Tuesday, May 21st 2013
Life history trade-offs are the bread and butter of biological anthropology. The way we understand the importance of certain traits and life events is in how they vary in response to selection pressures like energy availability or climate, but also cultural beliefs and practices.
That’s why it matters to us when you got your first period, or what your birth weight was, or how closely you decided to space your children, or if you had them at all. And we will delightedly explain the different selection pressures that push and pull on these events and traits, like how the travel soccer team you were so serious about as a kid might have delayed puberty for you just a little, but how that’s great because later puberty can lead to a lower lifetime hormone exposure and a lower risk for reproductive cancers.
We’re really fun at parties.
The broader importance of understanding all this variation, for the folks who aren’t nerding out on human evolution, is that it demonstrates that, well, we’re variable. And variable is normal, generally not worrisome or pathological. So studying variation directly contradicts a normative perspective that can make one feel like there’s only one way to be female, or one way to be male. I also think it can make us feel powerful, like we have strong, good bodies that are responsive to environmental variables and make smart somatic decisions.
One of the trade-offs I’ve grown increasingly interested in is the one between maintenance – that’s the effort you make keeping up the basic functions of your body, like digestion, circulation, but also immune function – and reproduction. Certain stressors can force the body to allocate more towards maintenance, which leaves fewer energetic resources for reproduction. For instance, if you are exposed to the cold virus, and you get a cold, your immune system is going to have to expend some additional energy fighting it off. This energy could have gone towards boosting your reproductive hormones just a little bit, or making your endometrium plush for the possibility of a baby.
Another way we’re fun at parties
Like many anthropologists in human biology, I have a freezer full of other people’s spit and pee from past projects. In my case the samples are from rural Polish women during the harvest season, over a menstrual cycle. In the past I’ve assayed all of it for reproductive hormones (estradiol and progesterone) and C-peptide (a biomarker of energy availability). But they have been waiting, preserved in the event a new laboratory methodology allows us to ask new questions.
My former student, Laura Klein (now a PhD student at Harvard) was able to use some old methodologies on measuring C-reactive protein in rat urine and tweak it to apply it to humans. C-reactive protein (CRP) is considered a measure of systemic inflammation, to some even a broad indicator of maintenance effort. So of course we decided to crack open the spit-and-pee freezer and pull out the Polish urine samples, because measuring CRP in these women alongside their reproductive hormones could tell us about maintenance versus reproduction trade-offs.
What we found
In this population of rural, agricultural women, CRP was negatively associated with progesterone – so the higher an individual’s CRP, the lower her progesterone (Figure 1). Progesterone is the hormone that is higher in the second half of the cycle. It is produced by the corpus luteum, which is what is left behind by the follicle that ovulates. Progesterone maintains the endometrium’s thickness and supports early pregnancy, and this latter-half functioning of the cycle tends to be the first that has energetic resources allocated away from it in the event some other part of the body needs it.
Figure 1. Women with high CRP (black squares) have lower progesterone through the luteal phase than women with low CRP (white squares).
There was a similar association with estradiol and CRP through the menstrual cycle, but it was not statistically significant, suggesting the relationship is not large or meaningful, at least in this sample. However, when we added age at menarche (first period) as a variable in our statistical models, age at menarche and CRP together seemed to influence estradiol. And the relationship between menarcheal age and CRP was interesting too: women who had gotten their first periods when younger had higher CRP.
We have some reason to suspect that this measure of CRP can tell us something about immune challenges. CRP breaks down into monomeric subunits when it gets to where it’s needed to help orchestrate the inflammatory process. Because we measured CRP from urine, only the monomeric subunits can be measured (the larger pentameric CRP, what’s normally measured in serum, can’t get through the kidneys). So we’re measuring the pro-inflammatory phenotype of what is left behind when a body needs to take care of inflammation.
Punchline
These associations are making us think that there is a lot more to adult ovarian hormones and fertility than we had first thought. Immune health and the childhood environment are both proving to be important to adult functioning. In future work, we really want to look at the immune environment during childhood to see if better measures of immune environment like microbial exposure from farm animals or history of illness and diarrheal episodes will help us understand what is driving this inflammation/reproduction relationship.
The paper: Clancy KBH, Klein LD, Ziomkiewicz A, Nenko I, Jasienska G, Bribiescas RG (2013). Relationships between biomarkers of inflammation, ovarian steroids, and age at menarche in a rural Polish sample. American Journal of Human Biology.25(3): 389-398.
Friday, May 3rd 2013
I’ve been reading some good stuff the last few weeks, thought I’d share it here.
Pedagogy
Cheating to Learn. A great way to engage students is put them in charge of the conditions for their exam. These students “cheated” by working together on an animal behavior final.
Math teacher explains math anxiety. Math and science anxiety is something that comes up quite a bit in my Anth 143 course, which is why over the years I’ve designed it to address critical thinking and basic science skills. I still don’t feel like I have a handle on how to help students who feel this way, even though I have my own personal experiences with this kind of anxiety that make me empathetic.
Higher ed
The Ever-Shrinking Role of Tenured College Professors (in 1 Chart). Yes, they really did use an old white greybeard for their image, as though those are the jobs in peril (they aren’t). But the fact that tenure-track positions now represent so few of the academic jobs out there has pretty dire consequences for how much a professor feels they can invest in their students. Adjuncts don’t know from semester to semester whether they get to keep their jobs, so they can’t easily advise undergraduates. And tenure-track professors are so panicked to keep their jobs that one has to fight to be truly well-rounded and not just be a research maniac who ignores undergrads and abuses grad students.
Colleges curb adjuncts’ hours to skirt Affordable Care Act rules. Jerks. Of course, if you have a tenure-track job like me, that gives you tons of privilege, but STILL doesn’t protect you from people who think your work is worthless. Exhibit A: the great state of Illinois is screwing us over on pensions. Which is why we should all be working together to protect our basic working conditions. (Give me a U! Give me an N! Give me an I! Give me an O! Give me an N!)
Universities Benefit From Their Faculties’ Unionization, Study Finds. Of course this is behind a paywall. Of course. But if you’re an academic and you’re on campus, you should be able to get this. Short version: unions aren’t just good for workers, they actually make their universities better. (This was a study of public universities, like the one where I work. Ahem.)
Why Professors at San Jose State Won’t Use a Harvard Professor’s MOOC. And here is an excellent example of organizing for change. I’m not totally against MOOCs, but I am certainly against using them in a way that implies that Ivy League courses are better than those at other universities (I love you guys, but we all know folks at universities and colleges where teaching is the priority are in fact the best teachers – if anyone should be making MOOCs it’s them), and in a way that leads to a bunch of poorer students of color looking on while a bunch of wealthier white kids on a video get to interact with the famous guy.
Discovery of sexual harassment by scientists attracts little attention. Paul Raeburn points a finger at the folks who decided not to cover our conference paper over at Knight Science Journalism Tracker. Though the good news is, the American Anthropological Association issued a Zero Tolerance statement in response to our presentation. If you are in a field-based science and want to share your experiences, you have until Friday May 10th to be included in our final analyses: click on the survey now.
US academic speaks out about gang rape ordeal in PNG. Alas, soon after news of our research broke out, so did this devastating story.
Ladybusiness
Cesarean delivery rates vary tenfold among US hospitals; reducing variation may address quality and cost issues. This is a paper I haven’t gotten around to blogging about, so I thought I’d just share the abstract for now (though the link in the upper right corner suggests you should be able to get the full text). What this paper shows is that cesarean rates vary widely between hospitals, and that that variance is even greater in low-risk pregnancies, where you should expect the least variation and lowest rates.
Investing in Women in STEM: Because Girls Grow Up. A great perspective from AWIS on why investing just on getting more girls in STEM is not going to fix the leaky pipeline. There are already lots of girls in STEM in many subfields, but they aren’t staying.
‘Know your IX’ campaign to stop sexual violence. I’m sad to say I’ve had to learn about this aspect of Title IX for my students in the past. My university does fairly well reporting these things, actually, and so far I have had a very positive experience with the sensitivity and thoughtfulness of the folks who work on this and related issues at the University of Illinois. I think we can do more on prevention and awareness, but the policies that are in place are pretty good.
Nifty things
But I’m a nice guy. Imagine you are one of a lucky group of people who gets unlimited access to ice cream, pouring from a wonderful Infinity Fountain of Ice Cream Goodness. Then, someone from another group gets one scoop from that fountain, one measly scoop, and has the gall to enjoy it in front of you. Of course, you get to go back to enjoying your unlimited ice cream after that, but HOW DARE THAT PERSON GET ONE SCOOP TOO?!? It’s a pretty apt metaphor for Men’s Rights Activism, and the video has gone so viral that there is now a Feminazi Stole My Ice Cream tumblr. And while we’re on the topic of great tumblrs, check out Boys Clubs.
Fitness and attention span. At this point I doubt there is anyone I’ve ever met who isn’t aware of my obsession with exercise and sports. But maybe this enhances, rather than detracts from, my day job.
A Highly Effective Way to Avoid Wasting Your Time. I found this via LinkedIn, which mostly has articles on business stuff that doesn’t feel relevant to my day job. But I enjoyed this article and have been doing what it advises – writing out every hour of your day, then filling in those hours when you don’t use your time productively. And it really has made me more productive, because I don’t want to have to fill in a line with “used social media too much.”
In praise of Boston. Dave Munger writes a touching post on his experience running Boston this year. He really captured the feel of the marathon. I’ve been many years (even brought the kiddo a month after she was born), and we usually cheer at mile 16 or the finish line. Maybe we’ll be cheering on some friends next year. (I won’t be running – I have run one marathon and it was enough. I’m happier working out with wheels on my feet these days.)
NBA Player Jason Collins says he is gay. I know you all know it by now. I just love this story, it’s raw and honest and beautifully written.
Wednesday, April 24th 2013
Jammer Hurrycane Jackie shows her defensive stance at a Twin City Derby Girls intraleague bout. Photo by Tom Schaefges, used with permission.
A few weeks ago I was reading over page proofs for a now-published manuscript, and I must have had my science writer brain on. I started to read what I had written and, for one excruciating moment, was horrified at what I saw. The writing seemed so stiff, so lifeless! Who the heck was I even talking to, and who would care about this stuff?
In an act of self-preservation, my science writer brain switched off, and after a moment my academic scientist brain flickered on like a cold fluorescent light. My body relaxed in the artificial yellow glow. Ahh, ok. I recognize the moves I am making here. This wording is to adhere to the abstract word limit. This wording is to appease a reviewer. This wording is to make sure I don’t inadvertently insult other scholars working in my area. This whole paragraph? So I don’t forget to cite anybody. These several paragraphs of awkwardly described methods are so that people understand exactly what our data can and cannot say. And these conclusions are severely limited, because if we overstate our findings we will get blasted.
And so on. Writing academic manuscripts is best done in a defensive posture.
When an entire mode of communication rests on anonymous peer review, it leads to a very specific style of writing. I’m not saying that our way of talking to each other is all bad (though I think the fact that anonymous peer review is not only the foundation for publishing, but also for getting grants, jobs, and tenure is hugely problematic, but I’ll leave that for another day). Jargon creates opportunities for specificity, and for agreement on the meaning of certain terms. Being careful and making sure to give credit to those who have gone before you is a good part of scientific practice. And there are plenty of scientific papers out there that I love, in part, because of the great, and yes, precise and careful, writing.
But when I’m switching back and forth between my two writing identities – someone who tries to write for a broad audience, and someone who wants to share my findings with my colleagues and, to be honest, check the appropriate boxes to get tenure – I am struck at how the way we have learned to communicate with our colleagues so directly contradicts not only the way science is perceived, but consumed, by the public.
To be fair, I also write defensively for the blog, because I do try and anticipate the response I’m going to get. But for the most part, that defensiveness pushes me towards clarity, as opposed to satisfying reviewers. Somehow, my online writing process, even when I am thinking ahead to how you will love it or skewer it, is less fear-based than my academic writing process. I need the professor gig more than the SciAm gig (sorry, Bora), so it could be more of that old self-preservation kicking in.
So my main questions coming out of this random, meandering post, are:
- What would it look like to train scientists to be ethical, precise writers without the looming specter of anonymous peer review?
- What would it look like if we didn’t always assume simplicity and precision are opposed to one another?
When we think about science communication, we often think of the part about training people to speak to a broad audience. But what if part of the problem is in how narrowly our academic writing trains us to write in the first place? As more journals move to open access, and more universities make repositories for journal manuscripts, our audience is going to shift. Can we shift too?
