Kathleen Powell plans to use the $544,000 grant from the William T. Grant Foundation to explore how the legalization of recreational marijuana in New Jersey affects Black, Hispanic and White young adults. 

Before being proven as addictive and damaging, cigarettes gained the attention of children through relatable slogans, cartoon characters and attractive designs. Only with marketing regulation and research detailing the destructive effects of tobacco did smoking slowly become less attractive to its young audience. But the marketing of harmful substances to vulnerable populations hasn’t gone away entirely. Instead, it has switched focus to another product: ultra-processed foods, commonly known as “junk food.” Erica LaFata, PhD, an assistant research professor in the Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science (WELL Center), was recently awarded a grant to explore food addiction in relation to ultra-processed foods.

Thanks to the generous support of Drexel alumni Bruce (BS '69, PhD '72) and Cynthia (BS '72) Maryanoff, selected College of Arts and Sciences students are able to participate in a chemistry research program during the first summer after their freshman year. Here recent Maryanoff Scholars share their research projects and their experience in the program.

New research on dampwood termites shows select members of the colony will experience brain changes in anticipation of cognitive demand. Drexel researchers measured developmental differences in the relative sizes of visual processing brain regions, called optic lobes, among dampwood termite castes to test whether optic lobe investment matches caste differences in exposure to visually complex environments.

Award-winning Assistant Professor of History Nic John Ramos, PhD, does not easily fit into any one category. Though he teaches in the Department of History, his doctorate is in American Studies and Ethnicity, which he describes as really being at the intersection of Gender Studies and Ethnic Studies. Meanwhile, his research exists at the intersection of race and medicine. And in his classes, students are just as likely to encounter graphic novels and poetry as they are historical documents and books.

Due to COVID-19, Associate Professor of History Debjani Bhattacharyya, PhD, re-envisioned her usually hands-on course Rivers in History, using the advanced technology of ArcGIS.

Researchers from the Center for Weight, Eating and Lifestyle Science (WELL Center) in the College of Arts and Sciences at Drexel University systematically reviewed numerous independently published guidelines for having conversations with children about weight status to analyze their content, consistency, actionability and scientific support. They recommend future guidelines unify their messages for caregivers and health care professionals and be better supported by scholarly data.

Just over $100,000 was awarded to 22 faculty and professional staff through Drexel's Rapid Response Research & Development Fund.

Before China declared giant pandas a protected species in 1962 – hunters in pursuit of the black and white bear used dogs to track them. Since then measures have been put in place to protect the vulnerable pandas, but more than half a century later, dogs are still jeopardizing their safety, according to a group of researchers that included Drexel’s James Spotila, PhD.

A new neuroimaging study out of Drexel University's Creativity Research Lab points to an answer of what may have driven the evolutionary development of creativity.

A new brain-imaging study out of Drexel University's Creativity Research Lab sheds light on the controversy on which side of the brain is responsible for creativity by studying the brain of jazz guitarists during improvisation. 

On June 10, the Drexel Libraries welcomed Ted Daeschler, PhD, Curator of Vertebrate Zoology at the Academy of Natural Sciences and Professor in Drexel’s College of Arts and Sciences, to discuss the importance of communicating geosciences research to inspire citizen engagement during the final ScholarSip event of the 2018/2019 academic year.

In her second post, Professor Stefanie Kroll, Phd recounts her travels from the capital of Equatorial Guinea, Malabo, to the small town of Moka (population around 200) on Bioko Island. This unassuming place has been the home base for the Bioko Biodiversity Protection Program for over 20 years and where she and other Drexel faculty and students do research year round.

Drexel University and Stillman College, a historically black university based in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, signed a Memorandum of Understanding in May 2018 which created unique opportunities for students from both schools — and expansion plans are already underway.

A new way of measuring the relative habitability of freshwater environments for fish and aquatic insects suggests that New Jersey’s water monitoring and treatment standards could use a boost.

Two Drexel University faculty members from different disciplines have come together to provide a unique opportunity for graduate students: learn how to flex their creative muscles.

A new study by Drexel environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, shows that between 2000 and 2016, lobbyists spent more than two billion dollars on influencing relevant legislation in the US Congress. As the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of climate lobbying data, Brulle’s research confirms the spending of environmental groups and the renewable energy sector was eclipsed by the spending of the electrical utilities, fossil fuel, and transportation sectors.

Freshwater mussels and shad were once plentiful in the Delaware Estuary and its tributaries, providing a range of natural benefits to people and waterways. Today they face an uncertain future in local streams and rivers, creating a serious disadvantage when it comes to ecological health.

Now, the Academy of Natural Sciences, the College of Arts and Sciences of Drexel University, the Partnership for the Delaware Estuary, Philadelphia Water Department and Department of Parks and Recreation, Bartram’s Garden, and the Independence Seaport Museum have come together to develop the Aquatic Research and Restoration Center to coordinate large-scale restoration efforts that do not currently exist in the Philadelphia region.

The typical images that “climate change” conjures include disappearing coastlines and melting polar ice. But what about animals’ brains — including our own? Can they be affected by the changing climate? Sean O’Donnell, PhD, professor in the College of Arts and Sciences, argues that they absolutely can.

Water scarcity is one of the greatest challenges of our time, according to the United Nations. For the Dolan family of Philadelphia, water runs deep and personal. Almost 90 years ago, Philadelphia-area naturalist/adventurist, Brooke Dolan II, led expeditions to western China and Tibet and collected the Asian mammals on exhibit in the dioramas of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. He and his colleagues also brought back thousands of other specimens to study at a time when the world looked to natural history museums for information on countless little-known species.

The fires now ravaging North California have been particularly bad this year because years of drought have left the area much like a tinderbox. One way to combat this build-up of “fuel load” is a controlled burn.

Jennie David, a 4th year graduate student in the Clinical Psychology PhD program, recently had a personal narrative published in the New England Journal of Medicine, titled "The Chair Grant."

“My life was forever changed by a man whose leg had been amputated,” says Elizabeth Lombardo, PhD, a clinical psychologist and national media consultant, recalling a former patient at the Baltimore Veterans Association Medical Center. At the time of their meeting, Lombardo had just graduated from Duke University with her master’s in physical therapy. “I knew if I could get him up on the parallel bars, he’d be able to walk,” she says, “and I could teach him how to transfer in and out of his wheelchair.” She considers that day a sign of her true purpose in life. Soon after, she applied to doctoral programs in clinical psychology and chose Drexel’s program (formerly part of Hahnemann University) because of its location and because of Arthur Nezu, PhD, one of the program’s directors, with whom she interviewed.

The Eastern Sociological Society’s (ESS) Annual Meeting was held in Philadelphia, PA from February 23rd - 26th, 2017. ESS was founded in 1930 to support sociological research and networking in the northeast United States, and has about 1,200 members. There were approximately 1,450 registrants at this year’s annual meeting and approximately 200 undergraduates presented posters. Drexel was well represented at the annual meeting with both faculty and students presenting.

Hiding inside a hard shell that’s up to four feet long and resembles an elephant tusk, there’s a dark-colored earthworm-like creature. At one end, the creature’s body forms a slight bulb. At the other, claw-like appendages. It doesn’t really eat on its own, but ingests products made by bacteria that live within it.

Kayci Vickers and Jillian Tessier both recently received research awards from the Council on Brain Injury.

Several Drexel Physics alumni recently received Graduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation (NSF). The purpose of the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program is to help ensure the vitality and diversity of the scientific and engineering workforce of the United States. The program recognizes and supports outstanding graduate students who are pursuing research-based master's and doctoral degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) or in STEM education.

Mona Elgohail, a clinical psychology PhD student mentored by Pamela Geller, PhD, has been awarded two travel grants.

For the approximately 8 million Americans who suffer from binge eating disorder, help could be just a download away. Psychologists in Drexel’s Laboratory for Innovations in Health-Related Behavior Change are developing a new smartphone application that aims to tackle binge eating, and they are seeking study volunteers to test it out. The app, called iCAT+, is for patients who suffer from binge eating disorder or bulimia nervosa.

A new study co-authored by scientists at Drexel University, published in the most recent issue of Biological Conservation, reveals the devastating impact of illegal logging on bird communities in the understory layer of Ghana’s Upper Guinea rain forests, one of the world's 25 “biodiversity hotspots” where the most biologically rich ecosystems are most threatened.

The bushmeat market in the city of Malabo is bustling—more so today than it was nearly two decades ago, when Gail Hearn, PhD, began what is now one of the region’s longest continuously running studies of commercial hunting activity.  Hearn’s team has now published its comprehensive results of 13 years of daily monitoring bushmeat market activity.

The thickness of the brain’s cerebral cortex could be a key to unlocking answers about intellectual development in youth with Down Syndrome, according to a new study led by a Drexel psychologist.

A new Drexel study suggests that social behavior evolved very differently in the brains of social insects than in vertebrate animals such as mammals, birds and fish.

More than a thousand residents and visitors to southern New Jersey will dig their own fossils and learn from the Drexel University paleontologist and students who conduct globally significant scientific research at Mantua Township's third annual Community Fossil Dig Day.

A Drexel-led team has described a new dinosaur species with the most complete skeleton ever found of one of the largest animals to ever walk the Earth. At 85 feet (26 m) long and weighing about 65 tons (59,300 kg) in life, Dreadnoughtus schrani is the largest land animal for which a body mass can be accurately calculated.

In the first pilot study asking adults on the autism spectrum about their experiences with driving, researchers at Drexel University found significant differences in self-reported driving behaviors and perceptions of driving ability in comparison to non-autistic adults. As the population of adults with autism continues growing rapidly, the survey provides a first step toward identifying whether this population has unmet needs for educational supports to empower safe driving – a key element of independent functioning in many people’s lives.

In a study that began as a sixth-grade science fair project, researchers at Drexel University have found that a popular non-nutritive sweetener, erythritol, may be an effective and human-safe insecticide. Erythritol, the main component of the sweetener Truvia®, was toxic to Drosophila melanogaster fruit flies in a dose-dependent manner in the Drexel team’s study, published in PLOS ONE. The flies consumed erythritol when sugar was available and even seemed to prefer it. No other sweeteners tested had these toxic effects.

A new study conducted by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert J. Brulle, PhD, exposes the organizational underpinnings and funding behind the powerful climate change countermovement. This study marks the first peer-reviewed, comprehensive analysis ever conducted of the sources of funding that maintain the denial effort. Through an analysis of the financial structure of the organizations that constitute the core of the countermovement and their sources of monetary support, Brulle found that, while the largest and most consistent funders behind the countermovement are a number of well-known conservative foundations, the majority of donations are “dark money,” or concealed funding.

The second-most-common catch on Costa Rica’s longline fisheries in the last decade was not a commercial fish species. It was olive ridley sea turtles. These lines also caught more green turtles than most species of fish. These findings and more, reported in a new study in the Journal of Experimental Marine Biology and Ecology, indicate that the Costa Rican longline fishery represents a major threat to the survival of eastern Pacific populations of sea turtles as well as sharks.

Two new treatment methods under investigation at Drexel University aim to help people reduce binge-eating behavior. One is a smartphone app designed to alert peopleat times when they are at risk for binge behaviors, among a comprehensive suite of other features. Another treatment is a new, evidence-based approach to small-group behavioral therapy.

Due to a complex and vicious cycle of biological and behavioral factors, dieters and weight loss researchers know, the more weight you’ve lost, the harder it is to keep it off. But eating disorder research has largely overlooked this influence, and Dr. Michael Lowe, a professor of psychology at Drexel University, has published a flurry of research studies showing that needs to change.

Scientists from the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University have described another new lobe-finned fossil fish species from the same time and place in the Canadian Arctic as the famous precursor to limbed animals, Tiktaalik roseae, which they discovered several years ago. 

Dr. Clyde Goulden, a pioneering ecologist and director of the Asia Center of the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, has devoted his life to studying climate change and how it is affecting Mongolian herders and the pristine 2-million-year-old Lake Hövsgöl. His efforts have now been recognized with Mongolia’s highest award to foreigners, the Order of the Polar Star. In a separate honor, Dr. Jon Gelhaus, Academy curator of entomology and professor in Drexel University’s College of Arts and Sciences, has received the Kublai Khan medal for his scientific achievements in Mongolia.

New research recently published in Neuron, co-authored by Drexel's Dr. Jeffery Twiss, is one of the strongest indicators yet of molecular signaling from end to end in peripheral nerve cells. The team's new discoveries may help scientists better understand nerve cells' distress signals and nerve cell repair, so they can eventually control and enhance the process to speed up recovery from nerve injuries.

Many of the world’s tropical protected areas are struggling to sustain their biodiversity, according to a study just published in Nature by more than 200 scientists from around the world. Among them, Drexel's  Dr. Sean O’Donnell, highlighted the important, beneficial role of private landowners who work to preserve biodiversity in their land surrounding tropical reserves.

New research suggests that climate change could exacerbate existing threats to critically endangered leatherback turtles and nearly wipe out the population in the eastern Pacific. Deaths of turtle eggs and hatchlings in nests buried at hotter, drier beaches are the leading projected cause of the potential climate-related decline, according to a new study in the journal Nature Climate Change by a research team from Drexel, Princeton University, other institutions and government agencies.

A side mirror that eliminates the dangerous “blind spot” for drivers has now received a U.S. patent. The subtly curved mirror, invented by Drexel University mathematics professor Dr. R. Andrew Hicks, dramatically increases the field of view with minimal distortion. 

Drexel University researchers have found that the climate conditions at a major leatherback turtle nesting beach affects the early survival of turtle eggs and hatchlings. They predict, based on projections from multiple models, that egg and hatchling survival will drop by half in the next 100 years as a result of global climate change.

Researchers are bringing the latest technological advancements in 3-D printing to the study of ancient life. Using scale models of real fossils, for the first time, they will be able to test hypotheses about how dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals moved and lived in their environments.

Drexel's new Papadakis Integrated Sciences Building features a five-story vertical wall of living plants – the largest such wall in North America and the only one at a U.S. university. Scientists and students at Drexel are studying the biowall, an active living filter that removes volatile organic compounds from the air, to get a better understanding of how it works.