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Heading in the right direction Also in this issue •Molecular memory •New takes on the Civil War •Canary in a coal mine, crab on a coastline UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA SPRING 2015 / RESEARCH
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Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

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Page 1: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Heading in the right directionAlso in this issue•Molecular memory

•New takes on the Civil War

•Canary in a coal mine, crab on a coastline

UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA SPRING 2015 / RESEARCH

Page 2: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Office of Research University of South Carolina

President Harris Pastides

Vice President for Research Prakash Nagarkatti

Research Communications Manager Elizabeth Renedo

Director of University Communications and Marketing/Chief Communications Officer Wes Hickman

Office of Communications and Marketing Creative Director Bob Wertz Editor Chris Horn Magazine Designer Maria Fabrizio Contributing Writers Craig Brandhorst, Page Ivey, Liz McCarthy, Steven Powell Photographer Kim Truett Cover Artist Maria Fabrizio

Website sc.edu/vpresearch

To comment on an item in Breakthrough or to suggest an idea for a future issue, contact the University of South Carolina’s Office of Research at 803-777-5458 or email [email protected]

The University of South Carolina does not discriminate in educational or employment opportunities or decisions for qualified persons on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, disability, sexual orientation, genetics or veteran status. 14002 UCS 10/14

The University of South Carolina is committed to sustainability in all facets of operation, including the production of publications such as this one, which is printed on paper certified by SmartWood to the FSC standards.

Page 3: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

In this issue

4 / In Brief

8 / Heading in the right direction A USC orthopaedic physician and athletic training director are developing new strategies for addressing the serious issue of sports concussions.

12 / Molecular memory Memory and the corresponding ability to learn socially acceptable behavior is de-pendent on key neural proteins. Michy Kelly wants to know how those mechanisms break down in disease states.

14 / New takes on the Civil War Three new books from history faculty offer new vistas on an old conflict.

16 / Q&A with Nathan Richardson A law professor of-fers his take on environmental law and climate change.

18 / The art of science Up close — really close — objects of nature become objets d’art.

20 / Canary in a coal mine, crab on a coastline An evoutionary biologist considers the dynamic chang es on South Carolina’s coastline and the conse quences for a number of species.

24 / In the pipeline Education professor Scott Decker thinks neurofeedback might hold promise for learning disabilities.

w Visit sc.edu/vpresearch for more information

Page 4: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Prakash Nagarkatti, Ph.D.Vice President for ResearchUniversity of South Carolinawww.sc.edu/vpresearch

In the pages of Breakthrough, you can see how research conducted here at the state’s only Carnegie tier-one institution with “very high research activity” impacts the community directly. Our researchers are exploring the Carolina coast seeking opportunities to harness offshore wind to power communities without harming the environment, studying head injury to help make sports safer for young athletes, and searching for ways to better understand and treat devastating mental illnesses, schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

But the impact of research doesn’t stop at those who ultimately benefit from the break-throughs realized in the lab. It also extends to the students whose academic experiences are enriched through taking part in research. The Office of Research strives to inspire and enable students at every level, on every system campus, to take their learning beyond the classroom.

At the University of South Carolina, tuition buys so much more than a top-notch classroom experience, great facilities and vital campus life. It also provides every student the opportunity to participate in research through programs including Magellan Scholars, which funds undergraduate research, and SPARC grants, which provide funding for graduate scholars’ research projects. Through these and other programs, students across all disciplines can engage their intellectual curiosity while they gain practical experience in research, grant writing and scholarship. As Gamecocks, our potential to impact the world through innovation has no limits.

2 / Breakthrough

Page 5: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Spring 2015 / 3

Page 6: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

HIDDEN IN PLAIN VIEW: A NEW PLANT SPECIES

The exclusive club of explorers who have discovered rare new species of life isn’t restricted to globetrotters traveling to the Amazon rain forests or the woodlands of the Congo River basin.

Just ask USC biology professor John Nelson and alum-nus Douglas Rayner — they’re having their membership cards stamped with a long-hidden plant found nowhere but South Carolina.

The new species, dubbed Stachys caroliniana, debuted on the international botanical stage with a peer-reviewed publication describing its unique characteristics. It has taken some time for S. caroliniana to get its due, but that’s not surprising given the rarity of this new example of what is commonly called a hedge-nettle or wound-wort.

Rayner, who earned both master’s and doctoral degrees at Carolina in the mid-1970s, collected the first specimen of what is now known as S. caroliniana in 1977 in the northernmost reaches of Charleston County, south of the Santee River.

Years later, Nelson found the plant growing on the north side of the Santee River in Georgetown County and was able to gather the information to make the case to the scientific community that this was a new species alto-gether.

“It’s one of the most creative things you could ever do. I mean, I didn’t make the species, but I guess I’m introduc-ing it to humankind,” Nelson says.

INNOVATION CENTER ON THE HORIZON

IBM — one of the largest and most respected technol-

ogy companies in the world — is partnering with the

University of South Carolina and will take up residence

on the Columbia campus.

The partnership will create the Center for Applied

Innovation, where experts from the university and IBM

will work together to better serve higher education

institutions nationwide and provide enhanced learning

experiences for tomorrow’s college students.

Global engineering giant Fluor Corporation will join

IBM in the new facility and will be an adviser to the

center. The center will initially be located in existing

facilities on USC’s campus and is expected to move to

a new office building in the Innovista Research District

anticipated to open in 2016.

“The Center for Applied Innovation is the realization

of the university’s vision to advance higher education

through strong, public-private partnerships,” said USC

President Harris Pastides. “Through this collaboration

with IBM and Fluor, USC students will have unique op-

portunities to learn both in and outside the classroom

and further hone their IT skills.”

4 / Breakthrough

In brief

Page 7: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

The Office of Research has named six assistant and associate professors

recipients of the 2015 Breakthrough Stars award.

The Breakthrough Stars program began in 2010 to recognize up-

and-coming junior faculty whose research and scholarly endeavors have

already achieved noteworthy success. Each cohort of Breakthrough Stars

has included faculty members from multiple disciplines, each of them

relatively new in their scholarly careers but already making waves in the

classroom, the lab and beyond.

“Taken as a group, these outstanding scholars are a reflection of the

innovation and research excellence happening every day at South Caroli-

na’s only Carnegie tier-one research institution,” said Prakash Nagarkatti,

USC’s vice president for research.

SIX NAMED BREAKTHROUGH STARS

ENTER THE ICE DRAGON: THE COOL FUTURE OF NANOFLUIDSAndy Hayes and Dale McCants have been thinking small for quite some time. Now, the two mechanical engi-neering alumni are ready to go big — really big — and they’ve got some pretty cool ideas about how to do it.

Hayes, who works for NASA as a thermal engineer, and McCants, an instructor in the College of Engineering and Computing, are champions of nanofluid technology, which uses tiny, specially-shaped metallic nanoparticles suspended in liquid to increase heat transfer within an electronic system. They say the technology could one day be used to cool everything from motorcycle engines to computer server farms and large buildings.

The two already have had success with their product Ice Dragon, a nanofluid cooling agent used by serious computer gamers seeking a competitive edge. Ice Dragon works by allowing gamers to overclock, or run their gaming systems faster, with-out overheating.

Hayes and McCants say the next step is to demonstrate nanofluid’s viability as a cooling liquid for HVAC systems in buildings, where preliminary stud-ies suggest they could reduce energy consumption by between five and 10 percent simply by swapping out tradi-tional coolants for their product.

Northrop DavisCollege of Arts and Sciences

Aidyn IachiniCollege of Social Work

Jason Hattrick-SimpersCollege of Engineering and Computing

Jason O’KaneCollege of Engineering and Computing

Sara SchwebelCollege of Arts and Sciences

Xuemei SuiArnold School of Public Health

Spring 2015 / 5

Page 8: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

WHAT MAKES THE FEATHER SOAR

Dinosaurs became extinct some

66 million years ago, but that’s

hardly the end of their story.

One group of their mod-

ern-day progeny — birds — is a

spectacular evolutionary suc-

cess story largely because of

the feather, which enables flight,

provides camouflage and attracts

mates. And as Matthew Green-wold, a postdoctoral associate in

biological sciences at USC, and

biology professor Roger Sawyer showed in a recent paper, a key to

the feather’s success appears to

be the variety and adaptability of

the interlocking protein building

blocks that feathers are made of.

Feather beta-keratin distin-

guishes birds from all other living

creatures. Birds are the only

organisms that have it, they have

it in abundance, and together with

the other keratins it gives them

an edge that makes them nearly

ubiquitous in a highly competitive

world.

“Feathers are strong, they’re

flexible, they’re durable,” says

Sawyer. “They can go through

a 200-mph dive and sudden

recovery without fracturing, such

as seen for the peregrine falcon,

the fastest member of the animal

kingdom. Perhaps we can mimic

these amazing properties in new

materials.”

BLOWING IN THE WIND

The answer to South Carolina’s quest for renewable energy might be

blowing in the wind — about a dozen miles off the coast.

The University of South Carolina’s Earth Sciences and Resources

Institute (ESRI-SC) is partnering in a study of potential sites for offshore

wind turbines that could generate enough electricity to power nearly six

million homes.

“Offshore winds are stronger and more consistent than land winds, and

they average about 18 miles per hour off of the S.C. coast,” said ESRI-SC

director and earth and ocean sciences professor Camelia Knapp. “That’s

relatively high compared to much of the U.S. coastline.”

The three-year, $750,000 project, funded by the Bureau of Ocean

Energy Management, will not only identify suitable geologic sites for

anchored wind turbines but also try to locate cultural artifacts such as

shipwrecks, hazardous artifacts such as unexploded military ordnance and

submerged prehistoric sites.

“We’re looking at the sites to ascertain whether there is hard ground,

soft ground, slopes and sand channels, fractures and faults, active zones of

sediment transfer,” Knapp said. “Based on the results of the first year, we’ll

zoom in on areas of interest to identify the most viable sites.”

6 / Breakthrough

In brief

Page 9: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

hs Health Sciences

On target for better healthUSC recently landed one of the biggest competitive grants in its history to create a research center dedicated to drug discovery.

Igor Roninson of the S.C. School of Pharmacy will direct the new Center for Targeted Therapeutics, overseeing an $11.3 million Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence grant from the National Institutes of Health over the next five years.

The center is focused on cutting-edge approaches to developing new drugs. Long gone are the days of aspirin, the efficacy of which was discovered long before any of the molecular-level biomachinery of the human body was understood. Medical scientists now have a highly detailed map of biomolecules involved in health and in every manner of illness, from diabetes to cancer to heart disease, and they expand

that map in the laboratory every day.By knowing how a protein or lipid

or some other biomolecule works in a properly functioning human cell or tissue, or how it’s involved when things go wrong, scientists can design a drug to interact with that biomolecule, changing its behavior in a way that improves a patient’s health.

“This is research that leads to drugs acting on specifically defined molecular targets,” Roninson says. “The overwhelm-ing majority of effort is now focused on targeted drugs, with one reason being that side effects can be unpredictable without targeting.”

The approach for discovering new drugs with better side-effect profiles is highly interdisciplinary in nature. The center is bringing six new junior faculty members to the SCCP, the College of Arts and Sciences and the USC School

of Medicine. Each will be paired with a senior mentor in the center, which will include faculty from the Medical University of South Carolina, an SCCP partner.

Roninson notes that the center will provide pilot grant opportunities to a wide range of disciplines across the university.

“Investigators will be able to work in a new area they hadn’t considered before,” he says. “They might make a discovery that can turn their career in a new direction.”

The size of the investment the NIH is putting into the new center reflects how success in drug discovery has changed in recent years.

“Big pharma is notoriously short on ideas,” Roninson says. “It’s important to have corporate partnerships for clin-ical trials, but the most promising drugs originate in academic laboratories now.”

Fall 2014 / 7

Page 10: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Heading in the right DIRECTION

8 / Breakthrough

Front & Center

Page 11: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Sports aren’t a uniquely American pursuit, but there’s something to be said for the range of options available here. If you’re not into basketball, football, soccer or baseball, there’s always lacrosse, ultimate Frisbee, hockey and roll-erball — and plenty more, in all sorts of professional, semi-pro and recreational settings.

Every one of these sports involves intended or unintended contact, and with that comes the inevitable risk of an injury that is getting well-deserved atten-tion at the moment: concussion. In the medical and scientific faceoff against this form of traumatic brain injury, the Uni-versity of South Carolina has developed an extensive playbook to achieve success.

Building a networkIn 2001, USC Sports Medicine physician Dr. Jeffrey Guy founded an innovative program for extending the university’s reach to athletes of all ages: Sports Medicine for Athletes and Recreational Teams, or S.M.A.R.T.

An assistant professor of clinical orthopaedic surgery, Guy often deals in the operating room with the after-effects of athletics gone awry, and with the S.M.A.R.T program he brought his department, the College of Education and the Department of Family and Preventative Medicine together to get ahead of the game, both to prevent injuries and to diagnose and deal with their effects quickly and appropriately.

Twenty Midlands-area high schools, most with partnering middle schools, now participate in the program, which provides medical pre-screening for athletes prepar-ing for varsity and lower level sports. It also puts USC athletic trainers on the fields of play and makes accelerated care available for those who are injured.

Youth monitoring through the S.M.A.R.T. program is in addition to USC Sports Medicine’s coverage of not just the hundreds of student-athletes on campus, but also the club, intramural and recreational student population. And their reach also extends to Benedict College, S.C. State, Columbia College, Claflin University, Columbia International University and a consulting role with Coastal Carolina, Lander College, Coker College and USC Aiken.

With that kind of access to central South Carolina’s sports world, the primary care physicians tasked with concussion care, Dr. Matthew Pollack and pediatric specialist Dr. Jeffrey Holloway, have their hands full because concussion diagnoses are growing in number.

Getting in the fieldMore concussions is actually good news, though, because the uptick in cases is thought to reflect an increase in proper diagnoses rather than an actual increase in concussion incidence. Better diagnostic results reflect, in part, the success of programs like USC’s Department of Athletic Training, which is part of the College of Education and works closely with USC Sports Medicine.

With more than 200 undergraduate majors, it’s one of the largest athletic training departments in the country, and the master’s-level program boasts 40 graduate stu-dents. With those numbers, the program is able to place athletic trainers and clinical trainees on all sorts of fields of play, from youth leagues to USC’s intramural competi-tions to football practices and Williams-Brice Stadium on game days.

On-field assessment of head injuries gets players to medical experts quickly, which has literally proven to be life-saving. Several years ago, ESPNU produced a documen-tary on Caleb Lott, a certified athletic trainer and USC graduate student working the sidelines of a high school football game who swiftly assessed that a player had sustained severe brain trauma.

The player was directed to Palmetto Health Richland in Columbia, which had a trauma team capable of identifying a brain bleed in progress and saved his life with an emergency operation.

Heading in the right DIRECTION

Spring 2015 / 9

Page 12: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Adapting new tacticsNear-immediate assessment is just one means of getting better concussion treat-ment out into the real world, and USC is pushing forward on another front: research to develop better prevention methods and improved treatments.

Jim Mensch, director of USC’s athletic training programs, is leading a research effort that places small accel-erometers behind the ears of youth football players and follows them over the course of the season.

“We are part of six states in a large study,” Mensch says. “We look at what it takes to get a concussion, and when we have these devices on the kids for an entire year, we can look certainly at the magnitude but also the frequency of the impact.”

They’re also able to correlate concussions with other variables. In age-restricted leagues, for example, there might be a 200-pound 12-year-old facing off with a 75-pound 12-year-old. In weight-restricted leagues, two players might be the same weight but differ by three years in age and maturity, and the research data can help organizers determine the safest way of matching up growing kids of all sizes and skill levels.

“Something else we’re looking at this year is coaches,” Mensch says. “There’s a program for USA Football, called Heads Up, that teaches coaches how to design practices with certain drills that show them the right technique, teaching the kids not to lower their heads. We’re looking at how the players do with coaches who have gotten certification versus those that haven’t.”

“We look at what it takes to get a concussion, and when we have these

devices on the kids for an entire year, we can look certainly at the magnitude

but also the frequency of the impact.”

— Jim Mensch, Director, USC Athletic Training Program

10 / Breakthrough

Page 13: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Developing new strategies USC researchers are also looking even further down the field for innovations.

“With concussion, therapies just don’t exist other than rest,” says Troy Herter, an assistant professor in exercise science. “We assume that rest will help, but compare that, say, to someone who comes in after having a stroke.

“Both involve brain damage. For stroke you want to get them out of bed, moving around, going to rehabilitation as soon as possible. The longer you wait, the worse the outcomes tend to be, but you take the complete and total opposite approach with concussion.”

Herter is leading a group at Carolina collecting and analyzing data in a pilot concus-sion study. It builds on his years of research on stroke, an ailment that is different from concussion but, Herter says, does share many similarities.

Finding effective treatments requires better ways of determining which brain func-tions are affected by a concussion and to what degree. USC physicians are trained to administer the ImPACT test, a concussion assessment based on a roughly 25-minute computer exam that includes word and shape memory recall, speed in finding consecu-tive numbers randomly displayed on the screen and a series of questions about how the patient feels physically.

“The ImPACT test is not an end-all be-all, but it gives us an extra tool to assess and evaluate,” says primary physician Holloway. “It can, for example, pick out that subset of the population that feels better, but their brain isn’t quite back yet.”

Herter and his USC colleagues are taking an approach that goes beyond ImPACT, which is largely a cognitive test, using what are essentially video games designed to differentiate a user’s sensory and motor systems. Subjects interact with virtual objects through a robotic interface that simultaneously tracks hand and eye movements. This al-lows the researchers to quantitatively measure performance during increasingly complex tasks requiring skillful coordination.

The scientists can then break down the results to show whether there are specific deficits in seeing, in moving or in thinking that might underlie a person’s inability to match their previous “high scores.”

Being able to carefully measure all three systems, rather than just cognition as in the ImPACT assessment, the researchers hope they can develop new concussion therapies down the line, Herter says.

“People will come in after a stroke and they’ll go through batteries of tests that say they’re fine. Then they’ll fill out a questionnaire and it’s a different story,” Herter says. “They say they have trouble driving the car or performing other daily activities. They’ll say, ‘I’m just not what I used to be,’ but they may still get a clean bill of health.

“A similar situation might exist with concussion, but athletes will lie in order to return to the field of play. By developing objective assessments that mimic complex ac-tivities like sports, we can hopefully improve our ability to determine whether an athlete is actually ready to return to play.”

Spring 2015 / 11

Page 14: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

We often associate faulty memory with dementia or

Alzheimer’s — the elderly person who can’t remember

names or information.

But when the brain’s molecular process for encoding

memory isn’t working properly, the task of developing

acceptable social behavior can be short circuited, as

well, particularly for those with an autism spectrum

disorder, schizophrenia or bipolar disorder.

“Most of what we think of as ‘socially acceptable

behavior’ is not an innate ability,” says Michy Kelly,

an assistant professor in the School of Medicine’s

Department of Pharmacology, Physiology and

Neuroscience. “It’s all learned. So if something breaks

down in your ability to form memories of your social

experiences, there’s no feedback loop that helps you

learn what is and is not socially acceptable. You don’t

remember that people don’t like it when you get too

close or talk too loudly in their face, so you keep on

doing it.”

Kelly’s research focuses on neural proteins that

affect social behavior and a specific memory process

called episodic memory that takes place in the hippo-

campus. Her lab group has been funded by the National

Institutes of Health, the Brain and Behavior Research

Foundation and the PhRMA Foundation.

“I’ve mostly been driven by fundamental questions

of how the brain functions and what fails in neuro-

psychiatric dysfunction,” says Kelly, who began her

career working in pharmaceutical research at Wyeth

Molecular memory

12 / Breakthrough

Page 15: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

and Pfizer. “I’m interested in the molecular mechanisms

that control memory and social behavior and how those

mechanisms break down in disease states.”

Memory is created by changing how easily neurons

communicate with each other across a specific circuit.

For a memory to last minutes to hours, the brain only has

to modify proteins that already exist within synapses, the

connection points between nerve cells. However, for a

memory to last hours to a lifetime, a signal has to make it all

the way to the nerve cell’s nucleus to trigger the production

of new molecules that are then sent all the way back to the

synapses to “glue in” the memory.

With so many molecular mechanisms involved, it’s easy

to understand why our long-term memory is so vulnerable

to disease. The circuit that encodes memories for social

experiences involves the hippocampus, a horse-shoe

shaped area of the brain where many types of memory are

processed.

“Think of a child on the autism spectrum. They seem

unable to appreciate what is and is not socially-acceptable

behavior. We believe this may be due, in part, to faulty

memory encoding, which leaves him/her unable to form

memories involving social cues,” Kelly says. “And it becomes

a vicious cycle. We tend to ostracize those who don’t

act normally, so they have even less opportunity to learn

appropriate behavior. And social isolation starts to break

down the molecular mechanisms in the brain even further.”

It turns out that the human brain doesn’t care if a person

is actually isolated from human contact or if the person

simply feels isolated — the biomarkers can look the same,

Kelly says. Her lab has found enzymes in the hippocampus

that could present promising targets for drug therapy to

normalize episodic memory function and its corresponding

role in learned social behavior.

“Our research shows that the enzyme PDE11A4 is

required for rodents to form memories for social experi-

ences. Not only does PDE11A4 modulate social behaviors,

but social isolation seems to break down PDE11A4,” she

says. “We have also shown that PDE11A4 controls how well

rodents respond to lithium, a classic mood stabilizer used to

treat patients with bipolar disorder.

“We have great hope that our findings will lead to new

treatments for patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder

or an autism spectrum disorder. PDE11A4 is only expressed

in the hippocampus, mostly in the ventral/anterior portion,

so we like it as a drug target. The restricted nature of

PDE11A4 expression gives us hope that a PDE11A4 drug

could provide symptom relief in the hippocampus without

causing unwanted side effects elsewhere in the brain or

body.”

“We hope what we’re learning will have relevance to

autism, schizophrenia as well as memory and learning

deficiencies,” Kelly says. “The whole reason I got inspired

to pursue this line of research is the concept of the brain

encoding memory. That’s a fascinating thing in itself.”

Molecular memory

Spring 2015 / 13

Page 16: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Book Corner

New takes on the Civil War Three new books from history faculty explore the bloodiest conflict on U.S. soil

14 / Breakthrough

Page 17: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

“The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege: A Sensory History of the Civil War,” by Mark M. Smith (Oxford University Press, 2014).

From the boom of cannons firing on Fort Sumter to the smell of decaying horseflesh at Gettysburg to the bodily discomfort aboard the H.L. Hunley submarine, the Civil War represented a variety of profound sensory experiences. “The sheer concentration of soldiers and the technology of warfare took a toll on an unprecedented scale,” Carolina Distinguished Professor of History Mark M. Smith writes in “The Smell of Battle, the Taste of Siege.” “So, too, sounds, smells, sights, tastes and touches were overwhelming in scope and intensity.”

But Smith doesn’t limit his sensory history of the Civil War to the battlefield. Rather, he takes the reader from the “mounting crescendo” preceding secession all the way through to the “deafening” silence” of postwar Charleston, exploring the full range of experience between.

“Civil War Canon: Sites of Confederate Memory in South Carolina,” by Thomas J. Brown (The University of North Carolina Press, 2015).Despite the fundamental conservatism that gives monuments of the Confederacy such as Charleston’s Magnolia Cemetery and the S.C. State House their power, they have played a significant role in how white Southerners have adapted to the varied challenges of modernity over the past century and a half. In “Civil War Canon,” associate professor of history Thomas J. Brown threads the politics of race, gender and econom-ics into an astute examination of the role played by these Palmetto State landmarks in shaping white southern memory.

“White southern memory encompassed many local variations, and South Carolina was peculiar in some ways and less peculiar in others,” Brown writes. “A central aspect of its exceptionalism was that the state looked back on a singularly long and intense engagement with southern nationalism. In that sense, the Civil War canon of South Carolina is uniquely typical of Confederate memory.”

“The Cause of All Nations: An International History of the American Civil War,” by Don H. Doyle (Basic Books, 2014).

McCausland Professor of History Don H. Doyle’s “The Cause of All Nations” examines the Civil War not merely as a domestic battle between the North and the South over the future of a fractured Union, but as a global ideological battle with far-reaching consequences. That battle was waged in print, public oratory and private conversation over basic principles: human equality, liberty and democracy versus aristocracy and slavery.

The various differences in worldview that precipitated the Civil War date back to the American and French Revolutions, Doyle explains, and their resolution on the battlefields of Antietam and Bull Run mark a decisive moment in world history. As he writes in his introduction, “At stake were nothing less than the fate of slavery and the survival of the ‘last best hope’ for the embattled experiment in government by the people. America’s Civil War shook the Atlantic world, and its reverberations at home and abroad shaped the world we inhabit today.”

Spring 2015 / 15

Page 18: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

With Nathan Richardson

School of LawUniversity of South Carolina

Nathan Richardson joined the University of South Carolina’s law school

faculty last fall, leaving an environmental policy think tank in Wash-

ington, D.C., to further pursue his research and teaching interests. He

focuses on environmental law and climate change, and hopes to put his

expertise to work in serving the Palmetto State.

Q&Aen Energy

es Environment & Sustainability

16 / Breakthrough

Page 19: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

in how we choose fuels and how the electric power sector

works. That’s been mostly a state regulated thing with a little

bit of federal involvement. So this is new territory for the

EPA, but it does have the responsibility under the Clean Air

Act for reducing greenhouse gas emissions. This is contro-

versial because the EPA hasn’t been in this game before and

because everything related to climate is controversial. It has

the potential to significantly reduce emissions. It’s necessary

for the president to fulfill promises his administration made

as far as [greenhouse gas] reductions as part of a deal that

was made with China last year. And it’s the first and biggest

step in going through the U.S. economy sector-by-sector in

trying to reduce emissions.

How did you get interested in this area of the law? I’ve always been interested in the environment. I spent a lot

of time growing up outside, and I’m also kind of an energy

and infrastructure nerd. I like systems and understanding the

way that they work. In law school, I had great teachers and

professors for energy and environmental law who really got

me passionate about it. It was a really interesting time to be

a lawyer [in this area of law] because people thought there

would be new legislation on a cap-and-trade bill that would

really change the energy landscape. But that didn’t happen,

so, instead, policy has had to be cobbled together from all

these other tools, and it really takes a lawyer to understand it.

Are you still involved on the policy side of this research? I try to be. I’m hoping to do that more in South Carolina to

try to understand the energy policy here. I’ve tried to make

myself available to anyone that I can be helpful to. Ultimately

it will be the states who are responsible for complying with

the EPA rules. South Carolina, to its credit, is on top of this.

It’s built a group of stakeholders to try to understand what

perspective to take at the proposal stage. I’ve been in limited

contact with that group and hope to work with people there

more.

What do you study in environmental law?

There are two main thrusts to what I do. One is the regula-

tion of the electricity sector at the federal level. A lot of this

regulation has come out of the Clean Air Act, which is an old

law that has been repurposed to address problems related

to climate change. It includes some new rules proposed by

the Environmental Protection Agency that might result in

sweeping changes — big shifts away from coal toward gas or

maybe nuclear and renewables to make electricity.

I’m also interested in oil and gas but that’s mostly low-level,

state regulation. Most oil and gas law in this country is state

law. My work has looked at how regulation in different states

has or hasn’t changed in response to really large increases in

[oil and gas] production due to fracking.

Is this an area of law that is constantly changing? Almost everything that I study at the federal level is existing

law. In fact, the Clean Air Act in its modern form dates to the

1970s. Under the law, Congress pushes a lot of authority to

the EPA. Even though the text of the law was written a long

time ago, what that means in practice is that it’s still evolving

today in big and important ways. Some states are changing

the way that they regulate shale development, not just be-

cause of environmental risk but because there is oil and gas

development happening in places that didn’t have it before.

It’s really interesting to see those different approaches and

how they work or don’t work and reflect the different values

and preferences of the people locally.

What are you focusing on now? The biggest area of my research now is federal regulation

under the Clean Air Act specifically aimed at reducing green-

house gas emissions from fossil fuel such as coal plants and

natural gas plants. The fossil fuel power sector is the biggest,

single greenhouse gas emitting sector in the economy. More

emissions come from coal and gas plants than from any

other area, including cars and trucks. It’s natural for the EPA

to look at that as the first place to regulate. If you can find

a way to get emissions down from those power plants, you

might be able to do it, if not more cheaply, then more simply.

EPA has proposed rules called the Clean Power Plan that ap-

ply to this electric power sector to try to reduce greenhouse

gas emissions.

Why are these rules important?

They are doing this through a part of the Clean Air Act that

has almost never been used before. So in spite of it being

a really old law, there’s new legal territory to research. Tra-

ditionally, this hasn’t been the EPA’s role, getting involved

Spring 2015 / 17

Page 20: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

18 / Breakthrough

Page 21: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

The Ocean — Up Close

THE ART OF SCIENCE

When people see photographs by marine science

senior Julia Bennett, they might think the pictures are

of a distant galaxy. But her art captures a much clos-

er frontier — magnifed images of sea plankton, which

form the foundation for all sea life. “I was always doing

photography and marine science simultaneously but

separately. This is the first time I have been able to

bridge them,” says Bennett, whose exhibition was on

view earlier this year at the Columbia Museum of Art.

The images, captured in-microscope, invite viewers to

observe samples of plankton from an abstract visual

framework and to consider artistically, and perhaps sci-

entifically, the oceans surrounding us. Bennett achieves

her otherworldly pictures by manipulating the micro-

scope’s light sources. By approaching the project from

an aesthetic point of view, she seeks to make viewers

stop and wonder. “These pictures frame the ocean as an

unexplored frontier right here on Earth. It’s an environ-

ment that should be explored, preserved and not used

as a resource of exploitation,” she says. W

Fall 2014 / 19

Page 22: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

hs Health Sciences

Steve Borgianini is looking millions of years into the past with his research, but what he learns about days long gone has plenty of relevance to the here and now.

An evolutionary biologist, the USC Beaufort associate professor is interested in the original fish-out-of-water story — how fish evolved to climb onto dry land. Any sea-dwelling creature that’s eyeing a permanent move onto terra firma has a lot of evolutionary work to do, from learning how to breathe oxygen not dissolved in water to learning how not to dry out to conquering gravity without water buoyancy.

But given that life originated in the oceans, it’s clearly been done before. And there’s no better place than coastal South Carolina to study the many steps involved in the ocean-to-land transition, Borgianini says.

That’s because South Carolina’s coastline is unusually flat with few freshwater inputs, making for estuaries that extend very deep inland. The transition from ocean water to less-salty estuaries to freshwater flowing from the inland rivers covers considerable hor-izontal distance.

And owing to residential and commercial development, there is now a living evolutionary laboratory, in a sense, set up adjacent to the S.C. coast. Buildings and impermeable roads and other surfaces have replaced forests and soil that once absorbed much of the precipitation from storms in the area. Water that used to take days, weeks, or years to recharge shallow aquifers and then trickle into estuaries is now diverted all at once as storm runoff.

“It’s kind of hard to think of freshwater as a toxin, but in our

system it is,” Borgianini says. “It’s a great place to study saltwa-ter-freshwater dynamics in estuaries and how altering patterns of flow in estuaries can impact the current species assemblages there.”

One organism he focuses on is the red-jointed fiddler crab, Uca minax, which appears to be in the midst of an evolutionary journey from surf to turf. In its early larval stage, the crab still needs saltwater to survive, but this crustacean lives its whole adult life in the semiterrestrial environment at the fringes of the estuary, where rain, groundwater seeps, and freshwater streams and rivers create the freshwater habitat this crab seems to prefer.

By studying the effects that inundations of freshwater have on species like fiddler crabs, on the phyto- and zooplankton that serve as the base of the aquatic food web, and on the communities of plants and animals in the same environment, Borgianini is gleaning insight into the evolutionary ladder that sea critters must climb to leave behind the salty life and life aquatic.

He’s also looking toward the future of the Lowcountry’s marine ecosystems — and the entire world’s coastline, for that matter. Coastal construction often short circuits the “water cycle” that brings freshwater intrusions into estuaries, and the sea level rise pre-dicted for coming decades will bring brackish water further inland everywhere. Understanding how shifts in the saltwater-freshwater balance will affect ecology is crucial to trying to ascertain ways to minimize environmental consequences.

“I don’t think we can engineer our way out of this,” Borgianini says. “We’re going to have to deal with the circumstances that come along with it.”

Canary in a coal mine, crab on a coastline

20 / Breakthrough

Page 23: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Fall 2014 / 21

Page 24: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Fresh air in a crowded world

Whether it’s the fl u, truck emissions or an anthrax attack, Shamia Hoque is on a mission to keep people safe when the air they breathe in this highly interconnected world is a hazard.

And airborne hazards are everywhere — meaning there are just as many oppor-tunities to thwart their spread, provided someone asks the right questions. If a co-worker returns from a vacation carrying TB, for example, can the disease’s reach be diminished by good offi ce design? Can a teacher open the windows in a classroom without making students sick from the exhaust fumes of schoolbuses idling nearby? If an under-the-weather airline passenger is later found to have SARS, which passengers might merit quarantine and what precisely needs to be cleaned to ensure no one else propagates an epidemic?

Hoque is an expert in understanding how airborne species — including gases such as carbon monoxide, particles of soot, pathogens like the H1N1 virus or aerosols like weaponized anthrax — behave in complex, real-world environments.

An assistant professor of civil engineering, Hoque develops computer simulations that predict where, how fast and in what concentrations these particles move. Th e computer models simultaneously take into account details such as furniture arrange-ments, ventilation register locations and the volume fl owing through the air-han-dling system as well as how the particles’ toxicity might decrease over time.

The models can be helpful both reactively and proactively, she says. Her dissertation examined the 2001 anthrax attacks on Congress, during which positive anthrax tests came back even from areas that were thought to have been cleaned.

“One thing I want to do is take these detailed models that only I can understand and transform them into something sim-ple, like an app,” she says. First responders could then plug in rudimentary informa-tion to fi nd the most high-risk areas to focus on, while a more detailed analysis could subsequently identify unexpected places, such as ductwork, that might merit particular scrutiny.

Hoque has even received interest from the Department of Homeland Security for using her computer models forensically. From the residue locations of an airborne pathogen discovered after the fact, for example, Hoque might be able to reconstruct the time and place that it was fi rst released.

And proactively, an analysis can show which workspace designs best isolate airborne pathogens so that large-scale spread of winter colds (or worse) might be prevented in an office space. Or how adding a series of half-walls to an architect’s blueprint might reduce patient-to-patient infections in a hospital under construction.

As the built environment — the indoor and outdoor areas where people work, live and recreate — grows, the interdisci-plinary movement to make its buildings, parks and interior designs integrated and energy-effi cient has created close quarters for everyone. Shamia Hoque is part of the team ensuring that that togetherness can be as safe as possible.

hs Health Sciences

22 / Breakthrough

Page 25: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

In the patented

process,

intensely cold

carbon dioxide

is sprayed onto

fabric, killing

mites and deac-

tivating many

of the proteins

that can

cause allergic

reactions.

Carpets, upholstery

and fabrics can

harbor dust mites

and all sorts of other

allergens.

Soon after it hits the

fabric, the carbon

dioxide is removed

by vacuum.

The fabric never

gets wet, preventing

the dampness that

new critters fi nd so

alluring.

am Advanced Materials

Freeze-drying allergensUSC chemical engineering professor Mike Matthews co-founded CarboNix LLC in 2006 with partner and engineering

alumnus Al Quick. They were recently issued two patents for their allergen removal system that eliminates some of

the underlying causes of severe allergies and asthma attacks. The heart of the system is CO2. “We originally started

working with carbon dioxide for sterilizing engineered tissues,” he says. “But we found that our CO2 technology can

be used to remove or deactivate a broad spectrum of the common asthma triggers found in people’s homes — in their

carpets, their bedding, their upholstered furniture. We want to give doctors and patients a new intervention to help

them reduce their attacks from asthma or severe allergies,” says Matthews. “We provide something that no current

interventions will do.”

Fall 2014 / 23

Page 26: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

In the pipeline

Scott Decker understands all too well what it’s like to be a child labeled as learning disabled. The former school psychologist was once in classes for slow learners before someone realized he simply learned differently. He ended up in accelerated classes for gifted students.

“Learning how to read, do math and write are as critical as walking and breathing in our society,” Decker says. “So if you don’t have those basic skills, you are at a tremendous disadvantage.”

Decker, now an assistant professor of psychology at Carolina, researches how we can better identify children who learn differently and find for them an alternate path to success.

Typical learning disability diagnoses come through an hours-long evaluation process that happens when a seemingly bright child cannot perform well in school. That’s what hap-pened for Decker as a student, and he has conducted and even created many of those diagnostic tests as a school psychologist.

“I got into academia, so I could figure out how we can do it better,” he says. Turns out, learning disabilities are all in your head, or rather the brain.

By watching brain activity when a child is attempting a thought activity that causes difficulty, like reading or math, researchers can distinguish children with learning problems with 90 percent certainty.

“Brain activity changes considerably when the child attempts to do the work that is a problem for them,” Decker says. “They’re not being defiant or not trying, you can see their brains are not functioning as well on those tasks.”

However, the identification of the problem can be the path to treatment, Decker says.

“Research has shown that it is possible to change brain activity through neurofeedback,” he says. “How do they do it? No one knows, but it does happen.”

Decker has been awarded an ASPIRE grant from the University of South Carolina’s Office of Research to see whether he can help improve the identification of children with learning disabilities and find successful treatments.

“That’s been my passion and my goal throughout my career: How do we use neuroscience to improve education for children and to use it to help children with disabilities?” Decker says. “If you have two children who can’t read, one might be because of language and the other might be because of vision. And the brain activity measures might help us determine that.”

Decker thinks neurofeedback could be used to treat many disabilities, such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, as an alternative to using medication or trying to create some other accommodation for the disability.

“If you can teach kids with learning disabilities how to reallocate their attentional resources to make their brain work differently, then over the course of time, you might actually improve how their brain processes information that is needed for reading, for math, for writing,” he says. “This would be actually fixing the underlying problem rather than treating symptoms.”

Decker admits that is a bit of a controversial study area, determining whether disabilities can be managed through neurofeedback or if medication is necessary. Even so, he says, his work on whether brain scans can identify certain deficien-cies is well worth the time.

“An EEG test takes 20 minutes versus a really good evaluation for learning disabilities that takes about five hours,” he says. “If I could save time on testing, yet provide better identification and treatment options, that would be a useful service for children.”

New approaches to learning disabilities

24 / Breakthrough

Page 27: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Initiated in 2005, the Magellan Scholar program is celebrating a signifi cant milestone this fall:

10 years and $3 million in funding for more than 1,000 undergraduate research projects. These

numbers hint at a larger story of ‘Discovery in Every Discipline,’ and we invite you to visit uof.

uof.sc/MagellanTen to get the big picture.

Featuring photo galleries, news and stories of Magellan Scholars past and present,

MagellanTen is your portal to the program’s 10th anniversary celebration slated for November.

Join us and embark on your own voyage of discovering the array of fascinating undergraduate

research projects at the University of South Carolina.

Celebrating Ten Years of Discovery for Every Discipline

Magellan Scholar: Discovery for Every Discipline

Science – Technology – Engineering – Math – Visual Art – Communication – History – Theater – Music

Social Sciences – Medicine – Marketing – Business

Page 28: Breakthrough Research Magazine - Spring 2015 Issue

Nonprofi tOrganizationU.S. Postage

PAIDPermit #766Columbia, SC

Columbia, SC 29208

Vertical crop markAll feathers on the right side of the crop mark do not print, only use for bleed

Horizontal crop markTail feather will always bleed o� the bottom, the pointed tip should NEVER be seen. All feather art below this crop line is for bleed use only

sc.edu/nolimits

As a Gamecock, my determination has No Limits.Yan Tong, facultyComputer Science and Engineering

A huge smile, a nervous grin, a devious wink or a deadpan gaze—facial expressions refl ect our moods and let others know how we’re feeling. But what if a computer could do the same thing: recognize our feelings by the expressions on our faces? Yan Tong, a computer science researcher, is focused on computer vision and pattern recognition. She’s cataloging thousands of facial manifestations with the goal of programming computers to recognize certain emotions. If successful, her work in could help teach autistic children, improve online instruction or even detect impaired drivers. Yan’s study is just one way USC research is turning science fi ction into science fact.