Addiction. What is it? Most people don’t understand. Perhaps they are addicted to caffeine or video games, but physical, mind rending addiction is not something most people intrinsically understand or can sympathize with.

With opioid addiction (synthetic or natural) comes not only a dependence on the drug itself, but it also creates a positive feedback loop. Opioid addiction, in most cases, causes the addicted person to become fully immersed in the drug, causing them to ignore family, friends and other important things in their lives.

Doctors in the U.S. have a major problem with the over-prescribing of drugs. This overprescription is not necessarily the doctor’s fault either. What is a doctor to do when a patient insists they are experiencing severe pain? The doctor can’t just tell the patient to deal with it, if they did that they would lose money and the patient would just go to another doctor anyway. So the doctor prescribes an opioid pain killer. Sure, one instance of this might not be that bad in the scope of creating an epidemic, however, the problem arises when hundreds of thousands of doctors and millions of patients are involved.

Nearly 1 percent of the U.S. population (nearly 3 million people) have a substance abuse disorder that stems from prescription opioid pain medications or heroin addiction. While this number may seem large right now, it gets worse when you realize how fast deaths related to this problem are growing. Since 1999, the non-suicide related deaths from prescription opioid overdose has increased by a multiple of four. Additionally, correlations have been found between non-medical directed use of prescription opioid pain relievers and the abuse of heroin.

I’m not saying that we should stop prescribing opioid pain relievers. People should not be asked to suffer without these pain relievers. Yet at the same time, doctors should be cognizant of the dangers these drugs impose on society.

In the late 1990s, pharmaceutical companies advertised to the doctors and medical professionals that addiction was not a danger when it came to their prescription strength opioid pain relievers. Again, it’s probably not the pharmaceutical companies fault, I’m not trying to play a blame game. Pharmaceutical companies should also be aware of the fact that their drugs can cause major detrimental impact on people and society.

Also, major scientific breakthroughs are not always good ones. Today, synthetic opioids can be found being sold to humans illegally like Fentanyl and Carfentanil. Fentanyl has been found to be nearly 100 times stronger than morphine and Carfentanil has been found to be 10,000 times stronger than morphine. With this extra potency comes an equal overdose risk.

While Fentanyl was originally created for human patients, Carfentanil was primarily created to be used as an anesthetic for large animals (elephants, horses etc.). These dangerous synthetic opioids have found their way to the illegal drug market and can be found being cut into heroin to make the drug more potent and more addictive.

Slowly, we as a nation have been recognizing the dangers of opioid addiction and coming up with methods to decrease addiction levels. However, the rate has only been increasing. The number of people dying from overdose of opioids is above 10 in 100,000. To put that into perspective, the number of deaths related to car crashes about 10 in 100,000. Think about that for a second. Nearly the same rate of people are dying from opioid overdoses as people are dying from car crashes.

We need to fight this epidemic. We need to take this problem seriously. However, this problem falls prey to the human condition. What we ourselves do not experience, we ourselves cannot sympathize with. For people who have never been addicted to opioids, it’s nearly impossible to understand the physical attraction and addiction opioid abusers have to the drug. I hope that people will start to understand that this is not a problem only weak-minded or mentally unstable people have, I hope that people can start to understand that this is a real problem that can affect anyone. With understanding comes a solution.

A team of researchers from Drexel University has come up with a new material that allows for extremely fast battery charging speeds.

Batteries composed of this class of materials, called MXenes, have the possibility of charging a laptop or cell phone in seconds. With regards to electric cars, the idea of charging your car in the same time it takes to fill a tank of gas is now a possibility with this new superconductive material.

Batteries have two main limiters in everyday use: charging speed and charge capacity. Charging speed is limited by something in the battery called “internal resistance.”

This internal resistance factor in a battery can be affected by multiple things including the material the battery is composed of, how much charge the battery currently has, and at what current the power block (what goes in the wall) can charge your battery.

If the internal resistance of a regular battery is compared to the internal resistance of the MXene material using the analogy of roads, a regular battery would be a traffic heavy city road while MXene would be a wide multiple lane highway.

“We demonstrate charging of thin MXene electrodes in tens of milliseconds,” Yury Gogotsi, founder and director of the A.J. Drexel Nanotechnology Institute, said in a comment to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers.

“This is enabled by the very high electronic conductivity of MXene. This paves the way to development of ultrafast energy storage devices [that] can be charged and discharged within seconds, but store much more energy than conventional supercapacitors,” he continued.

The charge capacity of a battery is limited by the number of areas within the material where energy can be stored. These sites are called “redox active sites.”

While batteries can be simply made larger to increase the redox active sites, the ability to charge the entire battery quickly is the major problem.

Some materials are better at charging faster and some materials are better at holding more charge. For example, supercapacitors (used in devices such as a camera’s flash) charge extremely quickly but the downside is that they cannot hold very much charge. On the flipside, lithium ion batteries (batteries used in cell phones and laptops) can hold a lot of charge but they take a significant amount of time to charge.

MXene technology allows for extremely quick charging, comparable to a supercapacitor, while also having enough redox active sites to hold a significant amount of energy (enough to make a battery for a phone, laptop or electric car).

One of main reasons that MXene material is able to store a significant amount of energy is because it is a flat material at the atomic level. Like stacking paper, MXene material is easily stacked layer by layer to create a dense structure that can hold a lot of energy. This same property also allows for MXene material to be charged very quickly.

“If we start using low-dimensional and electronically conducting materials as battery electrodes, we can make batteries working much, much faster than today,” Gogotsi said. “Eventually, appreciation of this fact will lead us to car, laptop and cell-phone batteries capable of charging at much higher rates — seconds or minutes rather than hours.”

MXene materials also have several other very important properties beyond their use for batteries such as their antibacterial and water purification properties.

One MXene material has been shown to kill more than 98 percent of bacterial colonies such as E. coli by damaging the cell membranes of the bacterial cells.

The same MXene material has also been shown to very quickly purify water of salts and charged particles.

As novel materials, MXenes have very useful properties. Dr. Gogotsi and his team have spearheaded many research projects towards studying these materials. Their practical ability to be used as batteries and energy storage devices has just started being studied in depth and much is still unknown about these materials.

The “War on Terror” is the reason our country went to war in the Middle East; the reason nearly 4,500 civilians have died from airstrikes and raids in the past eight-and-a-half years.

Under President Barack Obama, an estimate of 2,300 civilians were killed due to U.S.-led coalition strikes.

The estimate of civilians killed as of July 13 under President Donald Trump reached 2,200 people.

Think about that for a second. During eight years of presidency, Obama’s administration heralded the deaths of 2,300 civilians, averaging 80 civilians per month.

In right around seven months, Trump’s administration has brought 2,200 civilian deaths to the countries of Syria and Iraq. That’s 314 people per month.

What is the war on terror? Is it fighting terrorist organizations like ISIL and Al Qaeda? Fighting radical islamic terrorism? Or is it fighting the anti-Western ideologies many Middle Eastern radicals seem to have? Realistically there isn’t one simple definition, all of these aspects are included under the umbrella of the war on terror.

We should ask ourselves if what we are doing is worth it.

The main reason most of these terrorist organizations exist today is because of the U.S. trying to force democracy down the throats of Middle Eastern countries during the ’80s and ’90s. When we went to war with Iraq in early 2003, emotions were running high. With 9/11 having happened recently, everyone was terrified of another terrorist attack.

What are we fighting for today? We should know better.

The U.S. has been interfering in the Middle-East since the 1940s when Truman tried to strengthen relations there post-World War II. Tensions began to escalate in the ’80s when the U.S. sent soldiers to occupy the Middle East (Iran-Contra Affair). Major terrorist organizations started springing up (Al Qaeda, Taliban) after that.

Airstrikes and raids in areas populated densely with civilians may kill a couple terrorists, but are the lost innocent lives worth it? I would imagine the countries we are trying to “liberate” from ISIL and related terrorist organizations see us as the terrorists. While ISIL may be leashing their rights and activities, they aren’t killing 314 civilians per month.

Imagine how U.S. citizens would feel if 314 citizens were being killed by another country each and every month. There would be riots to wage war. President Trump promised to “bomb the s— out of ISIS”, and he has kept that promise. He’s also bombing the s— out of innocent civilians. While this isn’t quite an executive matter and there are other concerns involved including national security and international security, the president is the face of our country and he is ultimately responsible for attacks such as these.

Obama was no saint when it came to airstrikes abroad but at least he wanted to follow the extremely strict rules of engagement the U.S. military practices. One of Trump’s first requests as president was asking the military to get rid of all extra rules of engagement that aren’t required by international law. While the U.S. has not officially removed the stringent rules we practice, the mere fact that the president asked to shows his disregard for innocent life.

Imagine if we did get rid of the extra rules of engagement; the additional life that would be lost would be catastrophic.

After nearly 80 years of interference, we should have learned from our mistakes. There have been no positive results, and if anything, we are only giving cause for more terrorists to be indoctrinated.

Trump has not been attentive to keeping the war focused on terror but rather, he has been allowing for the war to bleed into becoming the “war on the Middle East.”

Drexel University will officially open the Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science Center July 1.

By including services for obesity and various eating disorders, the WELL Center will strive to create a healthier world by reducing some of the most prevalent problems facing the United States today.

An average of 30 million people in the United States suffer from a medically diagnosable eating disorder at some point in their lives. Some well-known and prevalent eating disorders include anorexia nervosa, bulimia nervosa and binge eating disorder.

Additionally, due to many cases not being reported, many more people could possibly be affected by eating disorders or low self-esteem from distorted body image.

Research projects concerning eating disorders are funded less often than other research projects, but Drexel hopes to initiate new and innovative research into eating disorders with the WELL Center.

Even though physical activity rates have been on the rise since the late ’90s, obesity rates have still increased over the years. The rate of obesity in 1997 was 19.4 percent. In 2015, it was 30.4 percent.

Michael Lowe, a psychology professor at Drexel, is doing a biobehavioral study of eating and weight. Lowe’s research aims to find interventions for obesity and causes for eating disorders. Research such as Lowe’s will be similar to the research Drexel hopes to accomplish at the WELL Center.

The WELL Center director will be Evan Forman and Meghan Butryn will be the director of research.

Forman is a professor in the department of psychology at Drexel and some of his research interests are Clinical Psychology and Neurocognition of eating and health related behavioral change due to problems such as obesity and eating disorders. Professor Forman has done several clinical internships at several universities including both Harvard University and the University of Pennsylvania.

Meghan Butryn is also a professor in the department of psychology at Drexel. Her research interests focus more on prevention and therapy for conditions such as obesity and eating disorders.

Drexel plans on creating a clinic imbedded into the WELL Center; this clinic will open in 2018 and will provide treatment for the obesity and eating disorders based on provable evidence.

The WELL Center will strive not only to be a place for research and treatment for eating disorders, but also to serve as a location for training healthcare professionals, postdoctoral fellows and current Drexel students (both on the graduate level and the undergraduate level).

bykst Pixabay

Investment services company SEI has partnered with Drexel University to test the user experience of its software tool Wealth Platform by measuring brain activity with a Drexel-invented technology.

Drexel and SEI performed this study at the LeBow College of Business’s Behavioral Science Lab.

Clients’ brain patterns were analyzed to see where and what improvements could be made to Wealth Platform’s user interface. Additionally, SEI and Drexel used this data to measure the improvement of SEI’s new interface compared to the old one.

“This strategic partnership with Drexel University supports SEI’s commitment to continuously improving our solution through cutting-edge technology and direct user experience and engagement testing,” Joseph P. Ujobai, executive vice president of SEI, said.

To study the participant’s brain, the Drexel research team used functional near-infrared spectroscopy, which allows for the measurement of cognitive function and general brain activity.

The fNIRS device used was invented by Drexel and is currently distributed by Biopac, a biotechnology company. This fNIR sensor can monitor the activity of a complex region of the brain called the prefrontal cortex.  While the sensor monitored this activity level, the participants used the SEI Wealth Platform. When a person had high activity in the prefrontal cortex, it suggested that they were thinking harder about whatever they were doing. High activity in that region of the brain is related to concentration, motivation and mental effort.

In addition to using this data, researchers collected information on eye movements and other behaviors. A survey was also done in conjunction with the neurological and behavioral analysis.

The qualitative survey allows the user to record their voice while using the new interface and self-report what they thought about the experience. The behavioral component includes the accuracy and speed of response while the subject is using the interface. This allows for the calculation of a metric called “behavioral efficiency,” which represents accuracy and time. The eye tracking allows for researchers to see how easily the subjects navigated the information on the interface.

“The methodology used for this study is comprehensive and novel,” Rajneesh Suri, the associate dean of research at the LeBow College of Business, said. “This method goes beyond the traditional usability studies and applies tenets of neuroscience to an ergonomics examination of a financial website. This approach to understanding consumers’ behavior leads to rich diagnostic information and greater confidence in actions taken by businesses,” Suri continued.

Bec Dalton The Triangle

A Philadelphia City ordinance has recently instituted a new policy forcing mobile food vendors to move their vehicles off of Drexel University’s campus every night.

According to Philadelphia City Ordinance, vending hours are 7 a.m. to midnight. Additionally, the food trucks must be off the street by 12:30 a.m.

“Philadelphia has numerous laws in place to protect the safety of vendors and their customers.” Drexel Police Department Chief Eileen Behr wrote in an email. “Drexel, working with city officials, plans to enforce these laws to ensure the safety and well-being our campus community, vendors and neighborhood residents.”

After a food truck explosion that occurred in 2014, killing a mother and daughter while injuring ten others, the City of Philadelphia began a safety education and inspection program.

Now, DPD and city agencies are working together to improve safety and health regarding food trucks and mobile food vendors.

“The purpose is not to have the food vendors leave campus, but comply by health and safety regulations for the safety of our community,” Behr explained.

However, Drexel has been openly communicating with food truck vendors since February.

“Drexel Public Safety and Drexel Government Relations met with the vendors in February.  We had a town hall and met with the mobile food vendors to provide educational information, talk about working together to improve safety, and abiding by city regulations,” Chief Behr wrote.

She also outlined a few concerns DPD has with food trucks and mobile food vendors. These concerns include pedestrian safety, improper sanitation, motor vehicle traffic safety and fire prevention.

Chief Behr suggested that this policy will increase campus safety through things such as: increasing hygiene of the food trucks by cleaning off-campus, not allowing restocking via pickup trucks double-parked on high-traffic roads, reducing the number of thefts from food trucks occurring overnight and limiting the hazards from improperly handled propane tanks.

Drexel Police are working with the university’s Office of Government and Community Relations, Councilwoman Jannie Blackwell, and the departments of Licenses & Inspections and Public Health “to improve safety around the vendors and ensure all are abiding by the city health and safety regulations,” Chief Behr wrote.

The Jimmy John’s on 3233 Powelton Ave. has closed permanently.

According to Drexel Campus Services, another Jimmy John’s will be opening soon. The new Jimmy John’s will accept Dragon Dollars.

Drexel has recently leased more space to dining venues, such as Fuel, Chipotle, Blaze Pizza, another Old Nelson Food Co. and Co-Op.

But in 2016  many SodexoMagic-run locations that accepted Dining Dollars were shut down, like Vegetate, Seasons and the Market and Noodle Bar. The spaces formerly occupied by the last two remain empty.

In December, Drexel switched food service providers from Sodexo to Aramark. With this change came a new menu at the Handschumacher Dining Center and new stations at Urban Eatery. Nothing else has been overtly changed.

Currently, Drexel and SodexoMagic are in a legal battle after Sodexo sued Drexel for an alleged contract violation. Sodexo claims Drexel falsified enrollment information. Drexel has filed a counterclaim. There have been multiple health violations pertaining to dining locations owned by Drexel and near Drexel. The Hans, while managed by SodexoMagic, received more than 20 health violations in late 2015. Violations ranged from improper storage to mouse droppings in various locations in the dining hall.

Pizza Wings Steaks is a restaurant on the 3200 block of Powelton Avenue, and it received 18 health violations in December of 2016. Violations included the presence of mold and mouse droppings. After closing for a period of days, the vendor opened up again. When it reopened, it only had four health violations. The full health report can be found at http://www.phila.gov/health/FoodProtection/FoodSafetyReports.html.

Photo courtesy Drexel University

Although President Donald Trump’s executive order that banned most visitors from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Sudan, Libya, Somalia and Yemen from entering the U.S. has been restrained by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, arguments as to the merits and legality of this executive order are ongoing.

Trump has been using his executive order on strengthening border security to expand the powers of immigration authorities. The title of this executive order is “Border Security and Immigration Enforcement Improvements.”

Included in this executive order are several provisions regarding securing the southern border by a physical wall and monitoring by active personnel. Additionally, this executive order forces states to comply with federal immigration laws to detain and remove individuals who are suspected of violating these laws. But it’s not that simple.

“There are legal limits, under both domestic law and international law,” Anil Kalhan, a professor at the Kline School of Law, said.

Kalhan sat down with The Triangle Feb. 21 to discuss the legal implications surrounding President Donald Trump’s executive order regarding banned travel from seven countries.

Kalhan said that the U.S. has the authority to limit who comes into the country, but not without restrictions.

Additionally, irrespective of the executive order itself, the President has great executive power over immigration. Even if travel is not banned from these seven countries outright, since the ban has been halted, the president can implement policies like extreme vetting of incoming travelers. Trump can also simply reduce the number of refugees admitted into the country.

“There are lots of things that are legal to do that are terrible ideas,” Kalhan said.

Kalhan also said that there would be many obstacles to building a wall between the U.S. and Mexico.

“A lot of property where a wall would be built is owned by private property owners and large stretch of land along the border in Arizona is owned by a Native American tribe,” Kalhan said. “It is practically and legally difficult to carry out this promise.”

Kalhan sees a legal problem with implementing Trump’s immigration policies within the confines of both domestic and international law. Additionally, Kalhan has concerns with the implementation of this executive order to expedite the deportation of illegal immigrants.

“Looking at the executive order and the memos that would implement them, the Trump Administration wants to start deporting people without recourse to hearings, which would be a massive set of due process violations, such as not giving them hearings in front of an immigration judge,” Kalhan said.

Kalhan also cannot foresee, even putting aside due process, the orderly implementation of this executive order.

“They are going to enforce immigration law in a highly chaotic way such as giving every front line officer the power to decide for themselves who should be deported, or they will do what the Obama administration did and focus on certain groups to deport,” Kalhan said.

The enforcement of this executive order also increases federal power with regards to legal enforcement of immigration.

“States don’t have inherent authority over immigration,” Kalhan said. “A few years ago when Arizona tried, the Supreme Court pushed them back that their law was preemptive.”

And sanctuary cities, cities that will not hold an individual for longer than the city itself has interest in them, no matter how the federal government feels about this individual, have pushed back on this notion.

“Sanctuary cities aren’t a legal term, rather it is the cities saying that they will not act as immigration agents unless they have independent reason to do so,” Kalhan said.

A Drexel University research group is set to lead an effort to study the safety of drinking water following a $2 million grant from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The research team consists of several members from Drexel University, the University of Colorado at Boulder and Penn State University, among others. The timeline for the study is three years and the team will research and experiment all across the country.

The study will contrast water systems by comparing the systems of Philadelphia and Boulder, CO. Philadelphia’s piping infrastructure is very old, and some areas have very low usage. This is in comparison to Boulder which is a much newer and expanding city. These two systems will help determine the effect system age has on contamination.

The product of this research will be a website or internet tool which will allow the managers of various plumbing systems to determine what safety procedures are needed. Additionally, this research will help to identify what areas are at risk of waterborne bacteria.

The end goal is to create a risk assessment tool so that the safety of drinking water and building pipes can be regulated.

“The research announced today will guide decision makers as they design, renovate or manage plumbing systems to provide safe and clean drinking water,” Thomas Burke, EPA science advisor, said in a statement to DrexelNow.

There have been some studies to determine the number of cases of waterborne illnesses each year, and some surveys conclude that there are incidence rates ranging from 12 million to nearly 20 million cases per year. Research into the factors of geography and demographics has not been done, nor has cause of illness been reliably tracked. According to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, the contamination of drinking water happens most often after the water leaves the government regulated water main and enters the plumbing of the buildings or exits the taps.

Some dangerous waterborne illnesses are caused by bacteria, such as Legionella, H. pylori and Mycobacterium, which can multiply in the water in the pipes on the premises of the building. Infections by all three of these bacteria can be fatal, and preventing outbreaks of disease caused by these bacteria remains a high priority.

Even though a large portion of this research is based on identifying risk of waterborne illnesses and levels of dangerous bacteria in plumbing systems, the levels of lead and other toxic metals is also a concern. According to the EPA, lead levels in drinking water are highly dependent on the piping it travels through. This research may also help determine what piping systems and neighborhoods are susceptible to high levels of lead in drinking water.

Photo Courtesy John Green/Bay Area News Group/TNS

Drexel University researcher Ryan Petrie recently published a paper in the Journal of Cell Biology with the potential to reduce skin-cancer-related deaths.

The novel research behind this discovery helps the scientific community to better understand the migration of normal and cancerous skin cells through the body. Primarily, the question that should be answered is: how does studying the movement of tumor cells help prevent cancer patients from dying?

According to a paper published in Cell, nearly 90 percent of cancer deaths are related to the metastasis, or the spread through the body, of cancerous cells. If this movement can be better understood, then it may be possible to reduce the mortality rate of cancer.

“Cell migration is a lethal characteristic of metastatic tumors, where malignant cells begin to move inappropriately and spread through the body to form secondary tumors,” Petrie said in a statement to DrexelNow.

According to him, there are clear differences in the movement of normal cells and their cancerous cell counterparts. Since there is a clear distinction, the cancerous cells can potentially be separately targeted to reduce movement and prevent the metastasis of tumor cells.

When a normal cell encounters a space through which it cannot easily move, the cell switches to another type of movement that uses a nuclear piston mechanism. Metastatic cancer cells, on the other hand, have an alternate method of moving through a tightly packed extracellular environment.

These types of cancer cells use a class of enzymes, catalysts that speed up chemical reaction, to help them move through through the environment. This allows them to maximize the available free space that the cells can move through.

When the activity of this enzyme is reduced, tumor cells may respond by undergoing physiological changes that result in the cells becoming rounded. This allows the cancerous cells to move more freely through the extracellular environment of a person’s body.

Petrie believes that understanding the mechanisms of these different types of cell motility may lead to new methods of slowing cancer metastasis. This would ultimately provide clinical benefit in the form of more effective cancer treatments.

“It is extremely desirable to block the movement of tumor cells as a method to reduce metastasis, the most lethal aspect of malignant disease. Our research suggests that in the future it may be possible to selectively reduce tumor cell movement, while leaving the movement of normal cells relatively unaffected. More work will be required to determine if this idea is ultimately feasible, but our current research indicates that it may be a promising approach,” Petrie said.