Tharpe, who died in 1973, is the subject of a documentary film based on Dr. Wald’s book that will air on PBS’s “American Masters” on Friday, Feb. 22 at 9 p.m.

“[Rosetta Tharpe] wasn’t quite marginalized, but she was kind of ironically shut out,” Dr. Wald explained. “Like a lot of early influences, she was there at the very moment rock and roll emerged.”

(Continue reading the story by Laura Donnelly-Smith at GW Today)

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Posted in English, Shelf Life

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Museum Security 2.0

Posted on February 15, 2013 by Danny| Leave a comment

The collections of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian include this Mayan decorative head, made of modeled stucco. The fragility of stucco and the artistry of this piece, likely a portrait, make it a highly significant object, according to curators. (Photo by Walter Larrimore/Smithsonian Institution)

Need to access to detailed images of a skull from a killer whale? Or the tail bones of a badger? How about sketchbooks belonging to caricaturist Al Hirschfeld?

The Internet’s got you covered, courtesy of recent efforts by museums to digitize collections for researchers and virtual tourists the world over. But as they push forward, museums also are grappling with how to provide the same strict security for an artifact once it has been converted into data.

“We want to make sure that [a digitized artifact] correctly represents reality, and that it is not degraded through the use of analytical techniques, and that people can’t come in and change the meaning,” said Julie J.C.H. Ryan, an information security expert and associate professor in GW’s Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering.

Dr. Ryan, who gathered the views of scientists and curators at a National Science Foundation-funded workshop on so-called virtual repositories, is presenting her findings this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
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Posted in Engineering Management & Systems Engineering

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This Way Out

Posted on November 30, 2012 by Danny| Leave a comment

The world lacks a demand and growth engine. This suggests that unless policy is changed, growth will continue to compress, inflation will become deflation, debt burdens will grow heavier and policy options fewer. It also implies that no one nation or region can go it alone.

—Jay Pelosky, a lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs and principal at investment consultancy
J2Z Advisory LLC, calling for a “synchronized reflation effort” on his Huffington Post blog this week. In the next one to two years, he anticipates seeing “the Great Compression give way to the Great Reflation.” And how that comes about, he writes, “will make all the difference.”

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Posted in Economics, International Affairs

Rebuilding Bone and Cartilage, Nanometer by Nanometer

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Danny| Leave a comment

A scanning electron microscopy image shows the artificial, web-like matrix of bone scaffolding created by Dr. Zhang and her collaborators for research appearing in the International Journal of Nanomedicine.
(Image courtesy Lijie Grace Zhang)

The human body doesn’t come with many spare parts.

For bones, in particular, the options available to fix large or complicated injuries, or to treat tumors and diseases, can come with problems. What little bone there is to mine from elsewhere in the body might not be sufficient to fill a large gap. And bone implants from other sources—human or animal donors, or implants fashioned from other materials—can loosen over time, wear down, transmit diseases and be rejected by the body. Repairing cartilage faces much of the same, plus the body has far less capacity to regenerate it.

Recent studies by GW researchers are pointing toward new ways of mimicking biological processes in order to help implants better integrate into the body, and to help the body grow new bones and even cartilage where it’s needed.
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Posted in Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Science & Engineering Hall

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Into the Lives of Objects: New book explores the lure and actions of ‘things’

Posted on September 27, 2012 by Danny| Leave a comment

English professor Jeffrey Cohen sits behind the long-dead cephalopod that maintains an uncanny lure. “[T]here’s something about it that makes us want to hold it and touch it and think with it,” he said. (Photo by William Atkins)

Not far from the fake palm tree on Jeffrey Cohen’s desk sits a fist-sized fossil that visitors can’t seem to keep their hands off of.

The intricately coiled, shelled creature made the journey from flesh-and-blood to cold stone tens of millions of years ago, if not hundreds of millions. Life is long gone. And yet still the fossil calls out to people.

“This seems to be an irresistible thing on my desk,” said Dr. Cohen, an English professor, as he handled the ancient cephalopod.

“As dead as it is, as inert as it is—it’s just a piece of rock; it was once alive but now it’s just stone—there’s something about it that makes us want to hold it and touch it and think with it,” he said.

That curious lure of an object, and the roles objects play in our lives as foils or companions or containers of sentiment is the subject of a new collection of essays curated and edited by Dr. Cohen, called Animal, Vegetable, Mineral: Ethics and Objects.

“Though their power sometimes becomes most evident just at the moment of a human touch, [objects] possess an uncanny agency all their own,” Dr. Cohen writes in the book’s introduction. Citing examples from a 14th century Icelandic saga, he writes: “Fire, ice, and water are actors in the text: they consume, convey, renew, destroy.”
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Posted in English, Literature, Shelf Life

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Fandom’s Biggest Fan: An insider’s perspective on fan culture

Posted on September 14, 2012 by Danny| Leave a comment

Kathy Larsen was camping out when her cover was blown. She was at a convention for fans of the TV series “Supernatural,” jockeying in line to secure a good table for a breakfast event the next day, when one of the show’s actors walked by.

“He saw us sitting there and he stopped,” she remembered, laughing. “He was like ‘What are you guys doing there?’ And we just sort of stammered and went ‘Uhh—well—we—.’ It was a mess.”

“We had interviewed him a bunch of times before and talked to him a lot. He knew me in a different context, as an academic,” she explained. “He didn’t know me as a fan.”

It was one of many moments where the lines between academia and fandom have blurred for Dr. Larsen, a teaching assistant professor in GW’s University Writing Program. After all, she isn’t just a die-hard “Supernatural” fan: she’s also a scholar of the show’s intense fan following.

In Kathy Larsen’s office even a David Duchovny action figure can’t escape the gaze of the action figure paparazzi. (Photo by William Atkins)

Dr. Larsen’s book, Fandom At The Crossroads: Celebration, Shame and Fan/Producer Relationships (Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012)—co-written with friend, colleague and fellow fan Lynn Zubernis—is an exploration of the complexities and contradictions inherent in the emerging field of fan studies. Scholarship in fan studies explores the communities, now largely Internet-based, that can form around popular movies, TV shows and other public art. Using their chosen media as a springboard to create fiction, art, video and other transformative works, fans interact with and participate in the stories they love. In some cases, fans can even influence what happens in the story itself.
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Posted in English, Media

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D.C.’s Kombucha Connection

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Danny| Leave a comment

A home-brewer of an exotic tea, an ex-bartender and a civil engineer—all GW business students—have hatched a start-up that brings a new take on the old tea to local tastebuds.

Capital Kombucha, the trio’s version of the ancient fermented iced tea drink called kombucha, is now stocked at 15 locations in D.C. and Maryland, GW Today reports.

“We were drawn to the idea of a wellness product that didn’t sacrifice taste,” said one of the students, Andreas Schneider. “Too often people think these things can’t go together.”

[For details on kombucha's purported benefits and a recipe for making Capital Kombucha a little, ahem, less healthful, read GW Today's Q&A with the Capital Kombucha team.]

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