Expert Spotlight: Dr. Alexandra Horowitz

“Dogs feel very strongly that they should always go with you in the car, in case the need should arise for them to bark violently at nothing right in your ear.” – Dave Barry

Dr. Alexandra Horowitz of Barnard's Dog Cognition Lab

While we may be the ones holding the leash, animal cognition researcher and dog guru Dr. Alexandra Horowitz says it’s pretty clear who’s actually in charge. At her dog cognition lab at Barnard College, Dr. Horowitz spends her time trying to understand what life is like from the perspective of a dog: the sights, the sounds, the smells…oh, the smells. While there are lots of things we still don’t understand about man’s best friend, one thing is crystal clear: they’ve got us wrapped around their little paws.

This week on You’re the Expert, Dr. Horowitz explains that dogs are furry anthropologists, masters at reading and interpreting human behavior to figure out what makes us tick. Or more importantly, what makes us pull out the liver treats. Dr. Horowitz says dog owners often assume they can understand what their dog is thinking or feeling based on how they’re acting. In reality, canine behavior toward humans is motivated more by what they’ve evolved to do over some 14,000 years as our companions than what they intrinsically feel like doing.

Take this classic example: you come home after an evening out to find the contents of your trash can strewn across the kitchen floor. There’s Fluffy, cowering in the corner with her tail between her legs, unable to make eye contact. Clearly she feels terrible for what she’s done, right? Well, maybe not. According to Dr. Horowitz’s research, Fluffy doesn't actually feel guilty about making a mess. But she may have learned that if she acts a certain way, she’ll get scolded less. (Could you yell at a pooch who looked like this?) Owners tend to project human emotions, thoughts, and feelings onto dogs to better understand them, but more often than not, we’re reading way too much into those big puppy dog eyes.

To learn more about what it’s like to be a dog – and why their noses are always wet – listen to the full You’re the Expert episode with dog cognition specialist Dr. Alexandra Horowitz here.

-Lydia Dallett, Production Associate

For more on Dr. Horowitz, check out this interview: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120823716 

Expert Spotlight: Margaret Geller

Whoever says size doesn’t matter has clearly never spent twenty years studying the universe.

On the latest episode of You’re the Expert, Harvard scholar Dr. Margaret Geller confirms that size does in fact matter when you study physical cosmology, or, the application of physics to the study of the universe.  Through field and lab research, Dr. Geller and her team have determined that one can measure precisely how big the universe will grow based on the rate at which the space between galaxies expands. Turns out that the expansion rate of the universe has been accelerating over time, causing the space between the galaxies that comprise our universe to widen. So all we really have to worry about is the universe accelerating at a velocity that causes matter, and all human life as we know it, to rip apart faster than the speed of light.  Science. Is. Terrifying. 

Terrifying, that is, for someone without five honorary doctorates for their achievements uncovering scientific truth about the vastly mysterious universe. And when it comes to scientific rigor and determination to uncover truth, Dr. Geller is no wimp – unless you are talking about someone who studies Weakly Interacting Massive Particles, or W.I.M.Ps. By that definition, she is the highest achieving WIMP at Harvard. 

Along with her team of like-minded scientists, Dr. Geller spends the majority of her time formulating various hypotheses, designing units of measurement by which to study universal matter, and conducts research mostly using a very powerful telescope in Tuscon, Arizona. She then uses computer generated 3-dimensional charts to map slices of the universe into galaxies, which naturally arrange themselves into patterns that resemble bubbles. Giant monster space bubbles.

It is a remarkable accomplishment to devise ways in which to scale the cosmos down to a meaningful and scientifically digestible size. But it would be a mistake to underestimate the magnitude of this effort, because, to quote Dr. Geller, “Size does matter, and the universe wins every time.”

For more on Dr. Margaret Geller, check out this interview:

Or look at this interesting timeline of cosmological development featuring Dr. Geller.

- Lee Stephenson, Production Associate 

Expert Spotlight: Lillie Cohn

At a very young age, Lillie Cohn developed a passion for animals – dead animals.

 While her friends played on swing sets or chased soccer balls across the playground, Lillie scoured her surroundings for creatures to dissect, and the bigger the specimen the better.

This week on You’re the Expert, researcher Lillie Cohn described how her early passion for dead animals biology led her to immunotherapy, a field that doesn’t involve much dissection but does involve a whole lot of blood.

At its most basic level, immunotherapy is using what we already know about the immune system to help our bodies fight off infectious diseases. Some diseases, like the flu, can be fought using vaccines. Other diseases, like cancer or malaria, are trickier to combat because in these cases the immune system doesn’t always recognize which cells are friendly and which cells are causing problems.

As a graduate fellow in the Nussenzweig Laboratory for Molecular Immunology at Rockefeller University, Lillie’s job is to train immune cells – in her case, dendritic cells – to recognize and kill problem-causing cells before they do harm. In other words, immunotherapy is basically molecular counterterrorism, and she’s Carrie Mathison in a lab coat.

Lillie’s got immunotherapy in her blood (literally), which may explain the childhood fascination with decaying rodents and small birds. Lillie’s grandfather, Zanvil A. Cohn, was a professor at Rockefeller University when he and Dr. Ralph M. Steinman discovered a new type of cell – the dendritic cell – in 1970, a discovery that would earn Steinman the Nobel Prize in Medicine 18 years after Cohn’s death and three days after his own. Lillie’s interest in the subject was fostered while working in the labs of these two scientific giants.

 -Lydia Dallett, Production Associate

To hear more about bloodletting and why immunotherapists never wear their lab coats to parties, listen to the full You’re the Expert segment with immunology researcher Lillie Cohn here. 

For a much more thorough and probably more accurate description of the work Lillie’s lab is conducting on dendritic cell biology as it pertains to diseases and vaccines, check out Rockefeller University’s Laboratory of Cellular Physiology and Immunology’s current research page here.

Also, in case you enjoy listening to British women talk about science, check out this awesome animated video on how immunotherapy is being used to fight cancer:

 Dendritic cell-based immunotherapy is just one of several ways researchers are manipulating the immune system to fight off diseases. Another popular area of study is allergy immunotherapy. Unlike most allergy treatments, such as antihistamines like Benadryl or Allegra, immunotherapy treats both the symptoms of an allergy and its cause by retraining the immune system to stop reacting violently when it comes into contact with peanut butter or pollen. For a riveting story on one researcher’s fight to get oral immunotherapy studies funded – and the families with at-risk children counting on her – read Melanie Thernstrom’s New York Times Magazine cover story, “The Allergy Buster.”