By Stian Rice, visiting assistant research professor, Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, UMBC

Prison inmates are picking fruits and vegetables at a rate not seen since Jim Crow.

Convict leasing for agriculture—a system that allows states to sell prison labor to private farms—became infamous in the late 1800s for the brutal conditions it imposed on captive, mostly black workers.

Federal and state laws prohibited convict leasing for most of the 20th century, but the once-notorious practice is making a comeback.

Under lucrative arrangements, states are increasingly leasing prisoners to private corporations to harvest food for American consumers.

Why now?

The U.S. food system relies on cheap labor. Today, median income for farm workers is US$10.66 an hour, with 33% of farm-worker households living below the poverty line.

Historically, agriculture has suppressed wages—and eschewed worker protections—by hiring from vulnerable groups, notably, undocumented migrants. By some estimates, 70% of agriculture’s 1.2 million workers are undocumented.

As current anti-immigrant policies diminish the supply of migrant workers (both documented and undocumented), farmers are not able to find the labor they need. So, in states such as Arizona, Idaho and Washington that grow labor-intensive crops like onions, apples and tomatoes, prison systems have responded by leasing convicts to growers desperate for workers.

The racist roots of convict leasing

Since Reconstruction, states have used prisoners to solve labor supply problems in industries such as road and rail construction, mining and agriculture. But convict leasing has also been a powerful weapon of white supremacy, and now, anti-immigrant sentiment.

After Emancipation, southern economies faced a crisis: how to maintain a racial caste system and a supply of surplus labor now that blacks were free.

Southern states passed vagrancy laws, Black Codes, and other legislation to selectively incarcerate freed slaves. For example, under Mississippi’s vagrancy law, all black men had to provide written proof of a job or face a $50 fine. Those who could not pay were forced to work for any white man willing to pay the fine—an amount that was deducted from the black man’s wage.

During the late 1800s, mass incarceration created an army of cheap labor that could be leased to private businesses for substantial profit. In 1886, state revenues from leasing exceeded the cost of running prisons by nearly 400%. Between 1870 and 1910, 88% of convicts leased in Georgia were black.

Populist response

But cheap convict labor also suppressed wages for free whites, and by 1900, poor whites began pushing back.

In 1904, James Vardaman was elected governor of Mississippi on a platform of returning whites to work and blacks to confinement. These populist white supremacist sentiments dovetailed with national economic concerns during the Great Depression, when agricultural failures led to widespread unemployment.

In the 1930s, the Ashurst-Sumners Act and accompanying state laws prohibited convict leasing and the sale of prisoner-made goods on the open market. Inmates still worked in agriculture, but the food they produced had to be consumed by other prisoners or state workers.

By the late 1970s, with growing competition from foreign manufacturing, U.S. companies sought out domestic sources of cheap labor.

Under pressure from corporate lobbies like the American Legislative Exchange Council, Congress relaxed restrictions on convict leasing with the Justice System Improvement Act. As the manufacturing and service sectors began hiring prisoners, agriculture expanded its use of migrant workers.

Profit and exploitation

Today, convict leasing offers significant revenues for prisons.

Most wages paid to inmates are garnished by prisons to cover incarceration costs and pay victim restitution programs. In some cases, prisoners see no monetary compensation whatsoever. In 2015 and 2016, the California Prison Industry Authority made over $2 million from its food and agriculture sector.

Growers can reap significant revenues, too. Inmates are excluded from federal minimum wage protections, allowing prison systems to lease convicts at a rate below the going labor rate. In Arizona, inmates leased through Arizona Correctional Industries (ACI) receive a wage of $3-$4 per hour before deductions. Meanwhile, the state’s minimum wage for most non-incarcerated farm workers is $11.00/hr.

Beyond the unfairness of low wages, inadequate state and federal regulations ensure that agricultural work continues to be onerous. Laborers endure long hours, repetitive motion injuries, temperature and humidity extremes and exposure to caustic and carcinogenic chemicals.

For inmates, these circumstances are unlikely to change. U.S. courts have ruled that prisoners are prohibited from organizing for higher wages and working conditions—though strikes have occurred in recent years.

Furthermore, inmates are not legally considered employees, which means they are excluded from protection under parts of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, the Equal Pay Act, the Fair Labor Standards Act, the National Labor Relations Act and the Federal Tort Claims Act.

Whose labor is being sold?

The total number—and racial makeup—of leased inmates is difficult to calculate. Not all prison systems report on farming operations or leased labor arrangements. According to one advocacy group, at least 30,000 inmates work within the food system. But to the extent that convict leasing reflects overall inmate demographics, prison agriculture is distinctly racial.

Blacks make up 39% of inmates, but only 12% of the general population, making blacks six times more likely than whites to be incarcerated. Over the last 50 years—the same period that saw the return of convict leasing—the black incarceration rate quadrupled.

Proponents of “prison industries” argue that leasing provides rehabilitative benefits like on-the-job training for reentry. But research shows that within the prison system, whites receive better jobs than blacks, with better pay and more beneficial skills.

Whereas migrant workers often benefit home communities by returning a portion of their wages as remittances, the garnishing or nonpayment of convict wages prevents inmates from contributing to their families and home economies.

Since Emancipation, agriculture has moved its focus from one labor source to another in response to shifting currents of populism, nativism and racism. All three benefit from the exploitation of minority populations, and all three justify policies of exploitation in economic terms.

Convict leasing is the first—and now the latest—strategy.

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Stian Rice, food systems geographer, Center for Urban Environmental Research and Education, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header image by Rasmus Landgreen on Unsplash

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Richard Forno, assistant director, UMBC Center for Cybersecurity, director, cybersecurity graduate program

The people of Baltimore are beginning their fifth week under an electronic siege that has prevented residents from obtaining building permits and business licenses – and even buying or selling homes. A year after hackers disrupted the city’s emergency services dispatch system, city workers throughout the city are unable to, among other things, use their government email accounts or conduct routine city business.

In this attack, a type of malicious software called ransomware has encrypted key files, rendering them unusable until the city pays the unknown attackers 13 bitcoin, or about US$76,280. But even if the city were to pay up, there is no guarantee that its files would all be recovered; many ransomware attacks end with the data lost, whether the ransom is paid or not.

Similar attacks in recent years have crippled the United Kingdom’s National Health Service, shipping giant Maersk and local, county and state governments across the U.S. and Canada. Map: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Recorded Future: Get the data

These types of attacks are becoming more frequent and gaining more media attention. Speaking as a career cybersecurity professional, the technical aspects of incidents like this are but one part of a much bigger picture. Every user of technology must consider not only threats and vulnerabilities, but also operational processes, potential points of failure and how they use technology on a daily basis. Thinking ahead, and taking protective steps, can help reduce the effects of cybersecurity incidents on both individuals and organizations.

Understanding cyberattack tools

Software designed to attack other computers is nothing new. Nations, private companies, individual researchers and criminals continue developing these types of programs, for a wide range of purposes, including digital warfare and intelligence gathering, as well as extortion by ransomware.

Many malware efforts begin as a normal and crucial function of cybersecurity: identifying software and hardware vulnerabilities that could be exploited by an attacker. Security researchers then work to close that vulnerability. By contrast, malware developers, criminal or otherwise, will figure out how to get through that opening undetected, to explore and potentially wreak havoc in a target’s systems.

Sometimes a single weakness is enough to give an intruder the access they want. But other times attackers will use multiple vulnerabilities in combination to infiltrate a system, take control, steal data and modify or delete information – while trying to hide any evidence of their activity from security programs and personnel. The challenge is so great that artificial intelligence and machine learning systems are now also being incorporated to help with cybersecurity activities.

There’s some question about the role the federal government may have played in this situation, because one of the hacking tools the attackers reportedly used in Baltimore was developed by the U.S. National Security Agency, which the NSA has denied. However, hacking tools stolen from the NSA in 2017 by the hacker group Shadow Brokers were used to launch similar attacks within months of those tools being posted on the internet. Certainly, those tools should never have been stolen from the NSA – and should have been better protected.

But my views are more complicated than that: As a citizen, I recognize the NSA’s mandate to research and develop advanced tools to protect the country and fulfill its national security mission. However, like many cybersecurity professionals, I remain conflicted: When the government discovers a new technology vulnerability but doesn’t tell the maker of the affected hardware or software until after it’s used to cause havoc or disclosed by a leak, everyone is at risk.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: CyberEdge Group Cyberthreat Defense Report 2019 Get the data

Baltimore’s situation

The estimated $18 million cost of recovery in Baltimore is money the city likely doesn’t have readily available. Recent research by some of my colleagues at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, shows that many state and local governments remain woefully underprepared and underfunded to adequately, let alone proactively, deal with cybersecurity’s many challenges.

It is concerning that the ransomware attack in Baltimore exploited a vulnerability that has been publicly known about – with an available fix – for over two years. NSA had developed an exploit (code-named EternalBlue) for this discovered security weakness but didn’t alert Microsoft about this critical security vulnerability until early 2017 – and only after the Shadow Brokers had stolen the NSA’s tool to attack it. Soon after, Microsoft issued a software security update to fix this key flaw in its Windows operating system.

Admittedly, it can be very complex to manage software updates for a large organization. But given the media coverage at the time about the unauthorized disclosure of many NSA hacking tools and the vulnerabilities they targeted, it’s unclear why Baltimore’s information technology staff didn’t ensure the city’s computers received that particular security update immediately. And while it’s not necessarily fair to blame the NSA for the Baltimore incident, it is entirely fair to say that the knowledge and techniques behind the tools of digital warfare are out in the world; we must learn to live with them and adapt accordingly.

Chart: The Conversation, CC-BY-ND Source: Recorded Future: Get the data

Compounding problems

In a global society where people, companies and governments are increasingly dependent on computers, digital weaknesses have the power to seriously disrupt or destroy everyday actions and functions.

Even trying to develop workarounds when a crisis hits can be challenging. Baltimore city employees who were blocked from using the city’s email system tried to set up free Gmail accounts to at least get some work done. But they were initially blocked by Google’s automated security systems, which identified them as potentially fraudulent.

Making matters worse, when Baltimore’s online services went down, parts of the city’s municipal phone system couldn’t handle the resulting increase in calls attempting to compensate. This underscores the need to not only focus on technology products themselves but also the policies, procedures and capabilities needed to ensure individuals and/or organizations can remain at least minimally functional when under duress, whether by cyberattack, technology failures or acts of nature.

Protecting yourself, and your livelihood

The first step to fighting a ransomware attack is to regularly back up your data – which also provides protection against hardware failures, theft and other problems. To deal with ransomware, though, it’s particularly important to keep a few versions of your backups over time – don’t just rewrite the same files on a backup drive over and over.

That’s because when you get hit, you’ll want to determine when you were infected and restore files from a backup made before that time. Otherwise, you’ll just be recovering infected data, and not actually fixing your problem. Yes, you might lose some data, but not everything – and presumably only your most recent work, which you’ll probably remember and recreate easily enough.

And of course, following some of cybersecurity’s best practices – even just the basics – can help prevent, or at least minimize, the possibility of ransomware crippling you or your organization. Doing things like running current antivirus software, keeping all software updated, using strong passwords and multifactor authentication, and not blindly trusting random devices or email attachments you encounter are just some of the steps everyone should take to be a good digital citizen.

It’s also worth making plans to work around potential failures that might befall your email provider, internet service provider and power company, not to mention the software we rely on. Whether they’re attacked or simply fail, their absence can disrupt your life.

In this way, ransomware incidents serve as an important reminder that cybersecurity is not just limited to protecting digital bits and bytes in cyberspace. Rather, it should force everyone to think broadly and holistically about their relationship with technology and the processes that govern its role and use in our lives. And, it should make people consider how they might function without parts of it at both work and home, because it’s a matter of when, not if, problems will occur.

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Richard Forno, Senior Lecturer, Cybersecurity & Internet Researcher, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header image: Many of Baltimore’s city services are crippled by a cyberattack.
The Conversation from City of Baltimore and Love Silhouette/Shutterstock.com, CC BY-SA

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

By Sarah Stellwagen, postdoctoral researcher in biological sciences, UMBC

What do all of the over 45,000 described spider species on Earth have in common? Each makes at least one type of silk. And there are an awful lot of types out there.

An individual orb weaving spider – the kind that spins the classic two-dimensional aerial spiral webs that seem to always be suspended at human face-height – can produce seven different silks, each with unique material properties.

Dragline silk forms the frame of an orb web and is famous for its strength and toughness, comparable to that of steel. The capture spiral is made of a highly stretchy version called flagelliform silk. Orb weaving spiders use an additional type of silk to wrap prey and create web decorations.

But there’s another kind that, on the surface, doesn’t resemble silk at all: the sticky glue with which some spiders cover their silk capture threads. It doesn’t look like the classic threads that come to mind when thinking of spider silk, but the gluey substance from these webs is in fact a silk protein.

For many years, researchers have been uncovering the secrets of spider glue, which stays wet in its open air environment and sticky over many rounds of attachment and release. Its genetic blueprint has remained elusive, however, meaning scientists haven’t been able to think about setting up large-scale production of this potentially useful biomaterial.

Using new technology, my colleague and I have been able to sequence the the first full genetic sequences that code for spider glue proteins.

A silk that’s really a sticky glue

Under a microscope, orb weaver glue resembles beads on a string – little glistening spheres along a strand of stretchy support silk. Instead of being spun into a fiber as it leaves the spider’s body like other silks, the glue proteins are extruded as a jumbled mass. Their job is to stickily retain prey that get caught in the web.

Different spider species produce glue tailored to their habitat’s conditions and prey.

The glue of tropical orb weaving species is sticky in the spider’s wet habitat, but downgrades to just tacky in low humidity. The glue of orb weavers from dry regions becomes dilute and thin if the humidity is too high.

Bolas spiders forgo the orb web, and instead produce a large globule of glue at the end of a long strand of silk that they whirl rapidly through the air. The glue of this sticky snare is specialized for capturing moths covered with loose scales.

Widow spiders produce vertical, glue-covered trip lines that detach from the ground when encountered by an unsuspecting victim, springing the prey into the air where it hangs suspended. Unlike orb weaver glue, widow glue is resistant to fluctuating humidity.

These various specialized adhesive properties have intrigued biomaterials researchers who can dream up plenty of uses for artificial versions of spider glues. But without knowing the genes that code for these proteins, there hasn’t been a clear road map for how to produce synthetic spider glues.

Cracking a long, repetitive code

Surprisingly, researchers have only sequenced around 20 full-length spider silk genes despite the incredible diversity of spiders and decades-old interest in silk as a useful biomaterial.

It turns out that not only are the properties of spider silk amazing, but so is the DNA code that stores the instructions for making the protein. Spider silk genes are extremely large; in itself that’s not a problem, but the bulk of their sequence is made from repeats of the same small DNA bits.

Imagine that the sentence “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPED OVER THE LAZY DOG” is a sequence of DNA that encodes for a protein, but whose exact order of letters is still unknown.

In order to discover this sequence, the main method of DNA sequencing technology available today has three main steps. Once a DNA sample is collected, many copies of the sentence are randomly broken up into small pieces. For example, you might end up with a collection of fragments like “THE QU” “QUICK B” “BROWN FO” “WN FOX J” “AZY DOG” and on and on.

Then a DNA sequencing machine discovers each letter of each piece. The final step is stitching all the short pieces, technically called “reads,” back together in one sequence to figure out the original sentence.

For the sentence above, this is an easy task. The sequence of letters is unique, and as long as there are at least five characters in each read, it’s possible to figure out where one fits relative to another.

Now imagine a similar sentence: “THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG.” Given many random short reads from the middle region like “UMPS J” or “S JUMP,” no matter how you slice and dice, it’s impossible to use this method to figure out the number of “JUMPS” in the complete sentence.

Sequencing a long read of DNA in one go

For many years DNA sequencing has been limited to this short-read strategy: breaking a gene into bits and then reassembling into one cohesive sequence.

Setting aside some difficult and expensive techniques that are out of reach for standard labs, the best way to fully discover a long, repetitive gene is to sequence the repetitive part from start to finish in one go. Fortunately, emerging technology, while still in its infancy, is starting to allow this long-read sequencing by getting around the chemistry limitations of the short-read method. For those that study super-repetitive DNA this is excellent news: New types of DNA sequencers are finally resolving the “JUMPS.”

Now that two spider glue genes are fully sequenced, the first step towards making a synthetic version is complete. Researchers can now insert the genes into other organisms, like bacteria or yeast, to make the glue in bulk.

Unlike solid silks, the glue proteins do not have to be transformed from a liquid to a solid fiber, something spiders do effortlessly but that scientists have trouble replicating. The glue has the potential for many unique applications and is biodegradable, water soluble and stays sticky for months or even years.

Imagine safer pest control or washable filters. Or frat boys wrestling in a kiddie pool of the stuff. Either way, someday soon it might be possible to reach your hand into a bucket of spider glue – the tricky part will be not sticking to whatever you touch next.

*****

Sarah Stellwagen is a postdoctoral researcher in biological sciences at University of Maryland, Baltimore County

Header image: Spider glue is actually a specialized silk protein. Sarah Stellwagen, CC BY-ND

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Ivan Erill, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, UMBC

Imagine a world where your odds of surviving minor surgery were one to three. A world in which a visit to the dentist could spell disaster. This is the world into which your great-grandmother was born. And if humanity loses the fight against antibiotic resistance, this is a world your grandchildren may well end up revisiting.

Antibiotics changed the world in more ways than one. They made surgery routine and childbirth safer. Intensive farming was born. For decades, antibiotics have effectively killed or stopped the growth of disease-causing bacteria. Yet it was always clear that this would be a rough fight. Bacteria breed fast, and that means that they adapt rapidly. The emergence of antibiotic resistance was predicted by none other than Sir Alexander Fleming, the discoverer of penicillin, less than a year after the first batch of penicillin was mass produced.

Yet, contrary to popular belief, antibiotic resistance did not evolve recently, or in response to our use and misuse of antibiotics in humans and animals. Antibiotic resistance first evolved millions of years ago, and in the most mundane of places.

I am a bioinformatician, and my lab studies the evolution of bacterial genomes. With antibiotic resistance becoming a major threat, I’m trying to figure out how resistance to antibiotics emerges and spreads among bacterial populations.

A billion-years-old arms race

Most antibiotics are naturally produced by bacteria living in soil. They produce these deadly chemical compounds to fend off competing species. Yet, in the long game that is evolution, competing species are unlikely to sit idly by. Any mutant capable of tolerating a minimal quantity of the antibiotic will have a survival advantage and will be selected for – over generations this will produce organisms that are highly resistant.

So it’s a foregone conclusion that antibiotic resistance, for any antibiotic researchers might ever discover, is likely already out there. Yet people keep talking about the evolution of antibiotic resistance as a recent phenomenon. Why?

Resistance can and does evolve when bacteria are persistently exposed to a new antibiotic they have never encountered. Let’s call this the old-fashioned evolutionary road. Second, when bacteria are exposed to a novel antibiotic and are in contact with bacteria already resistant to this antibiotic, it is just a matter of time before they get cozy and trade genes. And, importantly, once genes have been packaged for trading, they become easier and easier to share. Bacteria then meet other bacteria, which meet more bacteria, until one of them eventually meets you.

The rise and fall of sulfa drugs

For all their might, antibiotics are not the only substances capable of effectively killing bacteria (without killing us). A decade before the mass production of penicillin, sulfonamide drugs became the first commercial antibacterial agent. Sulfa drugs act by blocking an enzyme – called DHPS – that is essential for bacteria to grow and multiply.

Sulfa drugs are not antibiotics. No known organism produces them. They are chemotherapeutic agents synthesized by humans. No natural producer means no billion-year-old arms race and no pool of ancient resistance genes. We would expect bacteria to evolve resistance to sulfa drugs via the good old-fashioned way. And they did.

Just a few years after their commercial introduction, the first cases of resistance to sulfa drugs were reported. Mutations to the bacterial DHPS enzyme made sulfa drugs ineffective. Then penicillin and the antibiotic era came about. Sulfa drugs were relegated to a secondary role in medicine, but they gained popularity as cheap antimicrobials in animal husbandry. By the 1980s resistance to sulfa drugs was rampant and worldwide. What had happened?

At odds with resistance

To answer this question our research team took sequences of sulfa drug resistance genes from disease-causing bacteria and compared them to millions of “normal” versions of the DHPS enzyme in nonpathogenic bacteria.

The team identified two large groups of bacteria that had DHPS enzymes resistant to sulfa drugs. By studying their DNA sequences, we were able to show that these resistant DHPS enzymes had been present in these two groups of bacteria for at least 500 million years. Yet sulfa drugs were first synthesized in the 1910s. How could resistance be around 500 million years ago? And how did these resistance genes find their way into the disease-causing bacteria plaguing hospitals worldwide?

The clues left in gene sequences are too fuzzy to conclusively answer the latter, but we can certainly speculate. The bacteria we identified as harboring these ancient sulfa drug resistance genes are all soil and freshwater bacteria that thrive under the well-irrigated subsoil of farms. And farmers have been adding huge amounts of sulfa drugs to animal feed for the past 50 years.

The sublethal concentrations of sulfa drugs in the soil are the perfect setting for resistance genes to be transferred from these ancient resistant bacterial populations to other bacteria. All it takes is for one lucky bacterium to meet one of these ancient resistant ones in the subsoil. They trade some genes, one bacterium to the next, and resistance spreads until a newly minted resistant bacterium eventually makes it to the groundwater supply you drink from. You do the math.

Nothing new under the sun

As for why sulfa drug resistance genes would be around 500 million years ago, there are two plausible explanations. On the one hand, it could be that 500 million years ago there was a bacterium that synthesized sulfa drugs, which would explain the evolution of resistance. However, the lack of remnants from such a biosynthetic pathway makes this unlikely.

On the other hand, resistant bacteria may have been around just by chance. The argument here is that there are so many bacteria, and such diversity, that chances are that some of them are going to be resistant to anything scientists come up with. This is a sobering thought.

Then again, this is already the baseline for antibiotics. Like climate change, antibiotic resistance is one of those problems that always seem to be a couple decades away. And it may well be. A turning point for me in the climate change debate was a decade-old opinion piece in New Scientist. It stated that we should make every possible effort to prevent climate change, especially in the unlikely case that it was not caused by man, because that would mean that all we can do is palliate a natural phenomenon.

Our research points in the same direction. If resistance is already out there, drug development can offer only temporary relief. The challenge then is not to quell resistance, but to avoid its spread. It is a big challenge, but not an insurmountable one. Not feeding wonder drugs to pigs would do nicely, for starters.

* * * * *

Ivan Erill, Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, University of Maryland, Baltimore County

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Header image by Drew Hays on Unsplash

Today in Genes, Genomes, Genetics, UMBC postdoctoral fellow Sarah Stellwagen and co-author Rebecca Renberg at the Army Research Lab published the first-ever complete sequences of two genes that allow spiders to produce glue—a sticky, modified version of spider silk that keeps a spider’s prey stuck in its web.

The innovative method they employed could pave the way for others to sequence more silk and glue genes, which are challenging to sequence because of their length and repetitive structure. Better understanding of these genes could move scientists closer to the next big advance in biomaterials.

Sticky solutions

Spider silk is what spider webs are made of, and it’s been touted for years as the next big thing in biomaterials because of its unusual tensile strength combined with its flexibility. There are more than 45,000 known species of spiders, each of which makes between one and seven types of silk. However, despite many partial sequences, less is known about the full genetic structure of spider silk: Only about 20 complete genes have been sequenced. “Twenty pales in comparison to what’s out there,” Stellwagen says.

Plus, spider silk has proven tough to produce in large amounts. Spiders convert liquid blobs of silk into solid, spindly fibers in a complex process inside their bodies. Scientists can make the liquid, but “we can’t replicate the process of going from liquid to solid on a large industrial scale,” Stellwagen says.

Spider glue, however, is a liquid both inside and outside the spider. While the glue “does have its own challenges,” Stellwagen says, that difference might make spider glue easier to produce in a lab than silk.

Stellwagen sees great potential for spider glue applications as organic pest control. After all, she says, “This stuff evolved to capture insect prey.”

For example, farmers could spray the glue along a barn wall to protect their livestock from insects that bite or cause disease, and then could rinse it off without worrying about polluting waterways with dangerous pesticides. They could use glue similarly to protect crops from pests. It could also be applied in areas where mosquito-borne illnesses are prevalent. “It could also just be fun to play with,” Stellwagen says.

A “behemoth of a gene”

Before Stellwagen and Renberg’s work, which was funded by the Army Research Lab, the longest silk gene sequenced was about 20,000 base pairs. When she started this project, Stellwagen was expecting to sequence the glue genes quickly and then move on, building on what she learned from the sequence. Instead, it took her and Renberg two years just to finalize the sequence.

“It ended up being this behemoth of a gene that’s more than twice as large as the previous largest silk gene,” Stellwagen says. It was a long, hard road to the day she found Renberg in the lab and said, “I think our gene is 42,000 bases long. I think we finished it.” And in the end, it was taking a risk on a cutting-edge technique that finally yielded the complete sequence.

Not only was the gene exceptionally long, but, like spider silk genes, it has many repetitions of the same sequence of bases—A, T, G, and C—in the middle. Modern sequencing techniques (called “next generation sequencing”) work by generating DNA sequences for all of an organism’s genes, but chopped up in little pieces. Then, like solving a puzzle, scientists must match up the overlapping ends of the short sections to determine the entire sequence.

However, if your gene is repetitive, you need a single sequence, or “read,” that extends from before the repetitious region to beyond the end to know how many repetitions there are. If your repetitious section is long, as it is in the glue genes Stellwagen and Renberg studied, the chance that you would get the read you need with next-generation methods is slim.

Fortunately, “third-generation” sequencing techniques are now available. Third-generation sequencing produces longer reads, but fewer of them. Only by repeating the experiment several times do you have a chance of getting the reads you need to determine the number of repetitions and finally define the gene’s entire sequence. “It’s challenging,” says Stellwagen. “You’re picking a needle from a haystack.”

But it worked. After two years of going to the computer and not seeing positive results, Stellwagen and Renberg finally got the reads they needed to define the entire gene’s sequence.

Stellwagen is already thinking ahead to what comes next. “Now that we have a protocol for discovering full-length silk genes, what do silks from other species look like?” she asks.

“I’m super excited that I was able to finally figure out the puzzle, because it was just so hard,” Stellwagen says. While it was a much bigger challenge than she expected, “Ultimately we learned a lot, and I am happy to put that out there for the next person who is trying to solve some ridiculous gene.”

Banner image: Sarah Stellwagen (left) and her postdoctoral advisor Mercedes Burns work together in the lab. All photos by Marlayna Demond ’11 for UMBC.

Read the complete article in G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics.

Halfway through her senior year at UMBC, Naomi Mburu M26, ’18, chemical engineering, was named the very first Rhodes Scholar in university history. So, following Commencement, she packed her bags and—after squeezing in a summer trip to Kenya—headed for jolly old England to make her mark on Oxford, the oldest English-speaking university in the world. Today, more than 3,500 miles from home in her pursuit of a doctorate in nuclear fusion, Mburu writes to share her thoughts on her first year at Oxford, and the ways she’s making herself right at home.

Roughly a year and a half ago, I received one of the biggest surprises I have ever received: the opportunity to attend the University of Oxford in England. As someone who has lived and attended elementary, middle, and high school all within 15 minutes of UMBC, I was itching to see the broader world and what it had to offer. Now, I have been living in Oxford for a little over six months and wanted to share some experiences and observations with my UMBC community.

There have been several wonderful and difficult moments woven throughout my experience thus far. Meeting hundreds of other Rhodes Scholars has been one of the most wonderful aspects of this experience, as the scholars come from many corners of the world and each have such interesting experiences and perspectives on life. Some of the moments I most enjoy at Oxford involve exchanging life stories with my fellow “Rhodies” and hearing my classmates passionately talk about topics that are close to their hearts.

Having the Rhodes community around me has definitely helped ease my adjustment to English life, but there have still been many times when I felt the loneliness of leaving home and starting off alone in a new country. I found that close community and friendship can sometime take quite a bit of time, patience, and effort to create, and maintaining old friendships across time zones can be a difficult thing to juggle. Luckily, there is so much fantastic technology like WhatsApp and FaceTime that allow me to easily connect with family and friends back home, and my family was able to visit me in April. There have also been some unexpected differences that I am learning to adjust to, the main being the weather and the sun setting at 3 p.m. in the winter.  

One of the biggest surprises of Oxford has been the structure of the Ph.D. compared to universities in America. For starters, here the Ph.D. is instead called the D.Phil., and in my department the D.Phil. process solely consists of an in-depth research project conducted over 3-4 years. There are no class or teaching requirements; the only responsibility is conducting research. This was quite a shift from my time at UMBC where I found myself balancing a full, pre-determined chemical engineering course load along with extracurriculars, teaching, and research. This has given me the chance to spend my first few months at Oxford really diving into my new field of nuclear fusion and thinking critically about what I want to get out of my Ph.D.

The increased freedom does come with added responsibility, however—students must decide for themselves what they want their D.Phil. experience to look like and proactively seek out those opportunities. Coming from a more structured undergraduate experience, this freedom was initially quite intimidating. However, I have seen how the flexibility of this new schedule has afforded me lots of time to try new things, travel, ponder, and simply do things that make me happy. Oxford has lots of great spots where I go to relax, read, or think, such as Christ Church Meadow, a beautiful field complete with cows which runs along the Thames River, or any of the beautiful college gardens.

Oxford and the Rhodes community are bursting with opportunities for students to “choose their own adventure.” The Rhodes House has been a central part of my experience thus far, as it serves as a meeting place for scholars past and present to plan events, study, and hang out. I have attended many scholar-led talks, musical performances, and even a mindfulness course there. The house also serves as the location for the annual Rhodes Retreat, which is a unique chance to spend a few days reflecting and discussing deep issues of life and purpose with your cohort.

In November, I helped organize an American Thanksgiving dinner for 130 people in the Rhodes House with a diverse team of people, some of whom had never experienced this type of holiday celebration. We had mashed potatoes, macaroni and cheese, stuffing, sweet potato casserole, homemade bread, turkey, a vegan option prepared by a scholar from Israel, and one of the Jamaican scholars even made jerk sauce for the turkey! Every year, the Rhodes House also sponsors scholar trips to places like Israel, China, Palestine, and Chile. I attended the Chile trip in March, where I joined a group of 11 other scholars on a nine-day backpacking expedition through Patagonia National Park.

Outside of the Rhodes House, I have attended talks at Oxford ranging from brain surgery to the evolution of language, tried new sports like rowing, and engaged in ancient traditions such as attending formal hall in the Harry Potter-style dining halls where we wear a mandatory black gown and stand for a formal Latin grace before the meal. And in March, the university supported me to attend a fusion-focused, week-long program that involved operating the world’s oldest functioning nuclear fusion reactor, located in Prague, Czech Republic, which was a great chance to meet other students in Europe interested in fusion and gain some hands-on experience with a fusion reactor.

Overall, my time at Oxford has been full of experiences that are continuing to shape the way I view the world and use my time. I look forward to all of the adventures the next year has in store!

–Naomi Mburu ’18

*****

Header image: Mburu finds the end of the rainbow during a Rhodes trip to Chile, which included a backpacking expedition through Patagonia National Park. All images courtesy of the author.

For this UMBC-trained historian, a walk in the park led her on a 10-year journey to publishing her book Finding Kate.

Driven by her passion for history with support from her family, Meryl Carmel, M.A. ’94, history, dedicated 10 years of her life on a mission to Finding Kate. Her journey, which led her to write a book about philanthropist Kate Macy Ladd, was something full of unexpected moments ultimately connecting her and her future book subject.

On an inauspicious Sunday, Carmel decided to take a stroll in a park, a former grand estate located several miles from her home. On her walk, she came across a kiosk which held pamphlets about the woman who built the estate—called Natirar—and opened a convalescent home for working women there in the early 1900s.

This information reignited an early flame of interest for Carmel. The story of an affluent heiress who experienced great loss and still chose to use her life to help others spoke to a childhood question Carmel had never quite let go of.

Growing up in Philadelphia, Carmel discovered her love of history early on and spent much time as she could reading historical biographies. Even at the age of seven, she quickly realized that there weren’t many biographies written about women. One book in particular stood out to her, a biography of Betsy Ross. As Carmel learned more about Betsy, her curiosity led her to wonder why it seemed that only men did great things that were written about in books.

Decades later, her graduate work in women’s studies and history would focus on the accomplishments and contributions of our nation’s women, helping to answer the questions she had when she was younger.

For Carmel, publishing her book Finding Kate, was the culmination of a decade of research that took her to three different countries. Along the way, she discovered that her life was more tangled with Ladd’s story than she could have ever imagined.

When Carmel moved from Maryland to New Jersey, she was intrigued to learn that the nearby estate, Natirar, was owned by the King of Morocco. That surprising piece of trivia was only the tip of the iceberg of what she would soon learn.

Who exactly was the woman whose house was eventually bought by royalty? Ladd was raised in a Quaker family, her values steeped in charity and doing good for others. As an outpouring of her generosity, she opened a convalescent home for women called Maple Cottage on her 1,000-acre estate.This home was established in a comfortable setting where working women could stay for free for up to three weeks, to recover from an illness, surgery, or work-a-day weariness. Ladd saw a need to give women an opportunity to restore their health in a time when there were few similar options. What had inspired this act of philanthropy?

To answer this question, Carmel used typical historical methodology, such as consulting census records and secondary sources. But she also came up with a back door approach: tracking down some of distant descendants and descendants of her past employees. Carmel successfully located about 10 individuals with a connection to Ladd all over the country and even in Ireland, so she began traveling and gathering more information.

While many of the living relatives knew they had a very wealthy and generous ancestor, Carmel met one 92-year-old woman who actually knew Ladd.  This connection allowed Carmel to borrow many primary sources such as old photographs and boxes of random things, including old journals, diaries, and memorabilia. What Carmel didn’t expect to find along the way was her own personal tie to Ladd.

Along the way, Carmel discovered the name of the nurse who managed Maple Cottage. The long deceased nurse was buried in Meridian, New York, a place where Carmel and her husband had once spent a summer. It was the home of an old friend from her days as a student in Wisconsin.

It hit Carmel that the nurse and her friend—one buried in Meridian, one alive in Meridian—shared the same last name: Dudley. With a bit of investigating, Carmel discovered that Kate Macy Ladd’s nursing supervisor, Estelle Dudley, was actually the great-great aunt of Carmel’s friend Milli Dudley Lake. This came as a complete surprise to Lake.

This fortuitous coincidence was an exciting breakthrough for Carmel. Her luck increased even more when her former roommate uncovered a ledger book that belonged to her great-great aunt. It was filled with recipes for the food prepared for the guests at Maple Cottage. In that moment of human connection, Carmel knew that no matter what, she was determined to write her book.

Along the way, she learned that Ladd also created a foundation dedicated to health, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, which still operates in New York City. In addition, a greatly enlarged version of her convalescent home operated in her mansion house for 34 years after her death. More than 22,000 women received free state-of-the-art care at what was called the Kate Macy Ladd Convalescent Home.

Carmel was able to tell Ladd’s story, she says, because she followed through with her childhood curiosity of the role America’s women have played since the country’s founding by earning a master’s degree in history from UMBC. During her time at UMBC, Carmel continued to be a full time mom to two little boys while her husband was a professor at University of Maryland, College Park. She found time to work as a teaching assistant, and often sought guidance from her advisor Dr. Jean R. Soderlund, one of her very few female professors. Carmel remembers Professor Soderlund as a meticulous researcher and an inspiring woman, who helped guide her through her graduate program with excellent grades, fond memories, and ultimately the ability to see her research through to publishing a book.

*****

To find out more about Carmel’s journey and the little known story of Kate Macy Ladd, please check out her website.

All photos, including the header image, courtesy of Meryl Carmel.

“To whom much is given, much is required.” Meyerhoff scholars internalize this message, which is introduced during Summer Bridge and is almost as ubiquitous as “Focus, Focus, Focus,” and Langston Hughes’ “Dreams” at Meyerhoff gatherings. For many of the scholars, giving back has become a foundational principle in their lives, as they mentor colleagues, students, and interns in their roles as researchers, medical professionals, biotech entrepreneurs, and more.

This extension of the Meyerhoff program beyond UMBC amplifies its impact. Like a family tree, the DNA for the Meyerhoff program’s values and practices travels through generations of researchers as scholars graduate from UMBC and carry their experiences with the program wherever they go, cultivating the Meyerhoff culture in their new environments. Perhaps no simile is required—members of the Meyerhoff community feel that it is, indeed, a family.

“We truly are a family, full of people who accept and love each other as we are,” says Rhea Brooking-Dixon ’02, M10, biological sciences. After UMBC, she earned her Ph.D. from Duke University in experimental pathology, and today she is a scientist at Booz Allen Hamilton. She is married to Jason Dixon ’02, M10, computer engineering, so for them, Meyerhoff means family in multiple ways.

Families always help each other out, and that stuck with Dixon and Brooking-Dixon after graduation. They remember being asked by advisors at UMBC about participation in a study group, both to receive and give support to their classmates. “That showed us that the Meyerhoff Scholars Program wanted us to consider not just what a community could do for us,” they share, “but what we could also do for our community, whatever the scale, to help everyone develop into their best selves.”

Cultivating each Meyerhoff cohort as a family begins with Summer Bridge, a six-week experience that combines academics and social activities. Students learn together, eat together, and play together, forming bonds that buoy them through their years at UMBC and beyond.

“We’re developing a community. So to generate this concept of a community, they’ve got to have a shared experience,” says Keith Harmon, director of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. “So a big part of Bridge is doing everything together. You do nothing in Bridge as an individual.”

The mentality of giving back and supporting one’s community has been inherent to the program since its early days. Crystal Watkins-Johansson ’95, M3, biological sciences, earned her M.D./Ph.D. at Johns Hopkins University and now serves as director of the memory clinic in the neuropsychiatry program in the Sheppard Pratt Health System, and as an assistant professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

“When we recruit, we don’t talk a lot about Ph.D.s and M.D./Ph.D.s. We talk about legacy,
and we talk about service. We talk about leadership. We talk about being a part of
something that’s bigger than yourself.”
– Keith Harmon, Director, Meyerhoff Scholars Program

“As a graduate of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC, I have developed a tradition of mentoring undergraduate and graduate students from the Meyerhoff program,” Watkins-Johansson says, “as the mentoring I received through the program continues to be the foundation of my success.”

Isaac Newton said, “I have only seen farther by standing on the shoulders of giants,” and that phrase, too, has resonated with Meyerhoff Scholars. Erwin Cabrera ’10, M18, biological sciences, shares, “The Meyerhoff staff, program alumni, and UMBC faculty were my giants, so I strive to be a giant for those students who come after me.”

Cabrera’s current role aligns directly with his commitment to mentoring the next generation of biomedical professionals. After earning his Ph.D. at the New York University School of Medicine, he now serves as the associate director for the Research Aligned Mentorship program at Farmingdale State University, a program that provides additional supports—similar in ways to the Meyerhoff Scholars Program—to annual cohorts of Farmingdale students.

For some Meyerhoff scholars, it was the group experience that helped them see their true potential. “Being surrounded by a critical mass of high-achieving African Americans was extremely important to my growth as an individual,” says Kamili (Shaw) Jackson ’97, M5, M.S. ’99, mechanical engineering. “It gave me confidence and humility at the same time.”

Mentoring the next generation of scientists and engineers, and changing their lives in the process, is a worthy goal and a laudable outcome of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. But the ripple effect goes even farther. Those researchers, many of whom are from underrepresented groups in STEM, bring fresh perspectives and energy to their work, and the results of their efforts can impact an even larger set of people.

“My research experience in Dr. [Michael] Summers’ lab helped me recognize the lasting impact that biomedical research could have on the lives of patients,” shares Chelsea Pinnix ’99, M7, biochemistry and molecular biology. “I began to envision myself as more than a future physician, and instead as a young woman with the potential to heal patients in my clinic and improve medical care for patients that I would never meet through meaningful research.”

As the Meyerhoff Scholars Program enters its fourth decade, the emphasis on paying it forward is just as strong as it was at the program’s founding in 1989. Except now, there already exists a network—a family—of hundreds of Meyerhoff alumni ready to support upcoming students in all that they wish to pursue, which goes far beyond earning a degree (or three).

And that message of changing the world is part of the conversation from the start. Teaching students to think beyond the degree toward thinking about a career where they can make real change in the world, both by doing meaningful research and mentoring others, is an important part of the Meyerhoff program.

“When we recruit, we don’t talk a lot about Ph.D.s and M.D./Ph.D.s.,” Harmon says. “We talk about legacy,
and we talk about service. We talk about leadership. We talk about being a part of something that’s bigger than yourself.”

Learn more about the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at meyerhoff.umbc.edu.

Photos courtesy of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program.

From its very first days, Earnestine Baker, Executive Director Emerita, has been an integral part of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. UMBC Magazine sat down with Baker to talk about some of the ways she — along with other staff and students — laid the foundation for the program’s successes over the last thirty years.

UMBC Magazine: What are some of your first memories of how the Meyerhoff Scholars Program came to be?

Earnestine Baker: Immediately what comes to mind is the phone call I received from Dr.Hrabowski, inviting me to a meeting in his conference room. I was working in the Office of Financial Aid as the Associate Director of Financial Aid and Scholarships; UMBC did not have a scholarship program at that time. Tom Taylor, the Director of Financial Aid, initiated UMBC’s formal scholarship program.

So in that capacity, I worked to establish the scholarship program for incoming freshmen. One afternoon in the summer of 1988, I received a life-changing call from the Assistant to the Vice Provost, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, inviting me to come to a meeting to discuss scholarships. I was thinking that we would talk about my work and plans for UMBC’s scholarship program, but instead he laid out his plan for recruiting, to UMBC, African American men who would go on and achieve Ph.D.s in science. He met with Mr. and Mrs. [Robert] Meyerhoff, and he wanted to develop this program. I hesitated a little but finally said “Okay,” and he said, “I want to create the environment that we had when we were undergraduates [at Hampton Institute now Hampton University.]” And when he said that, I knew immediately what he was talking about. … During the meeting he asked if I would look into developing an application for the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. I went back to my office, developed a design and that’s how I began working with the Meyerhoff Scholars Program. By the way, the first application received for the Meyerhoff Scholars Program was from Chester Hedgepeth now an M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

UMBC Magazine: How did you initially spread the word about it?

Earnestine Baker:  So that’s an excellent question, because what happened after that meeting I thought was very smart of Doc. He sent letters to all the state superintendents of schools, principals, the heads of private and parochial schools, letters to guidance counselors throughout the state, community leaders, inviting them all to come to UMBC for a meeting. During this meeting, he again laid out his plan for the Program; first buy-in approach I thought.

Additionally, we asked students who were the people who made an impact in their lives educationally. And they said, “My teacher in biology,” or “My guidance counselor,” or, “My minister,” “My pastor of my church,” or “Someone down the street.” We collected names and addresses of individuals and invited them also to this meeting, and … asked them to nominate students for the scholarship. From this came the Meyerhoff Nomination Process.

UMBC Magazine: How did folks react to the program at the very beginning?

Earnestine Baker: That’s what was great about this meeting with the superintendents, principal and others …yes we announced the scholarship, but we also wanted support, buy-in, plus community ownership for the Program we were about to launch.

UMBC Magazine:  So in a way, you were opening the door to the people who were most likely to make it successful, because someone coming to the meeting was already going to believe in what you’re talking about. That seems like just such a smart move.

Earnestine Baker:   Right, it was a very wise decision. We let our leaders in education know that UMBC will provide another opportunity for them to support students whose goal is to increase the number of scientists who will teach and become researchers.

UMBC Magazine: What was it like bringing students into research opportunities for the first time, when you were still figuring pieces of the experience out?

Earnestine Baker:   The students were very excited. We knew for them to have a competitive application for graduate and professional schools, they needed strong research experiences, be it in industry or in higher education. Initially, a larger number of students were completing research in industry and not in higher education, at the NIH, National Science Foundation, NSA, and NASA; we had more connections in industry at that time.

At UMBC, the first faculty member to take one of our students in his lab was Dr. Frank Hanson in the Biology Department. I said to Frank, “I need to find a lab placement for one of our students,” and he said, “Well, let’s look at it and see what we can do.”

It took many, many meetings with high schools, universities, federal and state agencies and individuals to get our message “out.” Many of these meetings included Charles “Tot” Woolston – you don’t hear much about his efforts, but he gave tremendously while promoting the Meyerhoff mission and goals. Dr. Phyllis Robinson, Biology Department was extremely helpful in advising the program for internships and graduate school placements. A major breakthrough for research opportunities came when Dr. Hrabowski connected with Leadership Alliance, whose executive office is at Brown University.

Dr. James “Jim” Wyche was the director of the Leadership Alliance as well as a faculty member at Brown. This partnership, provided opportunities for our students to participate in research at the top leading institutions across the nation. There are about 38 schools in the Alliance now. I invited one of the Leadership Alliance faculty members from Harvard University to visit UMBC, meet faculty and the Meyerhoff Scholars. From this meeting – the next two summers, she (the late Dr. Jocelyn Spragg) selected three Meyerhoff Scholars for summer research at Harvard. The Meyerhoffs Scholars were Crystal Watkins M3, Damon Tweedy M4, and Andrew Atiemo M4. Their work was exceptional and created an interest in Meyerhoff Scholars at other top tier universities. This was a very exciting time, and my confirmation that “yes, we can do this.” Jocelyn invited me to visit Harvard while Damon and Andrew were there. She remained a good friend and strong supporter of UMBC and the Meyerhoff Program.

UMBC Magazine:   I would love to talk about Summer Bridge, because that is what comes up so often with everyone as a really pivotal moment of the Meyerhoff experience.

Earnestine Baker:  I feel Summer Bridge is the key component. It is the beginning stages of becoming a Meyerhoff Scholar and truly understanding the goals of the Program and what it means to work together as a family; the true feeling of the Meyerhoff family.  I often say to students “you don’t have to love each other, you don’t have to like each other, but you have to help each other.”

It’s not only about working together as students, but also learning how to work with faculty, staff and administrators; teaching the UMBC way, the Meyerhoff way. Academically, we talked about high expectations and goals. We had regular meetings and talked about how the Program expected students to perform academically, personally, socially … in all aspects of their undergraduate career.

What is critically important, and what we have tried to communicate over the years, is that you cannot be successful in STEM trying to do it alone, nor should you try. Interdependence is taught during Summer Bridge, and it’s very important. Some students’ approach is similar to high school, “I have to do this by myself. I cannot – I don’t – I shouldn’t ask questions, because if I ask questions it shows that I’m not smart, I’m not capable, and I’m not intelligent.” Hence some don’t want to ask questions or reach out for help. Some have the mindset, “It’s me. It’s mine. And that’s the way it’s going to be.”   I know it’s a part of their growing-up experience. For some, it’s the first time — hearing when you gain knowledge and achieve you should, and we expect you to, share what you have gained with others. When one wins we all win. When one fails we all fail. In Meyerhoff failure is not an option.  Can you imagine the reaction in a calculus class when the lowest grade on a test – let’s say 69 – becomes the grade for everyone in the class? Not happy campers.  Over the years I have enjoyed and appreciated the lesson learned in this class; seeing the class come together and work to achieve an “A” was just what I hoped would happen. It’s a powerful lesson and it has been passed forward.  During Summer Bridge scholars are expected to move about campus together – a part of the bonding process.  I remember once a group of scholars decided to leave their cohort early for lunch.  Upon my arrival to the dining hall one of the dining hall staff members reported to me that some Meyerhoffs had arrived early and she knew that they were not supposed to do that.  This to me was a wonderful example of institutional buy-in.  This staff member knew and supported our mission.

It begins with Summer Bridge, and the lessons learned hopefully will continue. I’m told it continues at the graduate level and in the work place. Summer Bridge is not easy. LaMont (Toliver) and I used to plan, plot, and scheme to make each Meyerhoff co-hort the best they could be. No gaps in the line while walking to class together, 6 a.m. wake-up calls, never late to anything, sit in the front of class … Scholars were not always happy with us, I know, but I hope they realize the reasons and can see and appreciate the benefits. For what we have accomplished over thirty years – “it is worth it.”

UMBC Magazine: What’s it like talking with students about Summer Bridge now, especially those who didn’t initially understand what you were trying to do?

Earnestine Baker:  It was a challenge seeing Meyerhoff Scholars go through Summer Bridge and initially not understanding its purpose, not getting it. Sometimes I saw hurt on their faces, or anger, and I said to them, ‘ Just listen. Just listen and you’ll come to understand what it is that we are trying to do.’ … And now I hear – ‘Okay, I’m out. I’ve graduated now, and I get Summer Bridge. I understand’…and they find themselves repeating some of the same principals not only to their students and colleagues, but to their kids…. I feel this part of my life has been so worthwhile. At the end of the day, I exhale and reflect, and I say, ‘Thank you, God.’”  Many scholars have expressed their gratitude for my support over the years and I am grateful.  But the only thank you I desire is to see them give back to others.

Learn more about the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at meyerhoff.umbc.edu.

Photos, top to bottom, provided by the Meyerhoff Scholars Program: Baker with Lamont Dozier, a member of the second Meyerhoff cohort; Early Meyerhoff students studying; Baker with members of the Meyerhoff Parents Association; Meyerhoff student activity on the Quad.

New research by UMBC’s Glenn Wolfe and collaborators is shaping how scientists understand the fate of methane, a potent greenhouse gas, in Earth’s atmosphere.

Of the greenhouse gases, methane has the second greatest overall effect on climate after carbon dioxide. And the longer it stays in the atmosphere, the more heat it traps. That’s why it’s essential for climate models to properly represent how long methane lasts before it’s broken down. That happens when a methane molecule reacts with a hydroxyl radical—an oxygen atom bound to a hydrogen atom, represented as OH—in a process called oxidation. Hydroxyl radicals also destroy other hazardous air pollutants.

“OH is really the most central oxidizing agent in the lower atmosphere. It controls the lifetime of nearly every reactive gas,” explains Wolfe, an assistant research professor at UMBC’s Joint Center for Earth Systems Technology. However, “globally, we don’t have a way to directly measure OH.” More than that, it’s well understood that current climate models struggle to accurately simulate OH. With existing methods, scientists can infer OH at a coarse scale, but there is scant information on the where, when, and why of variations in OH.

New research published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by Wolfe puts scientists on the path to changing that. Wolfe and colleagues have developed a unique way to infer how global OH concentrations vary over time and in different regions. Better understanding of OH levels can help scientists understand how much of the ups and downs in global methane levels are due to changing emissions, such as from oil and natural gas production or wetlands, versus being caused by changing levels of OH.

A flying laboratory

NASA satellites have been measuring atmospheric formaldehyde concentrations for over 15 years. Wolfe’s new research relies on that data, plus new observations collected during NASA’s recent Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) mission. ATom has flown four around-the-world circuits, sampling air with the aid of a NASA research aircraft.

This “flying laboratory,” as Wolfe describes it, collected data on atmospheric formaldehyde and OH levels that illustrates a remarkably simple relationship between the two gases. This did not surprise the scientists, because formaldehyde is a major byproduct of methane oxidation, but this study provides the first concrete observation of the correlation between formaldehyde and OH. The findings also showed that the formaldehyde concentrations the plane measured are consistent with those measured by the satellites. That will allow Wolfe’s team and others to use existing satellite data to infer OH levels throughout most of the atmosphere.

“So the airborne measurements give you a ground truth that that relationship exists,” Wolfe says, “and the satellite measurements let you extend that relationship around the whole globe.”

Wolfe, however, is the first to acknowledge that the work to improve global models is far from done. The airplane measured OH and formaldehyde levels over the open ocean, where the air chemistry is relatively simple. It would be more complicated over a forest, and even more so over a city.

While the relationship the researchers determined provides a solid baseline, as most of Earth’s air does, indeed, float above oceans, more work is needed to see how OH levels differ in more complex environments. Potentially, different data from existing NASA satellites, such as those tracking emissions from urban areas or wildfires, could help.

Wolfe hopes to keep refining this work, which he says is at “the nexus of the chemistry and climate research communities. And they’re very interested in getting OH right.”

Getting it right

The current study did consider seasonal variations in OH, by analyzing measurements taken in February and August. “The seasonality is one aspect of this study that’s important,” Wolfe says, “because the latitude where OH is at its maximum moves around.” Considering seasonal shifts in OH concentrations, or even multi-year shifts caused by phenomena like El Niño and La Niña, could be one angle to explore when trying to improve global climate models.

Looking further at OH levels on a global scale using satellite data validated by airplane data could also help scientists refine their models. “You can use the spatial variability and the seasonality to understand at the process level what’s driving OH, and then ask if the model gets that right or not,” Wolfe says. “The idea is to be able to poke at all these features, where we haven’t really had any data to do that with before.”

This new research is one step in the journey to enhancing our understanding of the global climate, even as it is rapidly changing. More accurately understanding how, for example, cutting methane emissions would affect the climate, and how quickly, could even influence policy decisions.

“It’s not perfect. It needs work,” Wolfe says. “But the potential is there.”

Image: The NASA research aircraft used for the ATom mission. Photo by Susan McFadden for NASA.