Tasting the way to good health

If the flavor of spinach makes you cringe or you don't like much mayonnaise on your sandwich, you may not be just a picky eater. You could be one of the 25 percent of the population who are supertasters: individuals who have heightened oral sensations from foods and beverages.

"Supertasters live in a different oral sensory world than nontasters, who also make up about 25 percent of the population," says Professor Valerie Duffy, who holds joint appointments in nutritional sciences and allied health and conducts studies on variations in taste and how they influence what people like to eat.

"Understanding why people eat what they do can help dietitians and nutritionists tailor diets that not only can lower the risk of diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular disease but are also enjoyable to eat," Duffy says.

Duffy is exploring relationships between markers of genetic variation in taste and what we like and choose to eat and the impact of dietary decision making on the risk of chronic disease, such as cardiovascular disease and cancer.

Supertasters' hypersensitivity to bitterness may cause them to avoid foods, like broccoli, that carry cancer-preventive compounds. They don't like the taste of fats and alcohol and as a result have shown lower cholesterol levels, which is good for heart health.

"Diet plays a role in preventing cardiovascular disease," Duffy says. "Understanding why people eat what they do is an important piece of the puzzle."

Creating a model physical therapy clinic

Photo: Dollie Harvey

Graduate student Amy Rush practicies strength building exercises at thle Nayden Rehabilitation Clinic with assistance from Michael Zito, associate professor of physicial therapy.

A new rehabilitation clinic is helping UConn students in the physical therapy program gain practical experience and keep pace with the latest innovations in the field.

The Britta R. Nayden Rehabilitation Clinic opened at UConn, providing faculty and students with a fully accessible, modern facility that can provide care for more than 10,000 patient visits annually. The clinic was made possible by a $125,000 gift from Denis J. Nayden '76 (BUS) '77 M.B.A., and Britta R. Nayden '76 (SAH), a graduate of the physical therapy program.

"We wanted to create a model clinic, where best practices are and evidence-based treatments of the highest level are the standard," says Scott Hasson, professor of physical therapy and chair of the department. "The Nayden Clinic allows us to further integrate all aspects of a student's education. Students see patients in a real world setting, and we determine our desired outcomes from best practices research."

The clinic operates in partnership with Windham Community Memorial Hospital, which provides administrative oversight and consultation. Joseph W. Smey, dean of the School of Allied Health, says the physical therapy department is planning to expand its offerings to include a doctoral program. "The Nayden Clinic will serve as a catalyst to support academic growth, allow for expanded learning opportunities for students, and provide an environment to support research," he says.

UConn M.B.A. a solid investment

Forbes and other leading publications have ranked UConn's School of Business among the best in the nation.

Forbes magazine ranks UConn's School of Business among the nation's top 50 for providing students the fastest return on investment from an M.B.A. program.

Of more than 1,200 business schools nationally, UConn is ranked 23rd among all public universities and the only public business school ranked in New England.

The biennial Forbes survey was designed to determine the return on investment for an M.B.A. by tracking the progress of graduates from the class of 1998 during a five-year period.

UConn's M.B.A. graduates nearly triple their salaries and break even on their investment of tuition, fees and foregone salary, says Forbes. The survey also showed that UConn graduates realized an 84 percent return on their investment within five years.

The ranking by Forbes continues the accolades for the UConn School of Business, which is also listed by Business Week magazine as among the best in the nation. The Wall Street Journal also elevated UConn to its list of Top Business Schools. U.S. News & World Report cites UConn as the number-one public business school in New England.

Learning and research in-country

While many students were at home over the winter intersession, 28 UConn students were earning academic credit in Cuba and Nepal as part of the International Culture Study Program sponsored by the College of Continuing Studies.

International programs are offered for UConn students and others interested in earning either undergraduate or graduate credits.

Chris Pagoni

Emily Meanwell '00 (CLAS) in Bhaktapur, Nepal, with two new friends during an intersession study trip.

"Students gain unique insights into the country they visit and learn more about themselves and differing ways of thinking and approaching the world," says Krista Rodin, CCS dean and faculty member for course trips to Cuba and Peru.

In addition to lectures and field trips, an integral part of the curriculum for students is individualized research on a topic of interest to the student.

Jessica Chavez, a seventh semester international relations major, says she gained a new perspective during her trip to Nepal, where she visited the Hindu holy site of Pashupatinath as part of her study of Nepali culture. An artist by avocation, she says her research project will be an illustrated version of a Nepali folk tale or a Hindu story.

"Doing a study-abroad program reinforces the information you learn in class by giving some perspective to it," says Chavez. "There are over 100 political parties in Nepal. We saw the aftermath of the recent political insurgence and student protests. Everything we learned seemed to have greater validity to it."

A new dental speciality at UConn

By combining research, innovative technology and business know-how, a UConn dentist is pioneering an emerging dental specialty known as biodontics.

Photo: Peter Morenus

Hubert Benitez, left, and Edward Rossomando in the dental clinic at the UConn Health Center.

Edward Rossomando, a professor of biostructure and function at the School of Dental Medicine, is developing a program to move biotechnology more efficiently from scientists and inventors to dental practitioners under a two-year $322,000 grant from the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research, a branch of the National Institutes of Health.

"Technology is at work in all dental offices, from infection control to lasers in restorative dentistry and the use of computers for everything from imaging to record keeping," Rossomando says. "Most dentists realize that the introduction of new products and technologies into their practice is in the best interest of their patients, but existing office routines and habits can present obstacles to any change."

The program introduces an understanding of business to dental students, faculty and practitioners. To further explore biodontics and pursue research on its practical use, Rossomando established the Center for Research and Education in Technology Evaluation at the dental school.

The UConn program has attracted the attention of other prestigious dental schools in the country that have signed up for seminars and training, including Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, New York University, the University of California at San Francisco, and the University of Southern California.

Using a stone wall to bridge learning

Stone Wall Secrets, a children's book authored by a UConn scientist and his wife, has become the catalyst for a novel elementary school curriculum.

The project, made possible by a $150,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, is a collaboration between faculty in the Neag School of Education and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.

About six years ago, Robert Thorson, a professor of geology, and his wife, Kristine, penned a fictional story about a boy, his grandfather and a stone wall in need of repair. The story is intertwined with lessons about how rocks provide clues to the past, from the days when the Earth's crust was formed to tales about the first settlers.

Last year, Thorson approached UConn education professors David Moss, a science educator, and Wendy Glenn, an English educator, with an idea he had to bring the fictional story to life. Using the Thorsons' book as a springboard, they are developing a K-8 curriculum that embeds science within language arts and other disciplines, rather than treating the content of each subject separately.

For example, third-grade students engaged in a lesson concerning life in colonial days, when fields needed to be cleared of rocks and trees for farming, posed a simple, but profound question: "Where did all the rocks comes from?" This allowed the teacher to move seamlessly between science, history and writing lessons, incorporating scientific thinking in an authentic and meaningful way. It becomes "a hook," Moss says, for the students to understand and care about how science fits into the context of daily life.

After recruiting teachers from the Mansfield, Conn., school system, the UConn team developed a pilot curriculum that is currently being tested. The curriculum will be analyzed and revised as necessary this summer before another year of pilot testing begins. The materials will then be made available nationally to all educators on the NSF website.

The Stone Wall Initiative is online here.

Having fun with algorithms

For Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, UTC Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, algorithms are not the difficult part of a math problem. Rather, they are tools for solving complex problems and having fun.

Photo: Peter Morenus

Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, UTC Professor of Computer SCiences and Engineering, teaches his students to design highly efficient algorithms.

Algorithms are the fundamental techniques for unraveling problems using a computer, the theory used to create the programming.

There are thousands of algorithms that can help sort data and Rajasekaran's job is to build algorithms that increase efficiency and involve the fewest operations. He is the principal investigator on a new five-year project, funded by a $1.2 million National Science Foundation Information Technology Research grant, in which researchers at four universities will develop and experiment with techniques for processing large amounts of data.

He says algorithms allow him to work in many domains, such as projects working with engineering faculty on fuel cell research and with allied health faculty on a project to design an exercise bicycle for the physically challenged.

It is not just the solution that intrigues him; it is finding the best solution or designing the most efficient algorithm. "It's an art more than a science," he says.

Rajasekaran is currently working with neuroscientists at the UConn Health Center on motif searches, a method to find useful parts of biological data repeated across species and in many parts of a medical database.

The complexity of step-family dynamics

Illustration: John Bailey

The Brady Bunch ideal of a step-family contrasts markedly with how Americans generally understand step-family dynamics. In fact from Snow White to Cinderella, in most fictional tales, step-families in general - and step-mothers in particular - are portrayed negatively.

There has been little study about the complex relationships that make up a step-family, something that UConn professor Shannon Weaver seeks to address with qualitative research on role construction and relationship formation by women in step-families.

"My interest is in family dynamics. I want to find out what works," says Weaver, an assistant professor of family studies.

Step-mothers find themselves in a particular dilemma because they are not biological mothers but they are expected to do the loving and nurturing things a mother does. Weaver says some define their role as that of a big sister because they do not want to infringe on what is considered the biological mother's territory in the family dynamic.

Over the past four years, Weaver has followed a number of step-families through good times and bad, successes and failures, common experiences and unique circumstances. She says communication is the single most important ingredient in establishing a healthy, blended family.

Critically important to family harmony, Weaver says, is "figuring out what you can control and accepting what you can't. Flexibility is very important in every family form but particularly in step-families."

Accent is on acting professor's skill

When he was a 10-year old growing up in New London, Conn., David Stern says he knew he had a knack for accents.

Photo: Melissa Arbo

David Stern, professor of dramatic arts and a dialect coach for Hollywood actors, demonstrates vocal techniques for students in a speaking voice class.

"I'd listen to my father's original cast recordings of My Fair Lady and an older recording of Finian's Rainbow," says Stern, '69 (SFA), UConn professor of dramatic arts. "I'd start singing along with the characters, and I realized I could parrot back almost any voice."

After graduating from UConn, Stern earned a doctorate, worked at several universities and created the widely used Acting with an Accent, a series of instructional tapes.

He eventually headed to Hollywood, where he became a premiere voice and dialect coach, working with actors such as Julia Roberts, Liam Neeson, Forest Whitaker and Cicely Tyson.

After 12 years, Stern returned to UConn, where since 1993 he has been improving accents and dialects of his students.

"The most important part of my job is protecting the physical health of the actors' voices," he says. "If I can get them to play heavily emotional moments, yelling or screaming without any strain, that is the single most important thing that I do. One of my jobs is not just teaching actors the technique for producing the accent but also showing them how it can be an integral part of each character's interaction."

Stern's most recent dialect film work is the new Viggo Mortensen film, Hidalgo, where he coached actor Victor Talmadge in using a Swedish accent.

Asking questions about legal ethics

Photo: Peter Morenus

Law professor Sean Griffith shares both real world and theoretical perspectives with UConn law students.

After considering a Ph.D. in philosophy, working as a playwright and practicing corporate law, Sean Griffith says being an associate professor of business law is "a natural place" to explore legal questions that interest him.

"I was always more interested in theoretical issues and problem areas. There are a lot of good questions about corporations and governance that need serious research to be answered," he says.

Griffith uses his scholarly writings to investigate some of those questions. In a commentary last year for the Connecticut Law Review, for example, he used the behavior of Enron executives to examine whether there is something wrong with the guiding principles of legal ethics. According to Griffith, the field of legal ethics did not provide "a normative principle capable of constraining the conduct of business lawyers in the current corporate scandals."

He also uses law and economics as a framework to investigate corporate law issues, such as in an article addressing the legal regulation of initial public offerings from the perspective of financial economics.

Griffith shares his knowledge of the business world with UConn students through a seminar on corporate governance and financial markets.

"The good part about having been in practice is that I can do practice-oriented exercises with my students," he notes. "They seem to both like and benefit from a mix of the practical and the theoretical."

New program brings global impact home
Waving a wand for food safety

New program brings global impact home

A new graduate certificate in global governance coordinated by a UConn political scientist will benefit both UConn students pursuing graduate degrees in the social sciences and secondary school social studies teachers.

The program will identify global impacts on daily life and help clarify how and why political decisions are made and what implications globalization has for democratic governance around the world.

Mark Boyer, professor of political science and director of the program, says the graduate certificate requirements - 12 credits and a research paper - will complement the work done by students already enrolled in master's and doctoral programs.

The program continues the collaborative efforts between the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences and the Neag School of Education, says Boyer. It provides a structured, globally oriented program for secondary school teachers, particularly in social studies, who are working toward an M.A. in education or a sixth-year diploma. He expects the program will also appeal to graduate students in other social sciences, such as history, sociology and economics.

"It's one of the new, exciting directions the political science department is taking," says Howard Reiter, who chairs the department. "We're moving to the forefront of a newly emerging area."

Boyer says the certificate program will showcase the department's strength in international relations and comparative politics.

Waving a wand for food safety

Photo: Peter Morenus

Claudia Koertling, assistant professor of marine sciences, uses an instrument adapted to detect harmful bacteria in meat before it can make its way to the supermarket.

UConn scientists are adapting a machine used by the U.S. Coast Guard to find explosives and trace amounts of drugs for use in detecting Listeria and other pathogenic bacteria in meat before it is shipped to grocery stores and restaurants.

Robert Vinopal, professor of molecular and cell biology, is collaborating on the project with Claudia Koerting, assistant research professor of marine sciences, and research specialist J. Richard Jadamec, both of UConn's Coastal Environmental Research Lab, a facility based at UConn's Avery Point campus.

The researchers are working to calibrate the inspection device and develop sampling methods to detect bacteria.

If they are successful, a meat inspector could use a wand to scan a side of beef and learn immediately whether it is contaminated.

"We hope our research will provide protection to the public and save money for the meat industry," Vinopal says. "We want to make it easier to know that what you are buying in the supermarket is safe to eat."

The machine allows researchers to test for bacteria at a cost of only about 50 cents per test, compared with more than $5 for traditional tests. The potential savings could be millions of dollars in testing and costly recalls of meat products.

The research is supported by grants from the American Meat Institute Foundation and the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

First national study on pregnant smokers

The UConn Health Center will conduct the first national, large-scale study to help pregnant women who want to quit smoking improve their chances of success.

A team of researchers led by principal investigator Cheryl Oncken, associate professor of medicine and of obstetrics and gynecology in the School of Medicine, will conduct the study under a five-year, $1.6 million grant from the National Institutes of Health.

"Our goal is to learn whether alleviating tobacco withdrawal symptoms with nicotine gum can help pregnant women quit smoking and improve birth outcomes," says Oncken. "We know there are risks involved with nicotine gum and patches, but compared to the chemicals inhaled and the potential reduction of oxygen to the fetus, those risks are significantly lower."

Side effects of nicotine therapy can include nausea, dizziness and increases in blood pressure and heart rate, according to researchers.

National statistics indicate that about 20 percent of pregnant women smoke. Research has shown that smoking during pregnancy is one of the most important modifiable causes of poor pregnancy outcomes in the United States. Pregnant women who quit smoking improve their chances of having healthy babies and avoiding serious pregnancy problems, Oncken says.

Nicotine is among the most powerfully addictive substances. Nearly 35 million people try to quit smoking each year, but less than 7 percent succeed after a year, according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

Studying the effects of Kangaroo Care

Photo: Peter Morenus

Kim Dorman of Newington holds her premature daughter Nicole at the UConn Health Center. The skin-to-skin contact is a therapeutic technique known as "Kangaroo Care."

Sometimes a simple human touch can assist patients more than the myriad of wires and technology that are part of modern healthcare.

In the UConn Health Center's high-tech newborn intensive care unit, where premature babies are nurtured toward health by increasing their capacity to gain weight, simply having a mother hold her baby skin-to-skin, chest-to-chest has shown to have an immediate and long-term positive effect toward improving the baby's progress to good health. Babies gain weight more rapidly, which stabilizes their development, and they go home sooner.

Although the effectiveness of the technique, known as Kangaroo Care, has been studied previously, the focus of new research by UConn nursing professor Arthur Engler is on the physiological and psychological impact on parents providing this care to a critically ill, low birth-weight baby.

Engler, a nurse, is conducting his research at the UConn Health Center, where he monitors the temperature and skin responses of mothers and fathers holding their premature babies in order to gauge the parents' reactions and level of stress.

"We already know Kangaroo Care helps babies," Engler says. "If we can show it also benefits parents, we can help nurses use this technique more widely, and the outcome is going to be better for the baby in the long run."

The UConn Health Center provides care for more preterm infants than any other hospital in Connecticut.

McCarthy fills the prescription

Photo: Peter Morenus

Robert McCarthy, head of the UConn pharmacy practice department, has been named dean of the School of Pharmacy.

"Dean McCarthy's appointment is enthusiastically supported by the School of Pharmacy and is a testament to his demonstrated success in reacting to and serving the needs of his faculty, students and staff," says John Petersen, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

McCarthy had been serving as interim dean since July 2002.

Since taking over leadership of the school, McCarthy's primary goals have been to bolster faculty and staff and boost the school's reputation during a time of significant transformation at the University.

"I consider this position at UConn as one of the top 10 school of pharmacy deanships in the country," McCarthy says. "My duty is to provide the kind of leadership these good people deserve and promote their exceptional work.

As a dean you have to get as much pleasure and satisfaction from the successes of your faculty and students as if you had accomplished them yourself."

McCarthy began his career as a hospital pharmacy director before joining the faculty first at Northeastern University and then at the Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences.

He has more than two dozen peer-reviewed publications to his credit and is preparing the third edition of his textbook, Introduction to Health Care Delivery: A Primer for Pharmacists.

Protecting children from sexual abuse

UConn researchers in the School of Social Work are helping identify the characteristics of child sex offenders in an effort to bolster abuse prevention efforts.

The study was conducted for the Children's Trust Fund, an independent agency that develops child abuse prevention programs, and led by Eleanor Lyon, associate professor-in-residence at the School of Social Work.

Contrary to public perception, the typical child abuser in Connecticut is not a stranger loitering in a local park. Instead, the most likely abuser is a parent, relative or friend of the child, an educated white male between the ages of 30 and 50.

The study was based on a review of the files of 188 convicted sex offenders who underwent treatment in Connecticut at the Center for the Treatment of Problem Sexual Behavior between 2000 and 2002. The researchers also studied 844 cases of child sexual abuse reported in 2002 and substantiated by the state Department of Children and Families and state police.

"When we focus prevention education only on protecting children from 'street danger,' we're making a mistake," Lyon says, noting that parents need to know who their children are spending time with and what they are doing.

Educators and other professionals working with children also need to understand that parents also can be perpetrators of acts of sexual violence aimed at children, she adds.