Perspective | From Mars to malaria

Is there life on Mars?

And does the time of year make you more inclined to think of a particular color of candy?

Each semester, Penn professors tackle a number of questions across different topics, performing research that can save lives and solve problems of all sorts.

And though their studies may not always gain wide renown after publication, the insights gained during the research process are often surprising.

English professor Stuart Curran edits massive 10-plus-page anthologies of eighteenth and nineteenth century poets, while Romance Languages professor Barbara Fuchs has focused on the windmill-battling hero Don Quixote.

Chemistry professor Jeffrey Bode aims to make drugs cheaper, while Biology professor David Roos examines the parasites behind malaria and other diseases.

Finally, Marketing professor Jonah Berger uses Livestrong bracelets in sociology experiments, and Environmental Sciences professor Douglas Jerolmack analyzes Martian sediment.

Though their focuses differ, they all represent the varied inquiries that Penn professors call their jobs.

Una amiga de Don Quixote

A native of Buenos Aires, she's no stranger to Don Quixote; in fact, she's quite familiar with him.

Published author and Romance Languages professor Barbara Fuchs has written about Don Quixote and Cervantes, in addition to teaching two classes on Cervantes at Penn in the past.

She also has done several critiques of cultural history in the form of comparative literature.

Fuchs says she is the "final stretch" of writing her fourth major work, Exotic Nation: "Maurophilia" and the Conflictive Construction of Spain.

This book examines the historical interactions of the Moors - an Islamic community that developed in Spain during the 1500s - and the native Spanish population.

Tensions between the two groups led to a cultural divide in Spain, which continues to influence present-day Spanish culture.

Fuchs previously authored Romance, which she describes as "a long-term history of romance literature," and Mimesis and Empire: The New World, Islam, and European Identities, which analyzes how and why "Europe gets caught in the threat of Islamic expansion."

Fuchs also said her teaching and her research go hand-in-hand: "Teaching feeds my research," she said.

For cheaper drugs

He wants to save you money on your drugs, and he wants to do it molecularly.

Chemistry professor Jeffrey Bode leads a team of 15 researchers. They focus on the synthesis of molecules and the development of new molecular reactions.

The team aims to form a reaction that adds a new chain of molecules to our proteins, which would help our cells more efficiently uptake drugs.

More efficient uptake would allow for smaller doses, lowering the cost of drugs like the HIV inhibitor, currently about $20,000 a year for treatment.

The team is also looking at ways to make drugs more tolerable in the body.

"We look at drugs and we look at molecules and see how we can use alternative methods to make these," he said.

Having arrived at Penn from the University of California, Santa Barbara, only a few weeks ago, Bode will begin teaching "Principles of Organic Chemistry" in the spring.

Though he has researched for years in this field and was a teaching assistant at UCSB, Bode still says he's "a little nervous to teach Penn kids."

Choice and conformity

Jonah Berger is the connoisseur of cool.

The Marketing professor has focused his research, which he calls "a mix of psychology and sociology," on culture.

"I'm interested in how products, ideas and behaviors catch on and die out," along with the "social dynamics that underlie the process," he said.

In one study that looked at signaling and divergence, Berger sold Livestrong wristbands to two dorms on the Stanford University campus: a regular, control dorm and a dorm next door with a stronger academic focus and a reputation on campus for housing "geeks."

The results showed that nearly one-third of the control group stopped wearing the wristbands after the geeks started wearing them, showing that consumer choices are generated through a mix of conformity and divergence from others' choices.

In a similar study, Berger found that "ideas are more successful if they're queued by the environment." For example, on the day before Halloween, people were more likely to list orange-colored candy or chocolate when asked to list eight types of sweets than those asked to do so a week after the holiday.

"Orange-associated products were more accessible when orange was more prevalent in the environment," the study found. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups appeared on 54 percent of the lists before Halloween but only on 30 percent a week later.

Rewriting Romantics

English professor Stuart Curran isn't just reading student papers and making corrections - he's editing comprehensive anthologies of British literature.

The English professor recently edited a 14-volume set of the works of Charlotte Smith, a late-eighteenth-century English poet and novelist.

Smith published Elegiac Sonnets in 1784, a work that has influenced Romantic poets like William Wordsworth.

The editing process consumed five years of Smith's life.

"This author in particular is herself quoting constantly without necessarily telling you where it's coming from," he said. Editing "involved a lot of digging out of sources, and historical sources as well."

Since the book was published, Curran, who serves as president of the Keats-Shelley Association of America, has signed on to edit a 10-volume definitive edition of Percy Bysshe Shelley's works.

Shelley, a Romantic poet, wrote during the early nineteenth century and drowned while sailing at the age of 29.

Editing a literary anthology involves "in-depth, complex textual issues, plus engaged erudite annotation," he said. "It really takes an awful lot of work."

Curran said he's not the only English professor actively engaged in this type of work.

"You'll find that all of us are pretty much engaged like this," he said. "There's nobody that isn't working very hard behind the scenes."

Taking on disease

David Roos knows his parasites.

The Biology professor's laboratory looks specifically at the organisms, including those that cause malaria and toxoplasmosis, a disease carried via cats.

His research provides insight for the clinical and pharmacological communities.

"Malaria isn't something that we hear a lot about in the U.S.," Roos said, but "roughly one in 10 people in the world contract malaria every year."

More than 1 million people die of malaria every year, according to the World Health Organization.

Currently, there are several anti-malarial drugs being developed that use knowledge gained from Roos' lab, among others.

"Much of the work that we do . is focused on trying to identify candidates for drugs and mechanisms for resistance to drugs," he said. We "identify the reasons old drugs don't work."

In 1996, a former Penn graduate student discovered a new organelle - a structure in a cell that performs a special function - essential for parasite survival in Roos' lab, a finding that he said was groundbreaking.

"It's not everyday that you discover a new organelle," Roos said.

That discovery allowed Roos and his students to "identify all the genes that are associated with the organelle, . giving us essentially a complete biological picture."

In addition, Roos is "developing new technology that allows us to push forward the frontiers of what we can see" scientifically, he said. "We've developed a molecular genetic technology, cell biological technology, computational database technology and a lot of genomic technology."

Signs of life

Though he can't confirm that there's life on Mars, he's one of the very few people that have seen signs of it.

As a team member of the Mars Exploration Rovers Project, Environmental Sciences professor Douglas Jerolmack analyzes sedimentary data collected by two rovers put on Mars in January 2004.

These rovers collect images of land formations, like river channels, and other various geological features.

The team looks for signs of water in the sediment composition based on data from the images.

"If we can show Mars supported liquid water, we can show that life may have arisen there," Jerolmack said.

He also spent a summer working at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In the company of 100 other scientists, Jerolmack viewed Mars from the rover's perspective and helped direct the rovers.

But the Mars project is only a small portion of his research.

Currently, Jerolmack is studying how underwater avalanches formed deep-sea channels in our ocean.

By filling bathtubs up with water and recreating the avalanches that dug these channels, Jerolmack recreates the phenomenon. He then analyzes the sediment samples and builds mathematical models to explain the process.

Jerolmack says he is excited about teaching "Earth Surface Processes" in the spring semester: "I think students should know about the forces that shape the landscape around them."

Each week, The Daily Pennsylvanian takes an in-depth look at an issue affecting the community. See Perspective every Tuesday.

Please note All comments are eligible for publication in The Daily Pennsylvanian.