Robert Foster, professor of anthropology, has had a longstanding interest in Papua New Guinea that started in 1984 with his doctoral dissertation research. He later did work on cultural attitudes in Papua New Guinea toward Coca-Cola. When he visited the South Pacific island nation in 2010, he found it transformed by another product: cell phones.

“The coming of the cell phone in Papua New Guinea just couldn’t be ignored. There was a moment when they were nowhere, then a moment when they were everywhere,” he says.

In 2014, he launched a three-year research project funded by the Australian Research Council, a comparative study of what he called “moral economy” of cell phones in Papua New Guinea and Fiji—that is, the shifting relations among consumers, companies, and state actors, all of whom have their own ideas about what is good, fair, and just.

As part of the project, he’s coedited a book, The Moral Economy of Mobile Phones: Pacific Island Perspectives (available for free download at Australian National University Press), with Heather Horst, a professor of media and communications at The University of Sydney. It describes what happened in Papua New Guinea and other Pacific island nations when their governments opened up the telecommunications sector to market competition.

In short, one company, Digicel, built an infrastructure that brought cell phones to remote areas, achieving in Papua New Guinea a remarkable 90 percent coverage rate. “Digicel has offered a service that the government failed to provide, namely making communication possible throughout Papua New Guinea,” says Foster. “And in that way, the company has helped bring together family and friends living across the country.”

Cell phones were not simply used to talk with family and friends. Foster learned that people in Papua New Guinea and elsewhere in the South Pacific were randomly dialing numbers in an effort to make new connections or “phone friends.” Cell phones offered villagers, including women, a way to create social relations outside the customary bounds of kinship and locality.

“It is perhaps the combination of intimacy and strangeness made possible by mobile phones that marks something new under the sun,” says Foster.

He points out that while Digicel has done a great deal for the people of Papua New Guinea, it is still a for-profit company. “Digicel is not there for humanitarian purposes. It exists to make money and does humanitarian things on the side,” says Foster. Consumers have accordingly developed new forms of self discipline in response to the company’s offerings. “It would seem that a recognizably Protestant ethic has emerged as a form of self-defense on the part of mobile phone users against the almost incessant corporate incitement to consume.”

For more about the research, see “The Future is Calling,” Rochester Review, July-August 2016.

The University of Rochester’s Mt. Hope Family Center, in conjunction with the University of Minnesota’s Institute for Translational Research in Children’s Mental Health, has received a five-year, $8.39 million award to create a national center for child maltreatment studies, becoming one of only three academic institutional partnerships in the United States to receive this prestigious award from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

NIH’s Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) will partner with the multidisciplinary team to create the TRANSFORM Center (Translational Research that Adapts New Science FOR Maltreatment Prevention). Penn State received a similar award in 2017 and Washington University in St. Louis this year.

“On behalf of our entire TRANSFORM team, we are honored to be chosen by NICHD as a National Center on Child Abuse and Neglect,” says Sheree Toth, the executive director of the Rochester-based Mt. Hope Family Center. “We will work tirelessly to advance research, policy, and training initiatives to prevent and address the adverse and lifelong consequences of child maltreatment.”

The TRANSFORM Center’s research will focus on two areas.

The first examines the efficacy of Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) delivered before or after birth to high-risk, impoverished families. CPP therapy, an intensive intervention that focuses on parent-infant relationships for families at risk for child maltreatment, has been extensively evaluated and used at Mt. Hope.

The second is a long-term follow-up investigation of a large-scale Mt. Hope study of risk and resilience in school-aged children. Researchers will look at psychological, immune, endocrine, physiological, and epigenetic processes associated with the early deprivation, trauma, and chronic stress of child maltreatment in relation to possible premature aging, and current physical and mental health in adulthood.

Read more here.

The nation’s first program dedicated to the study of flavored tobacco has been created with nearly $20 million in federal funding, thanks to the expertise of two regional research teams. One of only nine projects to earn funding through the federal Tobacco Centers of Regulatory Science program, the WNY Center for Research on Flavored Tobacco Products, or CRoFT, will unite teams from Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center and the Medical Center in an effort to better document and understand one of the fastest-growing trends in tobacco use.

Based at Roswell Park, the program will be led by Richard O’Connor and Maciej Goniewicz, both internationally recognized experts on tobacco use and its health consequences. The Roswell Park team will analyze various combustible and electronic tobacco products, their consequences for health, and how users interact with these products.

Collaborators from the Medical Center, led by Irfan Rahman and Deborah Ossip, will contribute critical resources in biomarker screening, genetic analysis, and toxicology assessment.

“We’re really excited about initiating this work, because no one has ever looked at flavored tobacco in such a comprehensive and systematic way. There are so many different flavorings, delivery systems, and product options, and so much we don’t know about them,” says O’Connor, professor of oncology with Roswell Park’s Health Behavior and Epidemiology & Prevention programs and director of the Buffalo cancer center’s Tobacco Research Laboratory.

Current federal regulations prohibit the sale and manufacture of flavors other than menthol in combustible cigarettes but not in other tobacco products, including e-cigarettes. Data published last year from the PATH Study, the largest prospective U.S. study of tobacco use, indicated that use of flavored products was highest among youth and young-adult tobacco users, with 80% of tobacco users ages 12-17 and 73% of tobacco users ages 18-24 reporting that they’d used a flavored tobacco product in the previous 30 days.

“There are a number of flavoring chemicals that are regarded as safe for incorporation into food and drink, but we have such limited data about what happens when these products are inhaled,” says Rahman, professor of environmental medicine, dentistry, medicine (pulmonary) and public health sciences at the Medical Center. “We’re going to study the impact on public health when these chemicals are added to e-cigarettes, vape pens, Juul and other pods, hookahs, waterpipes, cigars, and cigarillos (little cigars) to be a resource for both policymakers and the general public.”

The CRoFT team will pursue projects in four main areas:

• Assessing flavorant toxicity
• Characterizing flavors and their impact on behavior
• Determining respiratory health effects of flavors
• Evaluating the effects of product marketing

Read more here.

A new study in the Journal of Neurology finds that pregabalin is not effective in controlling the chronic pain that sometimes develops following traumatic nerve injury.  The results of the international study, which was driven by an effort to identify effective non-opioid pain medications, did show potential in relieving pain that sometimes lingers after surgery.

“The unrelenting burning or stabbing symptoms due to nerve trauma are a leading reason why people seek treatment for chronic pain after a fall, car accident, or surgery,” said John Markman, director of the Translational Pain Research Program in the Department of Neurosurgery and lead author of the study. “While these finding show that pregabalin is not effective in controlling the long-term pain for traumatic injury, it may provide relief for patients who experience post-surgical pain.”

Pregabalin, which is marketed by Pfizer under the name Lyrica, is approved to treat chronic pain associated with shingles, spinal cord injury, fibromyalgia, and diabetic peripheral neuropathy. However, it is also commonly prescribed as an “off label” treatment for chronic nerve injury syndromes that occur after motor vehicle accidents, falls, sports injuries, knee or hip replacement, and surgeries such as hernia repair or mastectomy.

Chronic postsurgical pain syndromes occur in approximately one or two out of every 10 surgical patients and the levels rated as intolerable after roughly one or two in every 100 operations. With 55 million surgeries performed in the U.S. every year, severe chronic pain impacts more than a million new people annually. Roughly one third of these patients are believed to have neuropathic pain or ongoing pain related to nerve injury.

These rates vary widely by type of surgery. The risks factors and underlying mechanisms of this type of chronic pain are not well understood. However, the types of symptoms patients describe like “burning,” “unpleasant tingling,” or “numbness” resemble other nerve pain syndromes like shingles pain. As a result, physicians trying to find useful non-opioid pain relievers have often turned to prescribing gabapentin or pregabalin.

The current study was conducted in 101 centers in North America, Europe, Africa, and Asia and followed 539 individuals for three months. Study participants were randomized into two groups who either prescribed pregabalin or a placebo.

The study found that pregabalin was not effective in controlling pain for individuals with traumatic nerve injury. A retrospective analysis of a subgroup of study participants, whose nerve pain was attributed to surgery, showed that the drug did provide better pain relief than placebo at 3 months.

Read more here.

The Warner School’s Learning in the Digital Age series for fall 2018 continues on Thursday, October 4, with a discussion on ethical issues titled “How Can We Study Teaching and Learning in Digital Spaces?”

The series will be every other Thursday from 3 to 4:30 p.m. in LeChase Hall, Room 215.

The bi-weekly series also features time for open discussions and contributions from the audience.  Learn more about the Learning in the Digital Age series topics and contact yhan18@u.rochester.edu to receive information prior to each session.

The Spring 2019 and 2019-20 Central New York Humanities Corridor proposal period is now open.

Proposals are welcomed from faculty at Syracuse University, Cornell University, the University of Rochester, the schools of the New York Six Liberal Arts Consortium, Le Moyne College, and the Rochester Institute of Technology for new and existing working groups in each of our eight research clusters.

Those clusters are:

• Philosophy/Critical Theory
• Linguistics
• Visual Arts and Culture
• Musicology/Performance Studies
• Digital Humanities
• Historical Studies
• Literature, Language, and Culture
• Archives and Media

October 15, 2018 is the next proposal deadline for activities to occur in Spring 2019 and/or 2019-20. Click here to learn more.

The Loan Repayment Programs (LRPs) of the National Institutes of Health were established by Congress to recruit and retain highly qualified health professionals for biomedical or biobehavioral research careers. The escalating costs of advanced education and training in medicine and clinical specialties are forcing some scientists to abandon their research careers for higher-paying private industry or private practice careers.

The LRPs counteract that financial pressure by repaying up to $35,000 annually of a researcher’s qualified educational debt in return for a commitment to engage in NIH mission-relevant research.

Apply by 5 p.m. November 15, 2018.  Additional Information.

Tyler A. Beach, Toxicology, “Recurrent DNA damage following single dose whole thorax irradiation is associated with a pro-fibrotic phenotype in the pulmonary epithelium.” 9 a.m., October 25, 2018. Whipple Auditorium (2-6424) Medical Center. Advisor: Jacob Finkelstein.

Sept. 30: Deadline for Medical Center tenure track faculty and their chairpersons to apply for up to $75,000 in bridge funding during a hiatus in research support. All questions and applications should be directed to Anne Reed. For more information, click here.

Oct. 1: Letters of intent due by 5 p.m. to apply for the KL2 Career Development program of the Clinical and Translational Science Institute, designed to support the early research career development of clinical and translational scientists via two years of funding. Click here to view the full RFA.

Oct. 1: AR/VR Initiative joint meeting of University and RIT faculty members to identify possible collaborations and partnerships. Faculty working in this area are encouraged to participate. 8:30 a.m.  to 3 p.m., Larry and Cindy Bloch Alumni and Advancement Center. Click here for the agenda. Register here no later than September 24.

Oct. 1: Panel discussion: Current developmental and regenerative neuroscience research at the University with expert panelists Amy Kiernan (Ophthalmology and Biomedical Genetics), Patricia White (Neuroscience), and Margot Mayer-Pröschel (Biomedical Genetics).  PONS Luncheon Roundtable Series. Noon to 1 p.m., Medical Center Specialty Room 2-7536. Refreshments will be provided.  For more information on PONS, visit http://blogs.rochester.edu/pons/

Oct. 4: “How Can We Study Teaching and Learning in Digital Spaces?” Discussion on ethical issues. Warner School bi-weekly Learning in the Digital Age series. 3 to 4:30 p.m. LeChase Hall, Room 215.  Learn more about the Learning in the Digital Age series topics and contact yhan18@u.rochester.edu to receive information prior to each session.

Oct. 8: Deadline to register for “Career Engagement, Revitalization, and Transition: A Curriculum for Mid-Late Career Academic Faculty,” a course designed to help associate professors and professors identify additional resources and skills as they advance and transition through the phases of their academic careers. The course will be held 8:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday, October 29 and Tuesday, October 30, location TBD. For additional information, contact Faculty Development, Ronnie Guillet, or Janine Shapiro.

Oct. 11: Pediatric Research Celebration Day. Lecture by Paul A. Offit, a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases; an expert on vaccines, immunology, and virology; and co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine. Noon to 1 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium. Scientific poster session 11 a.m.  to noon and 1 to 2 p.m., Flaum Atrium.

Oct. 15: Deadline to submit letters of intent to apply for Center for AIDS Research funding to facilitate the design, conduct and completion of clinical trials aimed at preventing HPV-related cancers in HIV-infected individuals. Click here for more information.

Oct. 15: Pre-proposals due for University Technology Development Fund awards of up to $100,000 for development of a technology to a commercial endpoint. Open to all faculty, staff, and students.  Submit to omar.bakht@rochester.edu. More information can be found at Rochester.edu/tdf.

Oct. 15: Deadline to apply for AS&E PumpPrimer II awards for innovative and high-risk research projects. Click here for guidelines. Faculty in Arts & Sciences should refer questions to debra.haring@rochester.edu and those in engineering to cindy.gary@rochester.edu. PumpPrimer I and Research Mobility funds are also available and applications are accepted any time.

Oct. 15: Deadline for Central New York Humanities Corridor proposals. Learn more here.

Oct. 26: Deadline to apply for the 2018 World Universities Network (WUN) Research Development Fund. If you are interested in leading a proposal effort, contact the University’s WUN coordinator, Ruth Levenkron.

Oct. 29: “The Future is Today: Transforming the Care of Childhood Onset Chronic Health Conditions.” UR Complex Care Center’s Second Annual Conference, co-sponsored by UR CTSI’s UNYTE Translational Research Network. 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., Class of ’62 Auditorium. Click here to register.

Nov. 5: Deadline for collaborative biomedical research teams to apply to the Center for Leading Innovation & Collaboration for funding to write a Synergy Paper. Questions can be directed to synergy_papers@clic-ctsa.org. Click here for the RFA.

Nov. 5: Annual Medical Student Research Poster session, noon to 1 p.m. Flaum Atrium, Medical Center. Medical students present their summer and year-out research projects. Contact omecached@urmc.rochester.edu with questions.

Nov. 12: Initial abstracts due for the School of Medicine and Dentistry’s Scientific Advisory Committee’s (SAC) Incubator Program. See details and application instructions. Contact Anne Reed for more information.