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Baylor Biology Professor Travels To Antarctica To Study Leopard Seals As Part Of NSF-Funded Research

As part of an $800,000 National Science Foundation-funded project, Stephen J. Trumble, Ph.D., associate professor of biology at Baylor, and other experienced Antarctica researchers from the University of California, Santa Cruz and Colorado State University will work to gain an understanding of the foraging ecology and physiology of the leopard seal, an Antarctic apex, or top, predator. “This three-year project will collect data on foraging and dive behavior, diet, habitat use and fuel use in leopard seals,” Trumble said. “Ultimately, the goal is to relate foraging behavior with physiological performance and determine physiological limits. The estimated physiological limits combined with habitat modeling will help us understand how leopard seals may respond and cope with a changing Antarctic environment.” Trumble and his fellow researchers will conduct their research at the remote Cape Shirreff Field Station on Livingston Island, relying on 55-years of combined experience and lights to navigate the terrain in the dark while searching for leopard seals. A vertebrate physiologist and expert in marine mammals, Trumble has made his fair share of national research headlines since he began working at Baylor in 2008. Along with his graduate students in his Laboratory of Ecological and Adaptational Physiology (LEAP), Dr. Trumble investigates and publishes on basic and applied research involving skeletal muscle physiology, organismal energetics, lipid biochemistry, digestive physiology and health indices in models ranging from rats to seals to whales. Source:

The Invisible Continue to Remain Invisible

The New York Times piece illustrates an observation few are willing to discuss and focus within realms such as U.S. legislation and academia. Let's not forget to mention the overarching implications related to the criminal justice and judicial systems within the country as well. Within the field of education I have, along side many great scholars, attempted to define the implications for Black males as they related to the historical and contemporary ramification of being within a system initially intended for White males only. Overall, we have attempted to tell the stories of Black males from both a quantitive and qualitative perspective as they relate to the effects of institutionalized racial oppression. But overall, these stories are largely ignored through the need to focus on Blacks as one monolithic group. This tendency allows for issues specifically related to Black males to be washed out. As Ralph Ellison emphasizes within Invisible Man ( 1952), they indeed become "Invisible." Source:

Guns in schools is a public health issue that needs to be tackled with data-informed strategies

Ron Astor, Lenore Stein-Wood and William S. Wood Professor of School Behavioral Health at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck of Social Work, urges districts and schools to utilize data gathered from statewide administered surveys on school climate to develop preventative strategies to reduce the presence of weapons on school campuses. Schools throughout California administer the California Healthy Kids Survey to measure school climate, substance use and well-being among California students. Results from the Fifteenth Biennial Statewide Student Survey, which surveyed 7th, 9th and 11th grade students between 2013-2015, showed striking insights into the prevalence of weapons on campus. 7th graders in the survey indicated the following: · 1.2% carried a gun to school property one time · 3.3% carried any other weapon (such as a knife or club) to school property one time · 12.8% had seen someone carrying a gun, knife or other weapon to school property at one time “Let’s get the rumbling before the storm. We don’t have a state or national strategy other than the Gun-Free School Zones Act to address the issue of weapons on campus,” Astor said. “We need to move to a public health approach to develop a preventative strategy for weapon reduction using data.” Source:

Another planet discovered by NASA – 2,545 light-years from Earth

Today, the scientific world was watching as NASA made a big announcement. Its Kepler Space Telescope, which has been conducting an intensive planet-hunting mission since 2009, had new results to share with the public. A media release from NASA states: “Our solar system now is tied for most number of planets around a single star, with the recent discovery of an eighth planet circling Kepler-90, a Sun-like star 2,545 light years from Earth. The planet was discovered in data from NASA’s Kepler Space Telescope. The newly-discovered Kepler-90i – a sizzling hot, rocky planet that orbits its star once every 14.4 days – was found using machine learning from Google. Machine learning is an approach to artificial intelligence in which computers “learn.” In this case, computers learned to identify planets by finding in Kepler data instances where the telescope recorded signals from planets beyond our solar system, known as exoplanets." There are some very technical and scientific data and information here. As well, a lot of questions to be asked and answered. That’s where experts like Dr. Michael Reed from Missouri State University can help. Dr. Reed is a professor of astronomy at Missouri State. He researches extrasolar planets and pulsating stars. Dr. Reed is available to speak to the media and can explain what this all means for science, the study of space and if there might actually be life out there. Click on his icon to connect with him. Source:

Women in the Workplace – Still an Unfair Playing Field

It’s a trend that has many reeling and wondering how to correct: many women working in the financial services industry on Wall Street today don't believe there are opportunities to advance to the most senior positions. This comes as corporate, academic and government leaders push for greater gender diversity at American companies. A study by Lean In released today showed some startling statistics. Women in the Workplace 2017 took pipeline data from 222 companies employing more than 12 million people. As well, more than 70,000 employees completed a survey designed to explore their experiences regarding gender, opportunity, career and work-life issues. The results were not good. The report showed: “Women remain significantly underrepresented in the corporate pipeline. From the outset, fewer women than men are hired at the entry level. At every subsequent step, the representation of women further declines, and women of color face an even more dramatic drop-off at senior levels. This disparity is not due to company-level attrition or lack of interest: women and men stay at their companies and ask for promotions at similar rates.” In fact, from entry level, women represent 47 percent of all entry level hires, but only one in five women will become a C-Suite leader. For women of color, that number diminishes to one in 30. The report also shows that women are less likely to be promoted, receive raises or be supported throughout their careers. So, what will it take to reverse this trend and make corporate America an equal playing field for all? What barriers need to be removed and what policies need to be changed? Is this a cultural shift, should it be regulated and can it be done? The situation is clearly unfair and there are many questions to be asked. Yet answers and solutions are by no means simple or easy to come by. That’s where experts from Missouri State University can help. Dr. Shannon Wooden is a gender studies expert. She is also a published author. Dr. Wooden can speak about the gender pay gap and why companies need more female representation in senior and board levels. Click on her icon to contact her. Source:

What's next for Equifax?

Earlier this week, Equifax announced a second breach of customer's personal data. That brings the total number of people who have had their personal information either seen shared or stolen to a whopping 145.5 million. To put that into perspective - that's the collective populations of Georgia, California, Texas, New York, Florida, Illinois, Pennsylvania, and Missouri combined. Goizueta Business School Expert Kevin Crowley says competitors could take advantage of this drop in confidence but don't look for another firm to swoop in and try to purchase Equifax at a low price. Source:

Diabetes Canada’s 20th Annual Professional Conference Comes to Edmonton

Diabetes Canada and the Canadian Society for Endocrinology and Metabolism (CSEM) will be celebrating the 20th anniversary of their Professional Conference and Annual Meetings at the Shaw Centre in Edmonton from November 1 to 4, 2017. The event, which brings together thousands of health-care professionals and researchers focused on diabetes care, is the biggest of its kind in the country. Registration for the event opens today. “The treatment and management of diabetes continues to evolve, making it more and more critical to bring together inter-disciplinary health-care teams to discuss the latest discoveries in diabetes care and prevention. I know this year, as we mark this important milestone, we will be pulling out all the stops to provide health-care professionals with the best information, including a sneak peek at the Diabetes Canada 2018 Clinical Professional Guidelines for the Prevention and Management of Diabetes in Canada.”Rick Blickstead, President and CEO, Diabetes Canada. “The Professional Conference is of extraordinary benefit to health-care professionals who attend because of the opportunity to learn about the newest advances in clinical practice and about new data and interpretations. This is also an opportunity to engage and interact face-to-face with colleagues, including world leaders in research.” Dr. Bruce A. Perkins, clinician-scientist at the Leadership Sinai Centre for Diabetes, Conference co-chair Source:

Payday loan rollovers do not harm some borrowers’ financial welfare

Research by a Kennesaw State University professor has found that there is a potentially limited adverse relationship between repeated refinancing and credit scores for those at the lowest end of the credit spectrum, casting doubt on the claims of payday loan critics that extended refinancing of these loans is universally harmful to consumers' financial welfare. Jennifer Priestley, a professor of applied statistics and data science and author of the 2014 study, says that "payday loans may not only fail to harm borrowers, but may actually contribute to an improvement in borrower welfare for some customers on the lower end of the credit continuum." Source:

Data Breach

Nearly every day a new company announces a data breach. It's a real problem and something the government, industry and security experts are looking to solve. Emory expert Ram Chellappa helped coin the term "cloud computing" and knows about the response and reputation loss related to data breaches. Source: