Categories
Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News Subfeature Technology

Dallas Innovates: Gamers join scientific research to help end the COVID-19 threat

BALANCED Media|Technology and Complexity Gaming have launched a citizen science effort that will test drug compounds against coronavirus, helping SMU sift through possible treatments faster

Source: HEWMEN

DALLAS (SMU) – While medical professionals everywhere have been hard at work for months searching for a cure to the COVID-19 virus, an unlikely industry has emerged to join the fight: the video game community, Dallas Innovates’ Alex Edwards reports.

A new effort from BALANCED Media|Technology (BALANCED) and Complexity Gaming intends to garner spare computer processing power that could help find treatments for coronavirus. The two Dallas-based organizations are encouraging anyone that works with video games to donate to the citizen science/crowdsourcing initiative called #WeAreHEWMEN, Edwards explains.

The BALANCED’s HEWMAN app will use gamers’ processing power to go through more than 200,000 FDA medications and compounds, with help from SMU computational biologist John Wise. Using these 200,000 compounds, between 1.5 to 3 million virtual experiments will be run, simulating attempts to dock compounds to specific locations on the virus. By identifying the compounds with the highest probability of success at treating coronavirus, Wise, who works in SMU’s Drug Discovery, Design and Delivery, can test new treatments faster and therefore, potentially get a viable treatment to the market more quickly.

Read the story about this innovative collaboration here.

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

 

 

 

Categories
Mind & Brain Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers Subfeature

Kids who blame themselves for mom’s sadness are more likely to face depression and anxiety

DALLAS (SMU) – “Even if she doesn’t say it, I know it’s my fault that my mother gets sad.” 

Kids who believe comments like this – assuming blame for their mom’s sadness or depression – are more likely to face depression and anxiety themselves, a new study led by SMU has found.

“Although mothers with higher levels of depressive symptoms face increased risk that their children will also experience symptoms of depression and anxiety, our study showed that this was not the case for all children,” said SMU family psychologist and lead author Chrystyna Kouros. “Rather, it was those children who felt they were to blame for their mother’s sadness or depression…that had higher levels of internalizing symptoms.”

In light of the findings, Kouros said it’s critical that parents and others who regularly interact with children pay close attention to the kinds of comments that kids make about their mom’s symptoms and to intervene if children incorrectly think that it’s their fault that their mom is depressed. Children who take on this blame can benefit from therapies and interventions that target negative thoughts, said Kouros, SMU associate professor of psychology.

Sharyl E. Wee and Chelsea N. Carson, graduate students at SMU, and Naomi Ekas, an associate professor of psychology at Texas Christian University, also contributed to the study, which was published in the Journal of Family Psychology. 

The study is based on surveys taken by 129 mothers and their children, who were recruited from the Dallas-Fort Worth community through schools, flyers and online advertisements. On average, children included in the study were 13 years old. 

Moms were asked to agree or disagree to 20 statements like “I could not shake off the blues” and “I lost interest in my usual activities” to assess if they had depressive symptoms, even if they had not actually been diagnosed with depression. Nearly 12 percent of the women surveyed were found to have potential clinical levels of depressive symptoms.

The moms were also asked to assess whether they felt their children had symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Kids, meanwhile, were asked to complete a total of four surveys to see if they were dealing with any anxiety or depression and whether they blamed themselves for any signs of depression in their mothers.

Kouros said there are two likely explanations for the linkage between mothers’ depressive symptoms and kids’ own mental health issues:

“If children blame themselves for their mothers’ depressive symptoms, then they may be more likely to brood about their mother’s symptoms. And we know from an extensive body of research that rumination over stressors – especially ones that are uncontrollable – is linked with depression and anxiety,” Kouros said. “Also, if children feel personally responsible for their mothers’ symptoms, they may try to ‘make it better’ and use ineffective coping strategies. This could lead to a sense of helplessness, failure, and low self-worth in the child, since ultimately the child was misattributing the cause of their mothers’ depressive symptoms.”

More studies are needed to see if depressed dads have the same effect on their children, Kouros said.

Many media outlets picked up the story, including KERA News, Moms, PsychCentral and The Federalist

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

Categories
Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News Subfeature

If women scientists wore fake facial hair, would men take them more seriously?

DALLAS (SMU) – Bonnie Jacobs is a world-renowned paleobotanist at SMU (Southern Methodist University) who specializes in the plant fossil record and what it reveals about past communities, ecosystems and climate. Her work in Kenya, Tanzania, and Ethiopia has helped document the origins and evolution of Africa’s modern biomes, as well as shed light on the environmental context of human family origins.

But she felt she needed to don a mustache and a beard to make a point.

Dr. Alisa Winkler, Vertebrate paleontologist, Southern Methodist University. Above: Dr. Bonnie Jacobs, Paleobotanist, Southern Methodist University. Credit for both photographs: 2015 Kelsey Vance

So did Alisa Winkler, an anatomy professor at UT Southwestern who also conducts research on fossil rodents, rabbits and other ancient mammals at SMU.

A new exhibit at the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History called the “The Bearded Lady Project,” is drawing attention to the sexism that female paleontologists still face in the pursuit of their careers. The exhibit features portraits of women engaged in paleontology research – many in difficult and remote locations – while wearing false beards or mustaches. The tongue-in-cheek question being asked through the exhibit is, “Would they have been granted more respect and credibility had they been men?”

You can read more about this exhibit in The Dallas Morning News here.

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

Categories
Earth & Climate Fossils & Ruins Plants & Animals Researcher news SMU In The News Subfeature

New leaf fossils found in Ethiopia’s Mush Valley

DALLAS (SMU) – Leaf fossils from Ethiopia’s Mush Valley that date back nearly 22 million years have been found by SMU’s Earth Science professors Bonnie Jacobs and Neil J. Tabor and a dozen other international scientists.

The Mush Valley is the first site in Africa to produce an assemblage of some 2,400 leaves from that time interval, and the first to be studied using multiple lines of evidence, including associated microscopic fossils and chemical constituents, that tell us details about the ancient ecosystem.

Paleobotanical remains that an international team found in Ethiopia’s Mush Valley.

Scientists can use data from the study to answer fundamental questions, like what climate change may look like in the future. Specifically, climate scientists can take information from the study, along with other data, to test models used to estimate future global climate change.

“The past helps us to understand how ecological processes operate under conditions so different from now. It is like the Earth has done experiments for us,” said Jacobs, a world-renowned paleobotanist at SMU (Southern Methodist University).

In addition, using fossils to learn more about what Africa’s prehistoric ecosystems were like can provide context for events in the past, such as when a land bridge developed between Africa and Eurasia 24 million years ago or the environment for primate precursors to the human family.

The fossils found in this study span an interval of 60,000 years during the early Miocene Epoch, which began 23 million years ago. Ellen D. Currano, a paleoecologist at the University of Wyoming, was the lead author of the study.  It was published in the journal Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology.

You can read more about the work that Jacobs, Currano and the international colleagues have been doing in the Mush Valley here.

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in eight degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

 

Categories
Feature Fossils & Ruins Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers Subfeature

Smithsonian has extended Sea Monsters Unearthed exhibit one more year to 2021

DALLAS (SMU) – “Sea Monsters Unearthed: Life in Angola’s Ancient Seas” was given an additional year at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. It will now be on display until 2021.

The exhibit has been viewed by 6 million visitors since it opened last year, leading to Smithsonian granting a longer stay for the exhibit in the Washington, D.C. museum. It was originally supposed to leave next year. Smithsonian also asked for an additional exhibit window for “Sea Monsters Unearthed,” showcasing the international and interdisciplinary collaboration that went into discovering the fossils.

The exhibit showcases never-before-seen fossils from Angola that was made possible largely due to the work of SMU vertebrate paleontologist Louis Jacobs and his colleagues and undergraduates. SMU Emeritus Professor of Paleontology Louis Jacobs and his SMU colleague Michael Polcyn forged a partnership with collaborators in Angola, Portugal and the Netherlands to explore and excavate Angola’s rich fossil history, while laying the groundwork for returning the fossils to the West African nation. Back in Dallas, Jacobs and Polcyn, director of the University’s Digital Earth Sciences Lab, and research associate Diana Vineyard went to work over a period of 13 years with a small army of SMU students to prepare the fossils excavated by Projecto PaleoAngola. These students – including Myria Perez, a former paleontology student who is now a fossil preparator at the Perot Museum – worked in basement laboratories to painstakingly clean and preserve the fossils.

“Sea Monsters Unearthed” allows visitors to visually dive into the cool waters off the coast of West Africa as they existed millions of years ago when the continents of Africa and South America were drifting apart. It’s a unique opportunity to examine fossils of ancient marine reptiles and learn about the forces that continue to mold life both in out of the ocean.

After 2021, the exhibit will return to Angola. Learn more here.

 

About SMU

SMU is the nationally ranked global research university in the dynamic city of Dallas. SMU’s alumni, faculty and nearly 12,000 students in seven degree-granting schools demonstrate an entrepreneurial spirit as they lead change in their professions, communities and the world.

About the National Museum of Natural History

The National Museum of Natural History is connecting people everywhere with Earth’s unfolding story. The museum is one of the most visited natural history museums in the world with approximately 7 million annual visitors from the U.S. and around the world. Opened in 1910, the museum is dedicated to maintaining and preserving the world’s most extensive collection of natural history specimens and human artifacts. It is open daily from 10 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. (closed Dec. 25). Admission is free. For more information, visit the museum on its website and on Facebook and Twitter.