Who is Donna Vogel?

Photo Credit: Keith Weller

On March 18th, 2009, Donna Vogel—the wife of our very own CPI editor David Margulies—competed as one of the final nine contestants on Jeopardy’s Tournament of Champions!

This tournament, which begins with fifteen contestants, narrows them down within the span of one week (five shows) to nine semi-finalists: the winners of each of the five shows, plus four “wild cards,” who are the highest money winners (excluding the actual episode winners). Then, the following week, those nine semifinalists compete in three shows to determine who will proceed to the finals. The winner of each show enters the final competition, which is spread over two episodes on the last two days of that week. Contestants’ scores those last two days are added together to determine the winner of the tournament.

Of course, this is how the time-frame plays out for viewers. For contestants, though, things happen much more quickly. Jeopardy tapes five shows a day, and since the Tournament of Champions could not begin filming until its venue site, the Consumer Electronics Show, had closed for the day, the competitions did not begin until after 7 p.m. “It was tiring for us,” Margulies (Vogel’s husband) recounted, “so you can imagine what it was like for the contestants!”

Vogel has been a long-time Jeopardy fan, ever since her sons were young. As they grew up, she urged the boys to go on the kids’ show, then the teen show, and finally the college show, but they never complied. Finally, when the show switched to an online screening test, her sons turned to her and said, “Okay, Mom, you take the test!” So she did.

In July 2008, Vogel walked away from a four-day winning streak with $87,299 (which she generously donated to charity). Her winnings were enough to earn her a spot on this year’s Tournament of Champions, where she earned $9,900 in the quarterfinals. This amount advanced to the semifinals as the #4 wildcard. She unfortunately did not make it into the final round, but she still managed to walk away with $10,000—the “consolation prize” for all semifinalists.

Vogel may have already been accustomed to receiving some visibility, as the Director of the Professional Development Office of the Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions. However, being a contestant on Jeopardy has elevated her to an entirely different sort of status. “It’s a very special kind of status; it puts you in a special category,” she said in one interview (viewable at Jeopardy.com). “One colleague of mine who works in New York said to me, ‘People are more impressed that I know a Jeopardy champion than that I know two Nobel Prize winners.’”

Dr. Vogel, we are definitely impressed.

Obama Favors Stem Cells

Embryo killer! Science savior! The hullabaloo over Obama’s recent repeal of federal funding restraints on embryonic stem cell research could be framed in a number of different ways. Two possibilities follow:

1. Pro life vs. Pro choice. Here, the issue is once again, who is more important: the life not yet born, or the life currently suffering? The purpose of researching stem cells is to find better treatments for ailments and conditions affecting living, breathing human beings. Opponents of using embryonic stem cells (which can transform into any cell in the human body and therefore be used to generate healthy replacement tissue) for research argue that this research destroys human embryos, which are the equivalent of unrealized human lives. Proponents argue back that firstly, researchers usually procure their stem cells from fertility clinic surpluses that were destined to be destroyed, anyway. (1) Secondly, why should an undeveloped embryo deserve more protection and championship than a suffering child or even a fully developed adult? As one United States Representative, Jim Langerin, put it: “What could be more pro-life than research that would extend and improve the quality of life for millions of people who are struggling with some of life’s most challenging chronic conditions and diseases?” (2)
2. Scary Science vs. Safe Morals. One predominant fear over Obama’s lifting restrictions on embryonic stem cell research—in spite of his assertion that cloning for human reproduction is “dangerous, profoundly wrong, and has no place in our society”—is that this action moves us one step closer to human cloning. The National Right to Life Committee worries that his administration is allowing scientists the opportunity to “create, and then destroy, embryos through cloning for the sole purpose of harvesting stem cells.” (3) Scientists such as Dr. Curt Civin, one of the leading scientists who helped develop the technique for isolate stem cells, as well as the founding director of the Center for Stem Cell Biology and Regenerative Medicine at the University of Maryland, try to pacify these doomsayers. “This was already life that was going to be destroyed. The choice is to throw [the embryos] away or use them for research.” (3)

The Bottom Line: The order Obama has overturned will allow federally funded research to use hundreds of new embryonic stem cell lines which, prior to that day, were limited to the lines created before August 2001 by legislation George W. Bush had signed while in office. Obama’s reasoning was thus, “Medical miracles do not happen simply by accident. They result from painstaking costly research.” (3) We can only hope that the resulting research will produce many such miracles.

Flow Cytometry with an Indian Connection

The Cytometry Society – India (TCS) held their second annual meeting in Bhubaneswar, Orissa on February 14-15 and the members greeted talks from many international leaders in the field – Attila Tarnok, Paul Smith, Susann Mϋller, Henning Ulrich, Jim Leary, David Galbraith, Bob Zucker and TCS’s own B. Ravindran.   Many of the speakers are affiliated with the journal Cytometry Part A (which held its annual board meeting in Bhubaneswar).  They were joined by other Cytometry Part A board members such as Awtar Krishan for a two week teaching tour of various Indian scientific institutions.  To follow their trek across India while expounding upon the joys and breakthroughs in quantitative single cell analysis using flow cytometry and image analysis, access: http://www.tissomics.de/neu/documente/index.php?content=300104000000000

Ereaders: What’s “Logical” from the CP Standpoint

Ereader Controversies Escalate
Whether you are an old-school addict intent upon preserving your leather-bound tomes, or a tech-savvy gadget guru loving your new iPhone, you will likely have heard about the launch of Amazon’s latest eReader, Kindle 2. Regardless of how you feel about this particular device, you will also most likely have formed some sort of opinion concerning eReaders in general.

Some people love them. “I’m convinced,” says Dean L. Hubbard, President of Northwest Missouri State University, “that students will read more and they will learn more, by using this medium.” (1) For the 2009 spring semester, Northwest Missouri purchased ebooks for 500 students in ten different courses, as it moved toward an all (or primarily) e-textbook campus. Meanwhile, activists at Andrews University promote using e-textbooks as opportunities to “go green.” Buying e-books eliminates the need for paper (which saves trees), packaging (which creates less waste), and shipping (which minimizes vehicular pollution), thus contributing to a happier, healthier environment. (2)

However, everyone’s not happy. For one thing, the publishing world may be starting to fear the Kindle. With Amazon’s massive, easily searchable store now instantly accessible at the fingertips of Kindle owners, what is to stop Amazon from grabbing a monopoly the world of books? Or even magazines, or newspapers, or . . . journals?

To try and assuage some of this fear and forboding, let us look at Current Protocols and see how this publication would fare in the eReader world. On the Kindle’s 6” diagonal screen, one 8 ½ x 11” CP page would look awfully shrunken. Now, the obvious argument is that all eReaders—the Kindle included—use reflowable text. This means that the amount of text doesn’t change; it is just displayed in different quantities (i.e. on different rows, on differing numbers of pages, etc.), depending how large the text size is. (This is very much like how a computer document works. If you change the font size, words get pushed to the next line, lines get pushed to the next page, etc.)

Reflowable text would solve everything if the contents of every book/magazine/newspaper/CP article were composed strictly of text. The problem arises when images, graphs, charts, and other “aesthetically pleasing” and organization-based images come into play. How can a 5×7” graph possibly be displayed on a screen that is not even 4” wide? Zooming and scrolling are two considerations, until we remember that the very purpose of charts and graphs is to make information as immediately and easily accessible as possible. With zooming and scrolling back and forth over an image, you are forcing the reader to overcome a digital obstacle course to find the very information you intended to be “available at a glance.” Honestly, as a reader, I would keep my paper copy and tell Amazon to take a hike.

This is not to say that all eReaders will remain in their 6” screen format. One company attempting to corner the “larger device” market is called Plastic Logic. Its device, with a 10.7” diagonal e-ink screen, is built to not only support products that rely on visual display (i.e. magazines, newspapers, and journals), but also to appeal to their more destructive users. (For example: You can smash your fist into the reader’s 22 x 28” screen and not even make a dent.) This is because it is made of pliable organic polymer rather than the more traditional, brittle silicon of standard eReaders such as the Kindle. (3) In essence, Plastic Logic is aiming its device at business professionals, whether they are office managers looking to consolidate stacks of paper to fit into their briefcases, or scientists hoping to reduce their bulky manuals to the size of a single sheet of paper. The company’s success with this device will be determined in 2010, as the device is scheduled to be released early next year. (4)

Meanwhile, you may want to grab your favorite book, magazine, newspaper, and journal article, stuff them into a time capsule, and bury it deep. EReaders are here to stay.

Vampires: a disease (of the media) or an epidemic (of superstition)

With all of the vampire material flooding the market over the last several years—Buffy, Twilight, Van Helsing—it’s no surprise that these creatures made an appearance at this year’s American Academy of Forensics meeting last week. After all, many of the scientists attending that meeting deal with evidence pertaining to dead bodies, and what are vampires if not dead?

Curiously enough, the original vampire legend may have developed from the effects of physical decomposition upon a corpse. For instance, as a body begins to break down, blood can leak out of the mouth. Meanwhile, bacteria grow inside the stomach and intestines, causing them to swell. With a creative imagination, someone might imagine that this dead body has returned to life, bitten some living creature (hence the blood on its mouth), and is effectively growing fat off of such sustenance. Additionally, this “growing” body can imitate guttural sounds such as groaning or sighing when it releases gases that have built up inside, offering further “proof” that the corpose has come to life.

However, explanations for the traditional vampire myth are abundant. David Dolphin, an organic chemist at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, has proposed that the vampire myth may have sprung from the disease porphyrias. Porphyias is a rare genetic disease that afflicts from one in 25,000 to 1 in a million people; hence why it might not be well known or understood, and why, in the past, the vampire myth may have been created as an explanation, instead. What happens to people suffering from porphyrias is this: molecules called porphyrins build up in their tissues—usually skin tissue—and when these molecules are exposed to light, they generate free radicals that destroy the cells in which they reside. Effectively, this would keep any rational porphryias patient indoors, lest their skin start to burn and blister. Understandably, many of these people turn nocturnal. Thus, the vampiric sun aversion was born. Meanwhile, porphyrin molecules can accumulate in bone tissue as well, and if they accumulate in teeth, whoa-la: reddish, bloody fangs. Even the trademark widow’s peak can be explained by porphryias, since the disease can be linked to excessive hair growth, particularly on the forehead. And finally, just like vampires, porphyrias patients are inclined to avoid garlic, because certain chemicals contained in that plant increase the production of porphryin molecules in their bodies—thus increasing the patients’ suffering. Therefore, Dolphin’s argument that vampires may be modeled off of porphyrias patients is a persuasive one.

It may not be nearly as persuasive, however, as, “Rabies: A possible explanation for the vampire legend.” This was the argument put forth by Dr. Juan Gomez-Alonso, a neurologist at Hospital Xeral in Vigo, Spain, in the journal Neurology. Like the stereotypical vampire, a person with rabies will often attempt to bite others, and rabies is transmitted via the bite of an infected host—eerily the way that vampirism is transmitted via the bite of a host. Rabies also causes insomnia—as it affects the hypothalamus, the part of the brain that controls sleep—as well as hypersensitivity to strong stimuli such as light. Therefore, this profile could have created the model for the vampiric night life and aversion to light. Still, perhaps the most persuasive evidence provided in Gomez-Alonso’s paper is anthropologic. Gomez-Alonso reveals that a rabies outbreak occurred in Hungary around the time that people first began reporting vampire sightings, in the 1720s. Hungary was an ideal site for the vampire myth to originate, since its cold, damp winter season is particularly long and therefore perfectly suited for preserving corpses. The cold prevents the body from decomposing quickly, and the humidity causes saponification, a proces by which subcutaneous tissues transform into a waxy substance. The living dead? Perhaps not. But for any superstitious uneducated peasantry who dug up lifelike corpses that were filled with uncoagulated (i.e. oozing) blood—which, coincidentally, is a symptom of people who die from collapse, shock, or asphyxiation, as rabies patients are prone to do—a plausible explanation was needed. Vampirism could very well have been the explanation they created.

Coincidentally, we are still talking about it today! On Thursday, February 19th, Emilio Nuzzolese, DDS, Ph.D., and Matteo Borrini, B.A. presented “The Vampire Bites Back in Odontology and Anthropology: Case Report of Skeletal Remains on Nuovo Lazzaretto Island, Venice” at the AAF meeting in Denver. Perhaps Stephanie Meyers will want to attend next year’s meeting. Or Ann Rice. Or maybe we can raise Bela Lugosi from the dead and he can give his own presentation….