ACADEMIC PUBLICATIONS
Academic publications so far
19
Aug
2014
Early Infantile Autism and the Refrigerator Mother Theory (1943-1970)
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
In 1943, child psychiatrist Leo Kanner in the US gave the first account of Early Infantile Autism that encouraged psychiatrists to investigate what they called emotionally cold mothers, or refrigerator mothers. In 1949, Kanner published "Problems of Nosology and Psychodynamics of Early Infantile Autism." In that article, Kanner described autistic children as reared in emotional refrigerators. US child psychiatrists claimed that some psychological or behavioral conditions might have origins in emotional or mental stress, meaning that they might be psychogenic. Kanner described autism's cause in terms of emotional refrigeration from parents into the early 1960s, often attributing autism to the lack of parental warmth. In the 1960s, Bernard Rimland and Bruno Bettelheim, both in the US, disagreed on the role of psychogenesis in autism. Rimland suggested that autism's cause was rooted in neurological development, while Bettelheim continued to emphasize the role of nurturing during early childhood. Nevertheless, many mothers reported that they felt a deep sense of anguish and resentment toward child psychiatrists who often made them feel as if they were to blame for their children's autism. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper Selected
10
Jan
2018
The glocal curriculum: A model for transnational collaboration in higher education for sustainable development
Journal of Cleaner Production
Transnational collaborations between universities provide an underutilized opportunity to teach sustainability competencies emphasizing the global and local nature of (un)sustainability. This article asks: what kind of curricula and teaching-learning environments can we use in transnational collaborations so as to prepare future generations to address (un)sustainability across different scales and contexts? The article presents a glocal model for transnational collaboration for sustainability which combines the use of digital technologies for global collaboration with experiences and engagement for local learning and impact. The glocal model was designed and implemented in The Global Classroom, a collaborative project between Arizona State University and Leuphana University of Lüneburg. The model fills two important gaps in higher education for sustainable development. In the theory, it provides new concepts to think about the curriculum and teaching-learning environment of transnational collaborations for sustainability. In the practice, it presents an exemplary implementation that can inform the curriculum as well as the teaching-learning environment of such collaborations. The article concludes that transnational collaborations for sustainability ought to more systematically integrate curriculum reform with approaches to internationalization and digitalization of higher education.Journal Paper Selected
15
Jul
2014
Leo Kanner and the Psychobiology of Autism
Arizona State University Repository
Leo Kanner first described autism in his 1943 article in Nervous Child titled "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact". Throughout, he describes the eleven children with autism in exacting detail. In the closing paragraphs, the parents of autistic children are described as emotionally cold. Yet, he concludes that the condition as he described it was innate. Since its publication, his observations about parents have been a source of controversy surrounding the original definition of autism. Thus far, histories about autism have pointed to descriptions of parents of autistic children with the claim that Kanner abstained from assigning them causal significance. Understanding the theoretical context in which Kanner’s practice was embedded is essential to sorting out how he could have held such seemingly contrary views simultaneously. This thesis illustrates that Kanner held an explicitly descriptive frame of reference toward his eleven child patients, their parents, and autism. Adolf Meyer, his mentor at Johns Hopkins, trained him to make detailed life-charts under a clinical framework called psychobiology. By understanding that Kanner was a psychobiologist by training, I revisit the original definition of autism as a category of mental disorder and restate its terms. This history illuminates the theoretical context of autism’s discovery and has important implications for the first definition of autism amidst shifting theories of childhood mental disorders and the place of the natural sciences in defining them.Theses Selected
01
Aug
2013
Communicating across the war zone: vet engagement at ASU
Arizona State University College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 2
In 2012, journalist Tom Brokaw gave the graduation commencement address to a packed Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe, Ariz. In his speech, he said we should do more for our returning veterans. He advised, “…We can begin to heal their wounds and to honor their service by welcoming them back to our peaceful lives in large ways and small. First, by seeking them out and offering our thanks and by establishing a model so that when – if we have to go to war again – we do not create two societies; one in uniform, and one not.”Journal Paper
28
May
2020
Local Solutions from a Global Classroom: Reflections on a cultural exchange
Arizona State University College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Magazine, Vol. 3, No. 1
Journal Paper
Local Solutions from a Global Classroom: Reflections on a cultural exchange
Journal Paper
11
Oct
2012
“John Bertrand Gurdon (1933- )”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Sir John Bertrand Gurdon further developed nuclear transplantation, the technique used to clone organisms and to create stem cells, while working in Britain in the second half of the twentieth century. Gurdon's research built on the work of Thomas King and Robert Briggs in the United States, who in 1952 published findings that indicated that scientists could take a nucleus from an early embryonic cell and successfully transfer it into an unfertilized and enucleated egg cell. Briggs and King also concluded that a nucleus taken from an adult cell and similarly inserted into an unfertilized enucleated egg cell could not produce normal development. In 1962, however, Gurdon published results that indicated otherwise. While Briggs and King worked with Rana pipiens frogs, Gurdon used the faster-growing species Xenopus laevis to show that nuclei from specialized cells still held the potential to be any cell despite its specialization. In 2012, the Nobel Prize Committee awarded Gurdon and Shinya Yamanaka its prize in physiology or medicine for for their work on cloning and pluripotent stem cells. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
14
Jun
2011
“‘Developmental Capacity of Nuclei Transplanted from Keratinized Skin Cells of Adult Frogs,’ by John Gurdon, Ronald Laskey, and O. Raymond Reeves (1975)”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
In 1975 John Gurdon, Ronald Laskey, and O. Raymond Reeves published “Developmental Capacity of Nuclei Transplanted from Keratinized Skin Cells of Adult Frogs,” in the Journal of Embryology and Experimental Morphology. Their article was the capstone of a series of experiments performed by Gurdon during his time at Oxford and Cambridge, using the frog species Xenopus laevis. Gurdon’s first experiment in 1958 showed that the nuclei of Xenopus cells maintained their ability to direct normal development when transplanted. The goal of Gurdon’s experiments was to show that specialized adult cells could maintain the information and capacity to direct normal development. He asked whether cells undergo permanent changes once they become fully specialized. Gurdon, Laskey, and Reeves’s publication was important to embryology because it shed light on that very question. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
14
Jun
2011
“Nuclear Transplantation”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Nuclear transplantation is a method in which the nucleus of a donor cell is relocated to a target cell that has had its nucleus removed (enucleated). Nuclear transplantation has allowed experimental embryologists to manipulate the development of an organism and to study the potential of the nucleus to direct development. Nuclear transplantation, as it was first called, was later referred to as somatic nuclear transfer or cloning. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
01
Jan
2012
“Thomas Joseph King Jr. (1921 – 2000)”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Thomas Joseph King Jr. and fellow scientist Robert Briggs pioneered a method of transplanting nuclei from blastula cells into fresh egg cells lacking nuclei. This method, dubbed nuclear transplantation, facilitated King's studies on cancer cell development. King's work was instrumental for the development of cloning of fish, insects, and mammals. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
01
Jan
2012
“2D Obstetric Ultrasound”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
The development of the obstetric ultrasound has allowed physicians and embryologists to obtain a clear picture of the developing human embryo and fetus during pregnancy. Obstetric ultrasonography, often referred to as ultrasound, is a technology that uses sound waves to produce images of structures inside the human body. A handheld probe emits sound waves, which are reflected back by the different structures within the body. These reflected sound waves are converted into electric signals that are detected by a transducer, which then produces two-dimensional images that can be interpreted by medical professionals. Ultrasound technology has become a sophisticated, high-resolution diagnostic imaging tool used widely in medicine, especially obstetrics. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
30
Apr
2014
“Leo Kanner (1894 – 1981)”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Leo Kanner studied and described early infantile autism in humans in the US during the twentieth century. Though Eugen Bleuler first coined the term autism in 1910 as a symptom of schizophrenia, Kanner helped define autism as a disease concept separate from schizophrenia. He helped found an early child psychiatry department in 1930 at the Johns Hopkins University Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland. Kanner revised criteria for diagnosing autism, beginning with his article "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact" in 1943, and he helped reclassify autism as a disorder caused by defective neurological development. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
03
May
2014
“Bernard Rimland (1928-2006)”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Bernard Rimland studied autism in children in the United States in the second half of the twentieth century. His early research in the 1950s and into the 1960s led him to assert that infantile autism was a neurodevelopmental disorder, or one that is caused by impairments in the growth and development of the brain or central nervous system. Rimland's assertion that infantile autism was a neurodevelopmental disorder contradicted another theory at that time that the condition resulted from emotionally cold parenting. Rimland spent much of his career as a psychology researcher for the United States Navy in Point Loma, California, but in his spare time he researched and wrote about autism, and he advocated for children with autism and their families. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
23
May
2014
“Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior (1964), by Bernard Rimland”
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Bernard Rimland published his book Infantile Autism: The Syndrome and Its Implications for a Neural Theory of Behavior (hereafter Infantile Autism)in 1964. The book proposed a theory to explain the causes of autism. The book also synthesized research into autism and used Rimland's neural theory, described in the book, as a theory to explain some aspects of behavior, intelligence, and abnormality. Moreover, Infantile Autism contributed to a debate between Rimland and child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim in the 1960s about whether autism was caused by how parents raised their children or by impaired brain development. Rimland's book convinced many autism researchers to study abnormal psychological development. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper
23
May
2014
“Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact” (1943), by Leo Kanner
The Embryo Project Encyclopedia
Leo Kanner published "Autistic Disturbances of Affective Contact" in 1943 in the journal Nervous Child. This article described the cases of eleven children with autism. Kanner described the behavior and upbringing of each child, aged two to eight, as well as the educational backgrounds of the children's parents. Though Eugen Bleuler, a professor at the University of Zürich and director of the Burghölzli Asylum in Zürich in Zürich, Switzerland in the early twentieth century, first used the term autism to describe of a symptom of schizophrenia, scientists cite Kanner's article as the first description of autism as a unique disease concept distinct from schizophrenia. One of the most cited articles about autism in the twentieth century, this article was the first to demarcate Kanner syndrome, which later called childhood autism. Researchers, including Kanner, eventually treated early infantile autism as a disorder resulting from abnormal development of the autistic children's brains. ISSN: 1940-5030Journal Paper