Read the article on Arctic research included in Polar Research in Tromsø here.

A Bates College junior and a recent graduate have been honored for their achievements in neuroscience research at the college.

Leah Carr, a junior neuroscience major from Summit, N.J., was awarded $915 in December by Sigma Xi, the international scientific research society. The award will support a genetics research initiative involving test subjects in the Lewiston-Auburn area.

In November, at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in Washington, D.C., Gregory Sousa of Augusta, Maine, received the top student award presented jointly by two organizations, the Faculty for Undergraduate Neuroscience and the German Graduate Schools of Neuroscience. A biology major, Sousa graduated from Bates in December. The award will pay for a weeklong trip to prominent neuroscience research facilities in Germany.

Carr’s project is titled “The Neurogenetics of Executive Dysfunction in Alexithymia: The Role of the DAT1 Gene.” Working with Nancy Koven, assistant professor of psychology at Bates, Carr is investigating possible genetic involvement in the condition called alexithymia. This refers to a cluster of emotionally related traits, such as deficits in attending to and identifying one’s emotions, that are associated with problems in coping with medical and psychiatric illnesses.

Carr is exploring connections between alexithymia and the functioning of the brain’s frontal lobes; and possible connections between specific brain functions and a gene that regulates dopamine, a neurotransmitter involved in a variety of key mental processes such as behavior, motor activity, sleep, mood and learning.

Working with a test group of 125 adults from the Lewiston-Auburn community, Carr will use saliva samples for genetic analysis and will administer neuropsychological tests to assess cognitive skills such as decision making, inhibitory control, planning and organization, abstract reasoning, attention and working memory.

“I’m very excited to receive this grant, as it is wonderful to know that others view your research plans as worthwhile,” says Carr.

Sousa’s research, conducted for his senior thesis under the guidance of Associate Professor of Biology Nancy Kleckner, looked at the role of neuropeptides — chemical “signals” in nerve functioning — in the regulation of feeding in pond snails.

Specifically, Sousa’s work pointed to the involvement of a chemical called neuropeptide phenylalanine as a neurological cue facilitating either the transition to satiation (the sensation of fullness) or a regurgitation movement in the snails.

“A benefit of studying mollusks,” Sousa explains, “is that they contain large neurons that are amenable for electrophysiological recordings — you can penetrate these individual neurons with electrodes and measure how they respond to the application of specific drugs.

“This permits the investigation of biological questions in ways that aren’t feasible in organisms with more complex nervous systems,” he continues. Because of basic similarities between the nervous systems of vertebrate and invertebrate organisms, invertebrate research can often “advance our knowledge of how nervous systems, in general, are able to generate complex behaviors.”

“Winning the award was an incredible surprise,” says Sousa, who plans to visit institutions in Berlin and Munich as he considers grad school. Currently a research assistant at The Jackson Laboratory, in Bar Harbor, he plans to undertake graduate study after two years there. He is working with Simon John, whose research involves the molecular features of complex diseases, particularly glaucoma, that lead to the death of neural cells.

Read more about Sousa’s work and award.

By, Doug Hubley

Early in the 1900s, two manufacturing plants in Arlington, Mass., dumped their chemical waste out back, which polluted a town-owned pond, later filled to create the high school football field.

The town became aware of the contamination in the 1990s but didn’t get money to clean up the site until the 2000s.

That’s when environmental consultant Matt Grove ’94 and his team from the firm Brown and Caldwell went to work.

First, the contamination was excavated and consolidated. “We installed a cap of plastic and soil layers,” explains Grove. “And we treated the groundwater with a chemical designed to stimulate bioactivity.” As microbes grow and prosper, they create soil conditions that immobilize the contamination. New playing fields were installed over the capped portions of the property. (See aerial images during the project and after completion.)

The Arlington project illustrates the changing approach to environmental cleanups. “The idea is that it’s not feasible to clean up a site to pristine conditions,” Grove explains. “Instead, you reduce contamination to a point where the site can be deemed safe for certain uses.”

Grove, a biology and geology major at Bates who earned a Ph.D. in geology at Duke, believes that “there’s a broader acceptance of changing the way things are done to get people to be more environmentally conscious. It takes a bit of force sometimes, but I think we’re moving toward a better place in terms of the environment and the care we’re taking of it.”

A biologist who made national news with his research into the effects of a common pesticide on frogs will speak at Bates College at 7 p.m. Monday, Sept. 22, in Chase Hall Lounge, 56 Campus Ave.

Tyrone Hayes’ talk is titled “From Silent Spring to Silent Night: What Do Frogs Tell Us About Human Health?” The first event in the 2008-09 College Lecture Series at Bates, the lecture is open to the public at no cost.

An associate professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, Hayes published research early in this decade that indicated a connection between extremely low environmental levels of atrazine, an herbicide commonly used by corn growers, and interference with gender differentiation in frogs.

Among other effects, the atrazine exposure caused male frogs to grow ovaries as well as testes, and altered the development of the frogs’ voice boxes, which would impair their ability to find mates.

“Why should we care about frogs?” Hayes asked during a 2007 presentation of “From Silent Spring to Silent Night” at the College of Wooster. “Because frogs have the same hormones as humans, so whatever happens to them as a result of atrazine could also happen to us.”

At Wooster, Hayes criticized the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency for its refusal to ban atrazine, despite the fact that much of its own research has identified the dangers. The European Union imposed a ban on the substance that took effect last year.

“He also blasted the manufacturer of atrazine (Syngenta), which admitted that its employees had eight times the national average of prostate cancer,” states a summary of the presentation on the College of Wooster Web site.

Continuing in the vein of environmental issues, the Bates Lecture Series returns with Naomi Oreskes, author of the influential 2004 essay “Beyond the Ivory Tower: The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change,” at 7 p.m., Monday, Oct. 20 in Chase Hall Lounge.

A historian of science of the University of California, San Diego, Oreskes will discuss the science of climate change and the idea of scientific consensus. Her essay has been cited in such publications as The New Yorker, USA TODAY and Parade, as well as in Al Gore’s documentary “An Inconvenient Truth.”

A precipitious drop in the population of the Devils Hole pupfish, an iridescent blue minnow found only in a hot spring-fed pool in the Nevada desert, is confounding scientists. After a 90 percent population drop off, numbers rose slightly in the most recent count. “It’s not up a lot,” said Paul Barrett ’80, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service biologist coordinating the research. “That’s true. But we may have bottomed out and stopped the decline, and in my book that’s a winner.” [More...]

Shawna-Kaye Lester '08

Shawna-Kaye Lester of St. Catherine, Jamaica, a 2008 graduate of Bates College, has won a prestigious and lucrative graduate scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation.

A double major in biological chemistry and Spanish at Bates, Lester will use her award to pursue an ambitious sequence of graduate programs to hone her leadership skills in healthcare management. Her multiyear Cooke scholarship is worth up to $50,000 annually for up to six years.

One of just 35 Jack Kent Cooke scholars chosen from 957 nominated students, Lester graduated from Bates as a published chemist, accomplished dancer and musician and, having studied abroad extensively, an experienced cultural observer.

She is the third Bates graduate to win a Cooke graduate scholarship in the program’s seven years.

Lester has mapped a nine-year graduate journey that starts with master’s studies at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She then hopes to study epidemiology at the University of Oxford and conclude with integrated medical and business studies.

Lester’s deep reservoir of ambition and talent is well-known at Bates.

“Shawna-Kaye Lester is among the strongest and most promising 10 students in my 30 years at Bates,” wrote longtime Bates dean, teacher and vice president William C. Hiss ’66 in recommending Lester. “She has intellectual gifts and discipline…and is a global citizen with stunningly broad talents across widely different fields.”

At Bates, she was known for her “integrity of character, sympathy for those in need, leadership, physical strength and energy,” he added.

In 2007, Lester used a Phillips Student Fellowship to follow the Ndere dance troupe of Uganda from Brooklyn, N.Y., back to its homeland, learning along the way how traditional dance can inspire the present. For her Spanish senior thesis, she focused on the Afro-Peruvian community from the 1950s to today.

Early in her Bates academic career, she worked in the lab of Tom Wenzel, Charles A. Dana Professor of Chemistry, an experience that yielded Lester’s coauthorship, with Wenzel, of an article in Tetrahedron: Asymmetry. For her senior biochemistry thesis, she researched RNA interference biotechnology, a project inspired in part by her mother, an asthmatic.

As a first-year student, Lester was named a Dana Scholar for her academic promise; as a graduating senior, she was elected to the College Key, the honorary Bates alumni organization for service and leadership.

A Christian, Lester likens the Cooke scholarship to a “divine trust fund.” Through the Bates Christian Fellowship, she volunteered with the UrbanPromise ministry in Camden, N.J., with Students International in Guatemala and with the Maine-based Rural Community Action Ministry. In 2005 she founded Eagles Breakaway, an aspirational program that brings together young people worldwide to share stories about education’s liberating power.

She danced competitively with the Bates Ballroom Dance Society, played the upright bass in the orchestra and was active in Bates Student Government and Amandla!, the Bates student organization focusing on the experiences of African American and African-descent students.

Bates’ two previous Cooke scholars are Matteo Pangallo, a 2003 alumnus who studied Shakespeare at the Globe Theater and King’s College in London; and Jason Rafferty, a 2005 graduate who is studying medicine and public health at Harvard Medical School.

Now in its seventh year, the Jack Kent Cooke graduate scholarship program is among the most generous of its kind. The 2008 scholars intend to study in a range of fields in the natural sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, including medicine, philosophy, law, landscape architecture, social work and creative writing.

The Jack Kent Cooke Foundation is a private, independent foundation established by Jack Kent Cooke to help young people of exceptional promise reach their full potential through education. Launched in 2000, the Foundation focuses in particular on students with financial need.

Eighty-nine percent of Bates College students who worked with the college’s Medical Studies Committee in applying to health care-related graduate programs for fall 2007 matriculation were accepted.

According to a report issued this week by the committee, 32 of 36 Bates applicants to medical (allopathic) or osteopathic schools, or 89 percent, were accepted. Nationally, about 45 percent of applicants to allopathic schools were accepted.

A national acceptance rate for osteopathic schools wasn’t available. However, in the 2007-08 academic year, 4,243 of 11,459 osteopathic school applicants, or 37 percent, were enrolled (as opposed to accepted; not all accepted applicants will enroll).

Fifteen out of 17 Bates applicants to other health-related programs, such as dental, nursing, nurse practitioner or veterinary medicine, were accepted, or 88 percent.

All told, 47 out of 53 Bates applicants who worked with the committee were accepted into graduate programs in the health professions.

Bates students are typically accepted into graduate programs in the health professions at a rate higher than the national average. This speaks to both the quality of Bates students and the way Bates prepares students for life after graduation.

During the 2006-07 academic year, the Bates Medical Studies Committee had more than 300 counseling appointments lasting at least 30 minutes with students and alumni interested in health careers. The college’s medical studies program helps students satisfy medical school requirements by, for instance, guiding students with their course selections and helping set up job-shadowing or internship opportunities.

Nearly 91 percent of Bates students who worked with the committee and applied to allopathic schools were accepted for fall 2007. Sixty-three percent of all Bates students who applied to allopathic programs were accepted, whether or not they worked with the committee.

Nationally, in 2007, 18,858 of 42,315 applicants (44.6 percent) to allopathic medical schools were accepted, according to information from the American Association of Medical Colleges.

Lee Abrahamsen, chair of the Medical Studies Committee and an associate professor of biology, notes that students at Bates and elsewhere show an increasing interest in graduate programs in public health. “That reflects the growing perception of health as a global issue that has to be understood from many perspectives,” she says.

In response, Bates has developed a four-course public health concentration as part of its new general education curriculum.

“Emerging infections, pollution, antibiotic resistance, who can or should be immunized — even laws that require car seats for children — are all public health issues,” Abrahamsen notes. “So public health is multidisciplinary, and including it in the curriculum allows our students to use what they learn from courses, travel, community engagement and other experiences to approach important issues that affect everybody.”

During the last two years, Bates applicants to allopathic and osteopathic programs have been 15 percent neuroscience majors, 24 percent biology majors, 29 percent biochemistry majors, 10 percent psychology and 22 percent other majors including art, philosophy, chemistry, English and religion.

Taegan McMahon '07

A childhood trip to the rainforests of Costa Rica introduced Taegan McMahon ’07 to poison dart frogs. Immediately, she was smitten. “They are very cool and absolutely beautiful,” she says.

Back home to Noank, Conn., McMahon raised them as pets. By sophomore year at Bates, she knew the inch-and-a-half amphibian would be a big part of her biology senior thesis.

Advised by Assistant Professor of Biology Ryan Bavis, she investigated how acid rain — a relatively new rainforest phenomenon — might affect the growth of the dart-frog species Epipedobates tricolor. [More...]

Lee Abrahamsen

Several years ago, students in Lee Abrahamsen’s 300-level virology course undertook a project for a hepatitis-C support group at a local hospital.

Members of the group craved information about everyday impacts the disease would have — “things like, ‘Can I share my towels with my family without infecting them?’ ” Abrahamsen explains. “The students developed this nice little booklet for them. It was a really neat project.”

That’s the kind of community orientation that won Abrahamsen, associate professor of biology, a prestigious award from the Maine Campus Compact. In April 2007, Abrahamsen was one of three Maine college educators to receive the consortium’s Donald Harward Faculty Award for Service-Learning Excellence (named for Bates President Emeritus Harward). [More...]