Photo courtesy: Zakiya James

Seventeen-year-old student Zakiya James is a pre-junior at Drexel University studying civil engineering who has faced numerous challenges in America’s education system in order to get to where she is today and now faces issues with financing her college career. James is currently fighting to pay for her first year of school at almost $70,000 and is exploring all available means to fund her continued education. Tuition is an issue a large portion of the nation struggles with, and students at Drexel know this all too well.

James is a brilliant young individual who enrolled at Drexel in January at the age of 17 without needing a high school diploma, taking the SATs or obtaining a GED. She first entered the public education system in sixth grade after the private school she attended closed. She attended Hardy Middle School, and there she faced one of the biggest shortcomings of the current education system. James found that the education she received was superficial and the teachers didn’t put forth the proper effort and actions into helping students understand the material. The lack of a proper learning curriculum resulted in her disinterest in course material and her failing some of her classes.

The fact that she was failing was brought to the attention of James’ mother, Shawna Malone. The teachers informed Shawna that James was disengaged and had difficulty grasping the material. James’ math teacher went so far as to say “You have a nice girl but not that smart.” Malone, who had attended public schools herself, knew the system had flaws and her daughter wasn’t to blame.

“I was disappointed with the school”, Malone wrote in an email. “Having a teacher tell me that was frustrating. I used that frustration to search for a solution. I never blamed Zakiya.”

Considering James had thrived in the private school she had previously attended, Malone worked tirelessly to come up with a solution to get her daughter out of the public school. She found one the next year when she made an arrangement with another private school to get a tuition discount in exchange for her volunteering. James flourished during her time at private school and excelled in all her courses but in two short years, she faced her next hurdle in her endeavor to obtain quality education, the cost of paying high tuition. She was forced to drop out and return to the public education system.

James enrolled into a well-respected public high school called Woodrow Wilson, which was better than the public middle school she had attended, but she was disappointed with the education she was receiving. She received high grades without trying and as a result didn’t find the material challenging and once again began to drift. Because of their financial circumstances, James couldn’t afford to enroll in a private school so her mother decided to have her take a placement exam that would enable James to attend college full-time and take college-level courses. James tested into freshman English and scored in the highest percentile for non-credited math for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics majors at the age of 14.

The college environment reignited James’ passion for learning and she enrolled in several math and science courses, as well as geography and history classes. She excelled at all her courses and even made the dean’s list despite being several years younger than her peers. She did so well that she was able to transfer to the University of the District of Columbia’s Flagship school after completing her two years in community college.

James was inspired by the knowledge she had attained in community college and began looking for research opportunities during the summer after graduation. She was accepted into a prestigious 10-week research program at Duke University called Center for Environmental Implications of Nanotechnology, where she studied the effect of nanoceria on microbial growth.

The head researcher, Claudia Gunsch, an associate professor of civil and environmental engineering at Duke, didn’t realize that James was a minor until one of the other research associates had told her. She was so impressed by James that she even recommended her when she applied to Drexel.

After completing the program, James returned to the District of Columbia and attended UDC but was eager to find more hands-on research opportunities in civil engineering. She began searching for research programs and found that Drexel had several.

She applied and was accepted within a few weeks. James quickly enrolled in demanding engineering courses but spent her first quarter worrying about how she was going to pay Drexel’s substantial tuition rather than studying. She had applied for and is receiving some financial aid from Drexel but not nearly enough to cover the cost of her attendance. James’ mother was able to help pay for some expenses such as books and personal expenses but her ability was limited. James claimed that she has grown fond of Drexel despite only being here for a little over a quarter and would hate to have to drop out.

“I love Drexel’s co-op program,” James said. “It gives me the opportunity to get some hands-on experience in my field. I also like the quarter system because I find it challenging and I intend to take part in Drexel’s Intelligent Infrastructure Alliance research program. I think I speak for every student at Drexel when I say that tuition needs to be lower.”

The good news is that the University’s financial aid office has heard James’ story and is meeting with her to come up with solutions to her financial problems. She also has a crowd. However, even after the current year is paid for, she still has another year to go through.

James is currently looking for federal aid as well as scholarships to help pay for the rest of her undergraduate education. She intends to join more research programs in the future and pursue a doctorate after graduation.

The post 17 year old pre-junior Zakiya James searches for Drexel tuition funding appeared first on The Triangle.

Photo Courtesy: Michael Guidiu

Michel W. Barsoum, distinguished professor at Drexel’s College of Engineering, and his research team have chemically engineered a novel 2-D nanomaterial that has the potential to significantly enhance next generation energy storage devices. The class of materials, called MXenes, are the first materials that are hydrophilic, have conductive properties comparable to metals, and the plasticity and moldability of clay. The marriage of these properties in a single material and the relatively low cost to produce make it a front-runner in the race to create high performance devices.

The original goal behind the project when it began in September 2010 was to create a better anode than graphite. An anode is the negative conductor of a battery; it releases electrons that flow toward the cathode. A device that is powered by a battery, such as a cell phone, works because the individual parts in the phone are connected to the anode and cathode of the battery. When charges are released from the anode, they travel through a single pathway to the cathode via components of the phone such as the screen, lights and speakers, thus powering the device. Currently, the best material used commercially to make anodes is graphite, and in order to create better batteries with the ability to store more energy per unit of volume, it’s key to find a material that has a high capacity to store charge.

The newly discovered MXenes were derived from a class of materials that were also discovered at Drexel by Barsoum in 1996, called MAX phases. MAX phases are substances with a hexagonal atomic structure similar to graphite but made with a transition metal, an A-group element (one of the elements in columns 13-18 of the periodic table), and carbon or nitrogen. Initially, Barsoum and his research team intended to use MAX phases to create a better anode, since they have conductive properties comparable to metals, but quickly found that they didn’t work with metals that are prevalent in current batteries (such as lithium) due to MAX phases’ chemical structure.

Michael Naguib, a doctoral student who was a member of Barsoum’s research team, figured out a way to chemically remove the A-group element from MAX phases using toxic hydrofluoric acid so that lithium would have a site to bond. The method worked, and a new class of materials was discovered and named MXenes. While testing the properties of the newly discovered materials, the team found that MXenes could bond effectively with polymers and retain the required conductive properties. This meant that the material could be given any desired mechanical property, such as high compressive strength, by simply bonding it to a second material. This makes MXenes more versatile and practical for a variety of applications.

However, the fact that concentrated hydrofluoric acid was needed to manufacture MXenes from MAX phases was an issue that needed to be solved, since HF is extremely hazardous and unsafe to handle, which would increase manufacturing costs among other problems. A solution was found by Michael Ghidiu, a doctoral student at Drexel also part of Barsoum’s team. Rather than using hydrofluoric acid, Ghidiu used lithium fluoride salt and hydrochloric acid, which are common substances found in most high school chemistry labs and much safer to handle than hydrofluoric acid.

When the etching of the A-element was complete, he washed the material in water. He expected to find the same black film that was created when MAX phases were mixed with HF but instead found the MXenes created from this particular process was clay-like in terms of plasticity and moldability. This was a huge leap forward in terms of applications for which MXenes could be used.

Photo Courtesy: Michael Guidiu

“Clay is hydrophilic so it can be molded, heated and made into anything you want when mixed with water, making it a very useful material,” Barsoum said. “However, clay doesn’t conduct electricity. Graphene is conductive but it’s hydrophobic. MXenes are essentially conductive clays, which testing showed renders them excellent electrodes for supercapacitors and potentially batteries. The hydrophilicity allows us to use aqueous electrolytes. From an environmental point of view, being able to work with water is a huge advantage, especially manufacturing-wise. It’s also less expensive than using non-aqueous electrolytes. The clay-like characteristics also allow us to roll it with a rolling pin [and slice it up] like dough to produce electrode in minutes rather than waiting several days. This material also holds together well. Most materials are conductive enough and don’t hold together enough. With graphite you have to add a conductive binder and glue that will prevent the material from flaking.”

The new hydrophilic MXene was pressed to see if it could be rolled into a thin film, since the initial goal was to create a thin film that could be used as an anode. It was then tested on a supercapacitor to see if it maintained its electrical properties. Capacitors only need an anode unlike a battery, which requires both an anode and a cathode that could keep up with the anode’s performance. The team found that it was significantly more effective in terms of energy storage per unit of volume than current materials and stored more energy than the MXenes that were created using HF.

“Current commercial supercapacitors only have the ability to store 200-300 Farads per cubic centimeter,”  Yury Gogotsi, a co-inventor of this technology, said. “A supercapacitor made using MXenes has the ability to store 900-1000 Farads per cubic centimeter. In applications where volume is at a premium, such as cell phones that are lighter, smaller and especially thinner than today’s generation, the ability to store a lot of charge in a small volume is very important and 1000 F per cubic centimeter is not a small number.”

The material also didn’t show any degradation after 10,000 cycles of charging and discharging, which indicates that the material is highly durable. So far, the results seem to indicate that the material is a better anode than graphite for lithium batteries, but Barsoum claims that they’re still a few years away from using the material to create an advanced battery.

“We tested the material as a supercapacitor electrode and found that it is a better anode than graphite,” Barsoum said. “However, a battery has two parts: an anode and a cathode. We created a better anode, but if we use current cathodes, the performance of a battery will be limited by the slower of the two components. We need to create a cathode that has equal performance to see the capabilities of an MXene anode.”

Barsoum intends to introduce the material to the marketplace in supercapacitors. He believes that the unique properties of the material make it a practical candidate for a wide variety of applications. Some of the major industries it could potentially affect include cell phones, energy storage for renewable energy, such as solar and wind and most notably batteries of future electric vehicles. There is still a lot of work to be done before that future becomes a reality but Barsoum is confident that it will be achieved within a couple of years.

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Photo Courtesy: Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Public Policy Cooridination

Two Drexel undergraduates presented a proposal help reduce high school dropout rates to the Philadelphia Mayor’s Office of Education and a distinguished panel of judges Sept. 17. Liangjian Gao, an electrical engineering major, and Xinyi Yang, an entertainment and arts management major, won second place in the Fall 2014 Philadelphia Public Policy Case Competition, a competition that gives students the opportunity to design and present policy that is both realistic and impactful.

The Public Policy Case Competition began Sept. 17 and invited undergraduate and graduate students across the Philadelphia region to develop creative solutions to the city’s greatest challenges. The idea behind the competition was to inspire local higher education students to consider their role in the Philadelphia community beyond their school and what they can do to make the city a better place to live, work and visit.

Students were presented with the problem of what Philadelphia could do to prevent the greatest number of students dropping out of high school. According to a 2011 Philadelphia Social Innovations Journal article, high school graduation rates hovered between 50-60 percent over the previous decade, far behind the Pennsylvania state average of 80 percent and national average of 68 percent. High school graduates earn on average $500,000 more over their lifetimes than high school dropouts and are less likely to end up in prison. In order to increase graduation rates and make Philadelphia’s workforce competitive in the years to come, Mayor Nutter issued the aforementioned challenge as part of his initiative to reach an 80 percent graduation rate by 2015.

The team composed of Drexel students came up with a solution to the issue, a mentor-mentee program called the “Philadelphia School Scholars Program” that recruits college students to be mentors to middle and high school students. The program specifically targets populations most likely to drop out such as students that come from low-income families and students whose first language is not English. The proposal was submitted online and reviewed by the Mayor’s Office of Policy Planning and Coordination and the Mayor’s Office of Education. Gao and Yang’s proposal was selected out of 11 other prospects and they were given the chance to present their solution at City Hall.

The program has three main areas of focus and consists of guiding middle school students to choose a high school that best fits their interests, tutoring middle school and high school students, and guiding high school students through the college application process. The solution targets at-risk students and attempts to build a relationship with them before they attend high school. By working with students while they’re still in high school, the Drexel team hopes to maximize the impact of the program.

The idea behind reaching out to middle school students even though the challenge asks to address high school dropouts is that if students attend a high school that suits their individual needs, they’re less likely to drop out. This method also allows college students, who choose to become mentors, to cultivate a long-term relationship and build trust with one student. Mentors that share proximity, similar interests and abilities with their mentees will have more impact than a teacher or school counselor.

Despite neither not being public policy students, the reason Gao and Yang chose to take part in the competition was because they felt a strong connection to Philadelphia and wanted to improve Philadelphia’s public school system.

“Although my major is electrical engineering, I am passionate about improving Philadelphia’s public high school education system,” Gao said. “I graduated from Furness High School, an inner-city neighborhood school. I saw the disadvantage students attending neighborhood high schools had compared to citywide high schools. It’s one of my goals to contribute something to improve the public school education system in Philadelphia.”

In addition, Yang, who is an international student, was inspired by her mother to help disadvantaged students and give something back to the Philadelphia community as well as inspire other students to do similar deeds.

“This is my second year in the United States and I’m strongly attached to the Philadelphia city and this community,” Yang said. “My mother is a school president and her passion in education and determination in guiding disadvantaged student has deeply influenced me. Personally, I had many positive experiences with tutoring middle school students and I thought I should contribute my past experiences and insight to help eliminate this issue. I also wanted to show that anyone can help, regardless of gender or nationality.”

Even though they didn’t win the competition, Gao and Yang were both excited and nervous to present their proposal to the distinguished panel of judges because it proved that their idea held promise and was considered a legitimate solution to an extremely challenging issue.

“I was thrilled and totally shocked when I knew that our team passed the first round and selected as one of the top four,” Yang said. “As an international student with language disadvantages and cultural barriers, I was glad that my idea was appreciated. It was the first time that I got to meet people who are so important to Philadelphia and it was an educational and inspiring experience.”

While there is no guarantee that the winning solution will be implemented, the winners will be offered the opportunity to pitch their proposal to Mayor Nutter and the city leadership and hopefully, the validation of their solution will inspire them to continue proposing their idea to funders, partners and relevant foundations.

The post City of Philadelphia hosts college public policy case competition appeared first on The Triangle.

Photo Credit: Bobbie McKenna
Photo Courtesy: Samantha Santomo

Taylor Collins resigned early from her role as president of Drexel’s Undergraduate Student Government Association effective Oct. 23. Kevin Murray, the vice president of the USGA, was internally elected to the role of president to serve until the spring quarter in 2015 and James Gordon, the Engagement and Operations Assembly chair, took his position as vice president.

Collins, a senior health sciences undergraduate in the College of Nursing and Health Professions and the Pennoni Honors College, resigned after six months as President, citing personal reasons. Having served in the USGA for two and a half years, her early departure marked a loss for the USGA executive team and Drexel students of an open, ambitious and visionary young leader who strived to bring changes that would benefit the student body. However, she is confident that the USGA is in very capable hands.

“I am overly confident that [Kevin Murray and James Gordon] will foster a collaborative environment in order to continue USGA’s path towards unprecedented heights with their exceptional leadership qualities,” Collins wrote in her resignation letter. “I want to thank [USGA representatives] all for being such amazing team players and demonstrating drive and passion in the short months that we shared together.”

Collins first got involved with the USGA during her spring term in freshmen year and was elected as Student Organization Representative. Under the leadership of the then-USGA presidents, she recognized the enormous potential of the USGA and developed ideas on how to improve the organization during her freshmen and sophomore years.

The following year, she was elected to the position of vice president and it was in this role that she saw the all the smaller changes that the USGA accomplished that students may not know the organization played a key role in, such as charging stations for cell phones, creating the Academic Center for Engineers and changing the times the shuttle is offered to Center City to accommodate College of Nursing and Health Professions students.

Photo Credit: Bobbie McKenna

Collins wanted to find better methods of communicating the achievements of the USGA to the student body in order to raise the organization’s profile and help students understand the importance and potential of having an organized and effective liaison between students and the University administration.

“Getting these accomplishments out to the student body has proven a challenge in past years,” Collins wrote in an email. “But I am confident that our communication with students this year can change their perspective on USGA and exactly what it is a student government can do for you.”

She had several ideas on how to accomplish this goal and ran for president on the promise of giving students more opportunities to communicate their demands to University officials. Collins’ message was heard and she was elected to the role of president of the USGA in June of this year. She was sworn in with the other elected representatives by the departing president during week four of the summer term during a general body meeting and spent the first three weeks of her term training the new representatives.

One of Collins’ major goals as president was to bring back town hall meetings and open-style forum events because she felt that they were vital effectively serve the student body. She believes that it’s the job of the elected representative to go to the students and give them the opportunity to voice their needs rather than wait for students to come to the representative. The open-style forum gives students an informal place to voice their concerns to University officials and is the very first step in the process of initiating change. The next step in the plan is to take the concerns of the students and turn them into goals for USGA to accomplish and prioritize the goals based on importance, feasibility, and relevance.

Another major goal Collins wanted to achieve was to make the USGA and all of its representatives as approachable and accessible as possible. There are several ways students can reach a representative including email which are listed on the USGA website, Facebook and a new form on DragonLink’s homepage where anyone can drop a question, concern, or idea quickly and easily that will be reviewed and addressed by a member of the USGA. Every representative also holds their own office hours located in the USGA office, Creese 051, with an open door policy to encourage students to drop by and chat, even if they are just wondering what USGA does.

Collins’ proudest achievement during her time as president was creating a collaborative, hard-working and invested group of student leaders capable of accomplishing so much within the scope of their responsibilities.

“It is very satisfying to know I inspired them in some way, shape, or form to serve the students to the best of their abilities,” Collins wrote. “If you look on our Facebook page, there are already numerous town halls and forums that have been planned and utilized by students. I cannot wait to see the reputation of USGA grow this year while being behind-the-scenes and supporting their efforts the entire way.”

Collins stated that her resignation isn’t the end of her involvement with the USGA and will continue to be available as a resource if needed. She plans to ensure a smooth transition and continue to be a student leader even if she doesn’t have an official title. It’s clear that she had a significant impact on the team she helped mold during her short time as president and will be missed by everyone she worked with.

“Taylor was a great president,” Judy Pierson, the current commuter representative of the USGA, wrote in an email. “She was always on top of everything — deadlines, goals, meetings — she was one of the most reliable people I’ve met, even though I’ve only known her for a short time. Even though it didn’t last long, this year’s USGA really thrived thus far, partly because of her leadership. Even though we are all going to miss Taylor, we are glad that she will still be around to support us for further initiatives.”

Murray intends to carry out Collins’ ideas of creating and managing town halls and open-forum meetings by offering all student populations two town halls during the school year with at least one University wide town hall which will be held in the winter term. The hope is that these forums will be productive and beneficial for both students and University officials. In addition, the USGA has a few major plans for the academic year including changes to the co-op employment summary and planner form, better hours for study spaces near the dorm and main residential areas, a service that will allow students living off campus to have a ride to their far residences, and clearer more consistent and open communication between willing students and upper administration.

Drexel University’s Center for Public Policy has named a former U.S. representative to the United Nations as distinguished visiting fellow in

Photo Courtesy: Center for Public Policy

public policy at Drexel. Retired Ambassador Joseph M. Torsella began his work at Drexel Oct. 1 and will remain in residence at the University until the end of the spring quarter in 2015. He will contribute to research undertaken by the center as well as share his knowledge, experiences and real world perspective on how public policy is created and executed.

The Center for Public Policy is a think tank within Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences. It conducts public-policy-oriented research and serves as a credible connection between faculty, who take part in that research, and relevant government agencies and nonprofit organizations. Torsella was chosen as the visiting fellow by the center and confirmed by the Office of the President because of his interest in both domestic and international policy, past service to Philadelphia and most recent service to the U.S. government, and his eagerness to engage and challenge students about policy, politics and international affairs.

“Ambassador Torsella not only brings a wealth of experience, but a natural inclination to share ideas, teach and learn,” Rosalind Remer, executive director of the Office of the President , wrote in an email. “His approachable demeanor will make him a great asset to the university community. Students will enjoy their interactions with him and the university community will benefit from the insights he will share in his lectures.”

Torsella began his public service to the Philadelphia region by serving as Philadelphia’s deputy mayor for policy and planning from January 1992 to September 1993, where he helped reduce the city’s budget deficit. He was then asked by former Philadelphia Mayor Ed Rendell to become founding president and CEO of the National Constitution Center in 1997, an institution that would provide a nonpartisan education about the U.S. Constitution to the American public. The project was approved in 1988 but due to operating budget deficits and inadequate focus, the project still wasn’t completed in 1997.

Under Torsella’s leadership, the construction of the Constitution Center was completed in 2003, after he managed to raise $185 million in private and public funds. The center opened in 2003 and serves as an interactive museum, national town hall and civic education headquarters.

He went on to serve as chairman of the Pennsylvania Board of Education, where he endeavored to address the rising costs of higher education and strengthened high school graduation requirements. In late 2010, he was nominated by President Barack Obama to service as U.S. representative to the United Nations for management and reform. During his time at the U.N., Torsella criticized the U.N., telling it to live up to its ideals and stop practices that were “relics of the 1950s.” He encouraged it to be more careful with taxpayer dollars and to live up to a higher standard in important practices such as peacekeeping. He focused on getting the U.N. to do more with less, to be much more of a transparent institution and to end some of the practices that discredit it. He managed to make significant advances in transparency, getting budget hearings that had formerly been closed to be webcast and getting the U.N. to publicly disclose its audits.

Torsella ended his role at the U.N. in early 2014 and spent some time with his family before deciding to join the Drexel community as a visiting fellow. He decided to come to Drexel because of its energy, dynamism and the large role it plays in Philadelphia’s civic life. He was particularly drawn by Drexel’s emphasis on practical experience displayed by its co-op program which he believes gives Drexel a real advantage and distinction and something he can greatly contribute to considering his wide ranging career in public service.

“I’m a big fan of Drexel as an institution and a big fan of President [John A. Fry], with whom I’ve crossed paths over the years,” Torsella wrote in an email. “I’m also a fan of the co-op program, which is something very distinctive and special. I’ve had a few Drexel student co-ops over the years and each one has been impressive. I’m hoping I can lend some practical insights to the public policy program [and] I’m also hoping Drexel students can do the same for me and give me some insight into the challenges and opportunities they are facing.”

Torsella intends to work with Andrew Bull, a master’s student studying public policy, to explore issues from some of his past careers in public service, such as access to higher education, high school graduation standards, the role of the U.S. in the U.N. system and transparency in government issues. He also intends to explore economic development and how immigration can be a positive force in economic growth.

In addition to research that will contribute to the mission of Drexel’s Center for Public Policy, Torsella will serve as guest lecturer for a few courses, hold regular office hours and be present on campus on Thursdays as well as deliver two lectures open to the University to appeal to a broad audience rather than just an academic one.

“Almost everything I do while at Drexel is intended to be of interest to a broad popular audience, not just to the academic community,” Torsella wrote. “That was one of the things that [President Fry and Interim Provost James Herbert]had in mind that I found most appealing: they wanted someone who would research and write for a broad audience. It was another way in which I saw Drexel as a very fresh and relevant institution which as I said was very appealing to me.”

The first lecture will be held late in the winter term and will focus on domestic policy issues and likely center on polarization and rising inequality. The second lecture will be held in late spring term and will be about the U.S. role at the U.N. and the U.N. as an institution, and a few remarks about the unfair treatment of Israel at the U.N.

Torsella’s residence at Drexel is an opportunity for students to gain a real world perspective of the challenges facing domestic and international policy makers and the general public to gain some insight into the issues within the structure of the world’s most powerful  and imperfect institution, the U.N. Torsella’s standing and extensive government service aids increase Drexel’s credibility and role in Philadelphia’s civic life and will help attract other distinguished individuals in the coming years.

Photo Courtesy: Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

A new comprehensive study by Charles N. Haas, the department head of civil, architectural and environmental engineering, has suggested that the 21-day quarantine period currently used to ensure that an individual hasn’t contracted Ebola might not be sufficient to definitely conclude the person isn’t infected.

The study, titled “On the Quarantine Period for Ebola Virus” and published in PLOS: Current Outbreaks, studied the origin of the 21-day value and concluded that it is possible that the practice was put in place after the first Ebola outbreak in 1976 in the Democratic Republic of Congo and a 2000 outbreak in Uganda, both of which provided very little data to form proper health policies and practices. The research claims that there is still a 12 percent chance that an individual infected with Ebola will not show symptoms for 21 days.

The research comes amid the latest Ebola epidemic, which has claimed approximately 4,600 lives to date and continues to kill over 20 people every day in the West African countries of Liberia, New Guinea and Sierra Leone. According to the World Health Organization, the latest outbreak infecting and killing people is the worst in recorded history and has the potential to severely affect the economies of these three countries and turn them into failed states.

The global response to the outbreak has revealed several faults in the system, causing health workers and researchers to reexamine the practices and procedures for treating patients and preventing the spread of Ebola, which includes the practice of quarantining an individual suspected of exposure for 21 days.

Photo Courtesy: Lyle Conrad

While the latest outbreak is the most severe in known history, Ebola has ravaged Africa for the last 35 years. The first recorded outbreak of Ebola occurred in Congo in 1976 in a community close to the Ebola River, from which it got its name. It was then spread by close personal contact and by use of contaminated needles and syringes in hospitals and clinics. Despite the tremendous effort of dedicated researchers, the actual host carrying the virus was never found — although it was suspected to be a fruit bat. This outbreak was the first recognition of the disease and claimed 280 lives.

Since the first outbreak, the disease has occurred fairly regularly with a few intermittent periods of dormancy and one 10-year period between 1979 and 1989 during which Ebola was thought to be a disease of the past. The latest outbreak began Dec. 26, 2013, when a 2-year-old boy in a remote village in Guinea fell ill with an illness characterized by fever, black stools and vomiting and died two days later.

According to a report in the Science Journal, the virus then spread to Sierra Leone via a traditional healer who treated patients from across the border in Guinea where the Ebola outbreak had just started. Her patients flocked to her funeral and 14 others became infected as they prepared and buried the healer’s body and the disease spread exponentially from that point forward.

Photo Courtesy: Center for Disease Control

According to the Centers for Disease Control, the virus is spread by close contact with blood or body fluids (including but not limited to urine, saliva, sweat, feces, vomit, breast milk and semen) of a person who is sick with Ebola, needles and syringes that have been contaminated with the virus, and infected mammals such as monkeys, bats and apes.

Symptoms of the Ebola virus include fever, severe headache, muscle pain, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting, abdominal pain and unexplained bleeding from the eyes, nose, or other orifices and bruising. Symptoms may appear anywhere from two to 21 days after exposure to Ebola, but the average is eight to 10 days.

The Ebola virus works by entering the body and targeting several types of immune cells, which normally display signals of an infection to activate the white blood cells that could destroy other infected cells before the virus replicates further. With defective immune cells failing to give the right signal, the white blood cells don’t respond to infection and the virus can start replicating immediately and very quickly. As the virus travels in the blood to new sites, it damages the lining of blood vessels, causing them to leak. Damage to blood vessels leads to a drop in blood pressure, and patients die from shock and multiple organ failure.

The good news is that although the disease is severe, the virus is relatively difficult to transmit and its spread can be easily prevented by thoroughly washing one’s hands and avoiding contact with blood and bodily fluids of an individual suspected of having Ebola. In addition, the disease has a very small chance of becoming an epidemic in the U.S., despite the flaws in the system that were recently exposed, due to a strong healthcare infrastructure and ability to detect the disease at a very early stage.

Photo Courtesy: James Gathany

In fact, the CDC updated their guidelines for health care workers when working with the disease or those infected within the past week. These guidelines include requiring workers to wear double gloves, full face shields, fluid-resistant gowns, waterproof boots and even an air-purifying respirator. These guidelines came after several health care works became exposed to the virus after dealing with infected patients in Dallas.
Health officials claim the reason for the severity of this outbreak is due to long held traditions surrounding burial customs such as washing the body of the deceased, the dramatic increase in population density in the affected West African countries since 1976, a weak healthcare system and that the disease is only contagious when the person shows symptoms, which takes 21 days.

The 21-day latency period is the main reason Ebola was able to spread to the U.S. and continues to be an issue in the West African countries. The 1976 and subsequent outbreaks brought forth the 21-day quarantine period and was seen as a surefire way to stop the spread. However, Haas’ research concluded that there is still a 12 percent chance that the 21-day quarantine period might be insufficient after considering all subsequent outbreaks that he believes the WHO and CDC may not have taken into account.

“While the 21-day quarantine value, currently used, may have arisen from reasonable interpretation of early outbreak data, this work suggests reconsideration is in order and that 21 days might not be sufficiently protective of public health,” Haas said.

However, Haas also claims that the benefits, risks and costs should be taken into account when making the decision to extend the quarantine period. Diseases that are extremely severe — such as Ebola — should have a longer quarantine period than those of less severity, but the benefit of extending the period should be weighed against the cost of enforcing the extended period and scientists and healthcare workers need to work with economists, lawyers and other professionals in order to develop an appropriate period that balances costs, risks and benefits.

Photo Courtesy: National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases

To date, there is no cure for Ebola, but current treatment includes providing fluids, maintaining blood pressure, providing oxygen as needed, replacing lost blood and treating other infections that develop. New treatment options for Ebola are rapidly being developed, with medical trials for a possible Ebola vaccine taking place in West Africa in January 2015, according to WHO.

A treatment proven to work in Kent Brantly and Nancy Writbol, two American doctors infected with Ebola while working in Liberia, is ZMapp. ZMapp, being developed by U.S. company Mapp Biopharmaceutical, and Canadian Defyrus Inc., is a cocktail of genetically engineered antibodies that boosts a patient’s ability to fight off Ebola.

Until the treatments are developed and proven safe, health workers have to continue with traditional treatment of the disease. The U.S. Agency for International Development has announced that it is helping the African Union with $10 million of funding to mobilize an additional 100 African health workers to fight the outbreak.

So far, the U.S. has spent a reported $100 million responding to the outbreak. WHO has said that Liberia in particular needs better ideas for containing the disease, since conventional Ebola control interventions are not having an adequate impact in Liberia, though they appear to be working elsewhere in areas of limited transmission. WHO predicts Ebola will spread to as many as 20,000 people before it stops.

Photo Credit: Ajon Brodie

The University has elected to begin charging a $50 application fee to prospective freshmen, transfer, and international students. The change was discussed earlier this year and a final decision was reached by the Division of Enrollment Management and Student Success over the summer with the support of the Office of President John A. Fry.

Unlike most universities, Drexel has not charged a fee in the recent past for admissions applications. Anthony J. Drexel, the founder and an important financier of the 19th century, intended for Drexel to be a university for working-class men and women to improve their station in life. It offered unparalleled features such as low tuition, night classes and free public lectures. Most importantly, it had a unique applied curriculum that would help students find better jobs — in fields like bookkeeping, chemistry, art and library science.

When Drexel first started, it had a limited curriculum and relatively small goals and at its core, it was meant to be a university to help the middle class. However, since its founding in 1891, Drexel has vastly expanded its curriculum, mission, size and most notably, its tuition rates. Drexel went from being a low-tuition college to the 16th^–most expensive university in the U.S., according to Business Insider.

Drexel isn’t alone in this steep inflation of college tuition rates, of course. Tuition has been rising across the U.S. due to the increased demand for a college education and the fact that a college degree offers increased job prospects in an economy that demands a highly skilled labor force. However, since Drexel still markets itself as a university for middle class Americans, one would think that adding an additional fee, however small, would be against Drexel’s best interest and values, and merely an extra financial burden on an economic class that is already being squeezed in a weak economy.

The decision to charge an admissions application fee was reached to remedy several issues, one of which being that a university needs to be able to make the claim that its students have a high graduation rate, are successful after graduation and are contributing members of their respective communities. Like any university, Drexel wants to enroll students who are a good fit for Drexel and for whom Drexel is a good fit, since these are the students most likely to benefit from a Drexel education.

“We are not just trying to make a freshman class, we want to enroll students who will be successful, graduate and become our alumni,” Randall Deike, senior vice president of the Division of Enrollment Management and Student Success, wrote. “I believe requiring an application fee will cause applicants to take a moment and think carefully about whether Drexel is the right fit for them.”

Another issue that the application fee is attempting to address is students applying without being informed. While one might think that applying to one of the top 20-most expensive colleges is already enough evidence that a prospective student understands the value of a Drexel education, Deike believes that students in the past may have applied without conducting any research simply because it was free to do so. Some students, although opposed to the fee, agree with the reasoning.

“The fee will definitely make students do research before applying,” Jane Maurer, a chemical engineering major, said. “But I personally feel that [Drexel] was my first choice the whole time so the application fee being free was a great help to me. I don’t think there should be a fee; it is not justified because Drexel is one of the top 20 most expensive colleges in the country.”

Other students agree with putting in the fee and thinks it will achieve its goal.
“I think less people will apply,” Christian Hamm, a biomedical engineering major who applied in 2013, said. “I myself only put out a last minute application because it was free. I had not given the university much thought until after I was accepted. I think it’s justified. It weeds out many of the applications that are applying just because it’s free. They have no business applying in the first place.”

There is a cost associated with reviewing each application and in the past, the cost was absorbed by the University. However, because of rising operating costs, the application fee will help offset the investment in application evaluation and fund the operating budget for Enrollment Management and Student Success, which will in turn be used to help share the Drexel story to prospective students through the outreach program.

It is worth noting that the $50 fee is above the national average application fee of $37.88 and is also subject to the fee waiver option in the Common Application if the applicant meets one of the criteria. It aims to compel prospective students to do some research before applying to Drexel.

“I am certainly sensitive to [the] concerns regarding middle class families but the $50 is actually on the low side compared to other institutions,” Deike wrote. “We should very carefully consider every fee we require and I believe this [fee] is important. We don’t want the fee to be a financial burden for families or deter applicants from applying if they are really interested in becoming a member of the Drexel community, so there is a fee waiver option through the Common Application.”

The fee is in effect today and will continue to be in effect for the foreseeable future. It is part of the University’s Strategic Plan and Student Lifecycle Management policy, which aims to enroll students who have an understanding of the value of a Drexel education, a Drexel experience, and the value of being in the community.

Photo Courtesy: NASA HQ PHOTO Flickr

Drexel University was awarded a $3,175,000 grant from the National Science Foundation July 30 to increase the number of ethnic minority students completing degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

The funding will support the Greater Philadelphia region Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation, which is headed by Drexel but also includes Cheyney University of Pennsylvania, Community College of Philadelphia, Delaware State University, The Lincoln University, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Temple University, University of Delaware and the University of Pennsylvania.

The Philadelphia LSAMP program was established in 1994. Drexel assumed leadership of the program in 2000, and upon the recommendation of the program’s executive committee, the project management of the program was shifted to Drexel during the same year.

According to their website, LSAMP was founded with the mission “to substantially increase the quantity and quality of African American, Hispanic and Native American students” receiving baccalaureate degrees and graduate degrees in STEM fields.

Thus far, some ethnic minorities have been underrepresented in STEM fields for a variety of reasons. They include lack of access to technology, education and training in STEM subjects; lack of role models; misperceptions about their educational capabilities; challenges in completing math requirements; and lack of financial resources. However, due to the United States’ shift toward knowledge-intensive economic activity and the anticipated retirement of STEM professionals in the government sector in the near future, the mission of providing access to and retaining these minorities in STEM fields is paramount to meet the impending demand for well-trained individuals.

“STEM skills are increasingly necessary in a 21st-century economy that depends heavily on the technology, science and engineering sectors,” Rep. Chaka Fattah, the lead appropriator for the NSF and a strong advocate of STEM, wrote in an email. “These have been fields that are historically underrepresented by disadvantaged minority communities, and by making a concerted effort to attract talented individuals in these sectors through LSAMP and similar initiatives, we can change this course.”

According to U.S. Census Bureau projections, minorities will be about half of the U.S. population by 2050 and a large segment of the labor force.

According to Veniece Keene, project coordinator of the Philadelphia LSAMP at Drexel, the program intends to use the grant to further ramp up its current activities and replicate more of each institution’s successful practices throughout the other institutions in the program. In addition, LSAMP plans to develop more inter-institutional collaborations among its partner institutions and other regional LSAMP programs, further enhance and develop partnerships with national and regional research laboratories, and collaborate with other federally funded programs in partner institutions to increase the capacity to integrate research and education.

Historically, Philadelphia LSAMP has more than doubled its minority STEM bachelor’s degrees annually and has produced over 10,200 minority STEM degrees, over 2,400 minority STEM master’s degrees and over 340 minority STEM doctorate degrees as of August 2013.

Over the next five years, the program aims to increase the minority STEM bachelor’s degree production to, at minimum, over 800 degrees annually, the number of students participating in undergraduate research from 100 to 200 students annually, the number of community college students entering partner institutions from 140 to 225 students annually, the number of students attending national STEM conferences from 100 to 200 students annually, and move at least 40 percent of LSAMP graduates (320 students) into graduate STEM education.

According to Keene, although financial support is essential for the LSAMP program to accomplish its mission, it also needs institutional commitment, administrative support and faculty involvement. The presidents of the participating institutions have given their support for the Philadelphia LSAMP initiative and serve on the program’s governing board, but there is an increasing demand for high-quality STEM faculty to provide research opportunities as well as inspire, recruit, advise and mentor students.

“We must start inspiring students in STEM fields at a young age and increase recruitment and retention,” Fattah wrote in an email. “I’ve lead the charge in Congress to infuse STEM into mentoring programs around the country, so that students not only are exposed to STEM but additionally are provided a strong network to encourage a lasting interest and success in STEM courses. I’ve also introduced legislation, America’s FOCUS Act, which would dramatically increase funding for STEM education throughout the country.”

To date, Philadelphia LSAMP has raised over $27 million in funding in support of underrepresented minority students in the Greater Philadelphia tri-state region. The program provides services to approximately 2,000 students per year and hopes to directly serve 90 percent of targeted minority undergraduate STEM students within the next five years.

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Photo Courtesy: Michael S. Wirtz

Former research professors in Drexel’s School of Biomedical Engineering, Science and Health Systems have developed an innovative wound healing technology using natural soy proteins that could potentially replace current expensive wound dressing options.

Peter Lelkes, the head researcher on the project, collaborated with Dara Woerdeman and Anat Katsir while at Drexel to develop the new technology. The recently patented technology has been licensed to Eqalix Inc., a regenerative medicine company based in Reston, Virginia, which seeks to market it as a product called OmegaSkin.

Injuries such as large cuts, diabetic ulcers or full body burns that require wound dressings are often severe cases for which the body needs assistance to heal properly. Traditional treatments such as gauze and bandages cover up the wound and prevent debris from entering, possibly preventing infections, but they are passive treatment options. A wound dressing actively helps the body mend itself by providing a moist environment that facilitates cellular migration and skin regrowth.

Current options for wound dressings include neonatal foreskin (infant foreskin discarded from circumcision); cadaver skin; or animal skin, such as from cows, horses, and pigs. While these options have had success in the past, they are extremely expensive and time-consuming to harvest, during which time patients continuing to suffer from their injuries begin to develop scar tissue. The new soy protein-based wound dressing is a much cheaper and more viable option that is derived from a source that is easy to harvest and inexpensive to produce.

“There is no competition between the two,” Lelkes said. “A 5-square-centimeter [three-quarters of a square inch] wound dressing using current sources can cost thousands of dollars and has some potential to transmit diseases. A plant-based wound dressing is inexpensive, green and much more effective.”

An article titled “Electrospun Soy Protein Scaffolds as Wound Dressings: Enhanced Reepithelialization in a Porcine Model of Wound Healing,” published in May in the medical journal “Wound Medicine,” showed enhanced healing in wounds treated with OmegaSkin compared to those treated with a control dressing. OmegaSkin also allowed appendages such as hair follicles and sweat glands to regrow, which didn’t occur with some of the other current sources. The new technology has applications in chronic and acute wounds and promotes skin regrowth and significantly reduces the risk of transmitting diseases associated with current wound dressings.

According to Lelkes, the purpose of the project was to develop a cheap alternative for current wound dressing options for countries that can’t afford them. Pharmaceutical companies often develop a new drug at a cost, patent the drug and introduce it to the market with a large profit margin. While the same result could occur here, Lelkes hopes that isn’t the case.

“The main idea is to find something that is inexpensive and affordable that can be used in countries that can’t afford an overly expensive health system,” Lelkes said. “Most countries can’t afford the exorbitant prices pharmaceutical companies often place on newly patented medicines, and I hope that doesn’t occur here.”

According to Seoh, a strategic partner or an acquirer, rather than Eqalix, will most likely set the price for OmegaSkin. Investors and large companies prefer to maximize profits and typically set prices as high as the market will bear in light of applicable competition.

However, due to restructuring at the beginning of this year by a new rule adopted by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, pricing for skin substitutes was bundled and capped so that reimbursement rates to hospitals for performing skin grafting procedures are substantially below previous rates. So it is in the best interest of hospitals to use cheaper substitutes in order to make higher profits.

Thus, Seoh believes OmegaSkin, with its low production cost, is perfectly situated to thrive in the emerging realities of lower reimbursement rates, which should translate into lower prices for patients.

The project was funded using a grant from The Coulter-Drexel Translational Research Partnership Program. According to Drexel’s website, the program is used to make proof-of-concept investments in translational research aimed at advancing biomedical technologies toward commercialization. The result of the project, in addition to the product, is a patent on the technology titled “Alimentary Protein-Based Scaffolds for Wound Healing, Regenerative Medicine and Drug Discovery.”

The patent was licensed to Eqalix by Drexel in order to commercialize the product and bring it to market. Under the customary licensing terms, Drexel will receive milestone-driven payments and royalties based on future sales. According to Thomas Seoh, president and CEO of Eqalix, the company plans to file appropriate product applications with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and other regulatory bodies late next year and to hopefully obtain marketing approval in 2015.

The new technology adds to Drexel’s growing leadership in creating new biomedical technologies. By licensing the patent, Drexel aims to encourage researchers to stretch the boundaries of current technologies and contribute to the well-being of the greater community by sharing the insights that they gain in doing so.

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Photo Credit: Department of History and Political Science

Jose Tapia, associate professor of history and political science in the College of Arts and Sciences, co-authored a study and subsequent article with researchers from the University of Michigan titled “Individual Joblessness, Contextual Unemployment and Mortality Risk,” which was published in the August 2014 issue of the American Journal of Epidemiology.

The study concluded that the increased risk of death in individuals as a result of unemployment co-occurs with decreased risk of death in overall populations during a recession, due to the negative effects of unemployment being restricted to individuals who are unemployed. On the other hand, the positive effects of a recession affect the employed, unemployed and those not active in the labor market.

While this study did not look at the specific causes behind increased mortality in unemployed people, previous studies have shown that employees who lose their job have an increased mortality rate due to health issues arising from self-blame, depression, increased use of drugs and alcohol, suicidal ideation, and the psychological effects of the stigma of being unemployed.

“Psychologists have often emphasized that being unemployed has been associated with stigma,” Tapia said. “Previous studies show there is a strong correlation between unemployment and depression due the process of self-blaming rather than thinking maybe they were let go due to other reasons. Studies have also shown that suicide ideation is more [frequent] in males than females.”

This would typically lead to the conclusion that a recession increases the overall mortality rate. However, more comprehensive studies have shown that a recession decreases population mortality and has an overall positive effect on the health of a population. The results are paradoxical and it’s this paradox that the study investigated.

Researchers agreed that the results of past studies were sound but failed to explain how the two effects could occur together. They resolved the contradictory results by assuming that one effect occurred in some localities and the other in different areas. However, the latest study by Tapia found that for the first time the paradoxical effects do indeed occur together in the same dataset.

“It’s like the story of the Blind Men and the Elephant,” Tapia said. “Like the blind men who feel different parts of the elephant and argue over who is right, these previous studies are describing two different phenomena that are actually related and occur together. Both results are correct, but the connection wasn’t seen until now.”

The study used survey data collected between 1979-1997 from a nationally representative panel of 5,000 households called the “Panel Study of Income Dynamics” and data from the U.S. Department of Labor to examine the relationship between unemployment and its effects on individual health in the United States.

The study used statistical models to estimate the strength of the association between unemployment and the risk of death and included variables such as age, sex, marital status, household income and previous health. The models also took lag into account, which looked at the employment status one to two years before unemployment to ensure poor health wasn’t the reason a person became unemployed in the first place.

Tapia’s research found that those who lost their job had a 73 percent increase in mortality, which is the equivalent of aging 10 years. That means that 40-year-olds who have lost their jobs are statistically at the same risk of death due to heart attacks, cardiovascular disease or other illnesses as 50-year-olds, which is quite significant. However, the positive effects of a recession had caused a small decrease in mortality.

In fact, the study found that a 1 percentage point increase in state unemployment levels, also called contextual unemployment, led to a 9 percent decrease in mortality rates, which is the equivalent to being a little over one year younger. The mechanisms for the positive effect weren’t investigated, but Tapia suggested decreased air pollution, traffic fatalities and circulation of illnesses may be the causes behind the decreased mortality.

The positive effect of a recession is small compared to the negative effect of unemployment in individuals, but the reason the positive effect dominates in the overall population is due to the fact that all individuals, including the unemployed, benefit from the positive effect, while only unemployed persons suffer the negative health effects of unemployment. .

However, the entire population — which includes those in the labor force in addition to children, retired people and other non-workers — benefits from decreased air pollution, one of several factors that vary based on economic upturns and recessions. Essentially, a small positive effect distributed to a large group of people wins over a large negative effect distributed to a small fraction of people.

The study resolves the paradox of increased individual mortality and decreased population mortality by showing they occur concurrently, and provides a substantial reason for studying the mechanisms that result in increased population health during recessions: in order to implement effective public health policies and practices.

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