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Published by the Office of Communications | 
On December 4, 2002, the Center for a Livable Future held its third Research Day to highlight work done in the previous year by the recipients of the Faculty and Student Research Fund. The purpose of the research grants is to support innovative, interdisciplinary study by Johns Hopkins University faculty, fellows, and students on the complex interactions among diet, health, food production and food security, equity, and the world’s resources. The fund also seeks to assist faculty, fellows, and students to develop successful careers in the investigation of topics on sustainability or in policy development for sustainability. Here are their progress reports. Katalin Szlavecz , PhD, senior lecturer and associate research scientist in the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, sampled soils from tilled, non-tilled, and organically farmed plots throughout the year to determine whether farming practices have a short-term and/or long-term effect on the diversity and abundance of soil fauna. High biodiversity and abundance of organisms are major components in maintaining long-term soil fertility. Tilling and cultivation are major disturbances for soil organisms. Dr. Szlavecz found that overall biodiversity was highest in untilled plots. In addition, detritus on the soil provides cover and food for many decomposers, important elements in an agro-ecosystem. Szlavecz found that organic plots harbor the greatest variety of arthropods.  Ellen Silbergeld , PhD, professor, Environmental Health Sciences, is developing a biologically based health risk assessment for antibiotics used in concentrated, high-volume animal production. Many antibiotics approved by the FDA for non-therapeutic use in animals are also used to treat human disease. All use of antibiotics inevitably selects for resistant organisms. People can be exposed to resistant pathogens via consumption of food or by working in food animal production. In addition, household contacts of farm workers may be exposed to these bacteria via person-to-person contact. Dr. Silbergeld and her group have found that environmental routes of exposure may be important. Until now, antibiotic resistance has been evaluated as a food problem. Dr. Silbergeld recommends working to understand the biology of microbes, including the impacts of antibiotics on microbial evolution and the horizontal gene transfer from resistant organisms to other potentially pathogenic organisms, and then improving surveillance methods accordingly to protect the public’s health.
Alain Madec, PhD, postdoctoral fellow, Center for Water and Health, worked to develop and assess the potential of a low-pressure membrane filtration process to remove solids and microorganisms from liquid animal waste. Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) containing thousands of animals generate huge volumes of liquid waste that is currently stored, untreated, in large, open holding ponds called “animal waste lagoons.” Dr. Madec developed a pilot laboratory membrane filter system to treat liquid animal waste. Using this system, he was able to remove over 99 percent of suspended particles, a variety of bacteria including fecal coliforms, E. coli, and enterococci, to their detection limits (>99.999 percent reduction), and over 99.99 percent of male-specific and somatic bacteriophage indicator viruses. Future research will focus on developing a working membrane bioreactor that will further improve treatment of liquid animal waste by membrane filtration. Members of the genusMoringa are cultivated throughout the tropics because they are fast growing and are a valuable as a source of food, medicines, oils and industrial agents. Moringa oleifera is the most abundant and most widely cultivated species of this monogeneric family, having been cultivated by the ancient Romans, Greeks, and Egyptians. In addition to being a valuable source of food, it has numerous medicinal uses, long known to folk practitioners, some of which are now being supported by modern scientific methods. Many of the other 11 species, however, are highly endangered. In order to preserve the biological potential of these rare species, Jed Fahey, MS, research associate with the School of Medicine’s Department of Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, and Kitty Stephenson, also with Pharmacology and Molecular Sciences, successfully developed tissue culture methods of propagation using readily available species. These tissue culture protocols should now be transferable, with slight modifications, to the endangered species. In addition, collaborations with colleagues in St. Croix and Kenya will allow field testing of the propagated plantlets.
Cars, trucks, buses, and other mobile sources are responsible for a large fraction of the air pollution in urban environments. Sung R. Kim, PhD candidate in Environmental Health Sciences , studied the amount of air pollution generated by SUVs compared to sedans, using time-resolved measurements of air pollution and traffic in a Baltimore parking garage. Kim found that the air pollution generated by SUVs was two to three times greater than that of sedans, depending on the pollutant. Pollutants in the included carbon monoxide, volatile organic compounds, or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. This study provides some of the first objective measures of the actual impact of different vehicle types on air quality, and demonstrates the importance of consumer choice in reducing air pollution. With increased agriculture and nutrient enrichment, the dominant organisms in the Chesapeake Bay are planktonic diatoms and dinoflagellates. The increase in dinoflagellates is detrimental because they are not palatable for other organisms. Some of the species, such as Pfiesteria piscicida , are toxic. Grace Brush, PhD, professor in the Whiting School of Engineering Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, has analyzed sediment core samples from the bay in collaboration with Angela Arnold, MSE, and PhD candidate in Geography and Environmental Engineering, and Holly Bowers, MS, University of Maryland Institute of Human Virology. The sediment core samples, taken from areas where Pfiesteria piscicida has been found recently, are dated and analyzed for diatoms, dinoflagellates, pollen, and nutrients. With these data, Brush and her colleagues hope to determine whether Pfiesteria outbreaks are a recent phenomenon correlated with nutrient enrichment associated with agriculture, or if they are iterations of cycles dating back centuries, perhaps pre-dating European colonization and deforestation in the Chesapeake Bay watershed. Although proponents of agricultural biotechnology, including the U.S. government, emphasize its potential global humanitarian and ecologic benefits, most genetically modified crops benefit large-scale farming in industrialized nations. There remain important ethical, social, and ecologic concerns about privatization of agricultural research, patenting of genetic material, and the role genetically modified crops should play in attaining a sustainable global food supply. Susan M. Bernard, JD, DrPH, MPH '90, instructor in Environmental Health Sciences, investigated the legal and social climate in which agricultural biotechnology has developed and found that long-term food policy decisions are being made without effective public direction and oversight. Potential solutions include increasing public ownership and control of agricultural research and policy, re-examining patent policy, and developing financial incentives and statutory requirements to encourage the biotech industry to better address global food needs. Veena Das, PhD, professor with the School of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology Ranendra Das, associate research scientist, School of Arts and Sciences Department of Anthropology; and Lori Leonard, PhD, assistant professor in International Health, are conducting a comparative study on how low-income families experience and manage illness. In Delhi, for example, low-income families have easy access to health care providers, but little cash to purchase a full course of antibiotics. Meanwhile, in rural Chad, access to health care is so difficult that many ailments considered illnesses elsewhere are simply endured as facts of life. In Baltimore, on the other hand, the burden of chronic diseases is compounded by violence, lack of insurance, and high rates of incarceration. The investigators conclude from this comparative analysis that what at first might appear to be the erratic actions of irrational, uninformed, or irresponsible patients, are in fact responses determined by local environmental factors including the way health services are structured and the patterns of care. The Watermark Project was organized in 2000 by Margaret Keck, PhD, professor with the School of Arts and Sciences Department of Political Science, as a five-to-ten-year interdisciplinary study conducted in collaboration with newly emerging river basin management teams in Brazil. New laws in Brazil decentralized the management of water. This decentralization provided a unique opportunity to study different approaches to management on a watershed-specific basis by considering effects of different ecological conditions, variation in institutional rules, and involvement of non-governmental actors. In the first stage of the project, researchers collected descriptive information on the watershed’s ecology, history, patterns of land use, and infrastructure. The results from the baseline studies have begun to produce a set of hypotheses on institutional development in settings of perennial uncertainty, which will influence the next phase of the project. The ultimate question is whether decentralized water management actually works, leading to a more rational and environmentally sound and just approach to water management.  |
