A Deficit of Nature Deficit Disorder at MHS

After living in dense, urban settings for over 8 years, I was beside myself with the thought of growing tomato plants in my own backyard after moving to Montclair. And grow my tomato plants did--they were huge! Every day in August when I came home from work, I would run out back to pick some tomatoes and each day I was crestfallen when I saw that another animal also wanted to sample my tomatoes. It was just one bite, which was enough, though, to ruin the tomato for any human that didn't want a bit of squirrel saliva mixed in with the splendor of a tomato warm from the sun. This went on for a while until one day that I got so angry that I ripped the tomato plants out of the ground while angrily shouting, "If I can't have any tomatoes, neither can you, squirrels!" I recall looking back at the house and seeing my husband through the kitchen window looking perplexed and shaking his head. I laugh when I think about it. But, I beam when I see the success that the MHS students are having as they try their hand at farming.

We have 15 raised beds in front of the annex at MHS thanks to a local Eagle Scout group. The MHS students from the 9th grade bio classes and the AP Bio classes grew enough produce to donate to Toni's Kitchen.

Lettuce and peas for Toni's Kitchen

Rael with a tub of MHS Farm produce for Toni's Kitchen

We also have a relationship with the Montclair Community Farms, who will help us water over the summer and harvest some of the food for their farm stands.

The MHS farm has been humming along nicely with lots of different groups involved. But, we didn't stop there. My AP Bio students also built a pollinator bed along Toney's Brook near the bird habitat. Maybe you didn't know we had a bird habitat, but the birds sure did! It's regularly visited by house sparrows, goldfinches, starlings, woodpeckers and more.  Let me be honest for a moment: I felt like it was the blind leading the blind as we built the pollinator bed. I love to garden but tearing up sod is not something I have done. It's not rocket science, of course, and with the correct tools--the pickaxe came in very handy--and lots of ATP, we built something that we're all proud of. I'll let the pictures below tell the story.

This is how it began...7th period AP Bio breaks ground.

Annette and Helen pull up some stubborn roots.

Olivia and Dean actually had to carry the wheelbarrow to dump the sod b/c it had a flat tire!

Eve discovered the power of a pickaxe.

  

Grace and Emily planting the baptisia...and having fun while doing so.

Amaya did not hesitate to make a nice, sharp edge for our bed.

This is how we water our bed and Liana seemed to enjoy wading through Toney's Brook and scooping up the water.

The finished product! In a few years, it will be amazing!

E.O. Wilson popularized the biophilia hypothesis in 1984. The premise of the hypothesis rests upon our evolutionary past: we evolved in nature and we are therefore attracted to nature and work to sustain it. I am biased--I have always been happiest while looking under rocks, picking blackberries and romping through the woods, which is how I spent my childhood. And although my students are growing up in a different environment and a different time (hello, smartphones), the vast majority of students were happy and relaxed while working on "the farm" and building the beds. I have no evidence from a controlled trial to support the biophilia hypothesis, but I saw smiles aplenty this past month as we dug in the dirt. One of my students even wrote about the possible source of this happiness.  I care deeply that my students understand the concepts in AP Biology and get good scores on the exam. But, I don't kid myself. I think in the future, when high school is a blur, they will remember our time outside and not how their body was burning up sugar via cellular respiration to generate the ATP needed to do the work. And I am absolutely fine with that.

The title of this post refers to a book called Last Child in the Woods, which was a catalyst that prompted me to pursue a career in teaching.

Gardening Has Just Become Your Newest Stress Reliever

The idea of having to go outside and plant for the last few days did not make me the happiest student. I have to be honest, the simple thought of all the bugs flying around my face, my shoes getting muddy, and me being cold due to the miserable spring we had discouraged me in the morning before going to my first period class. I was interested in doing something else besides loads of work but gardening had never really been my thing. It's mainly because I don't like having my hands in direct contact with dirt or even being around that kind of environment. Needless to say, I put in effort where I could by doing something simple because every bit of input helps, right? I helped Ms. Eckert plant germinated morning glory seeds and I think that had been my first time actually using a shovel to dig through dirt for planting. I know that might sound crazy. I had to actually touch the soil when picking out the seeds from the cup and putting them into it. In addition, I attempted (and I say attempted because this completely failed) to dig a hole for the plant but unfortunately, the use of a spade did not get me very far.

I say all of this to say that even though my initial approach to planting was quite negative in the beginning, I began to enjoy being out there and working with the shovel and dirt especially at the point of leveling out the bed and digging to make it even. It put me in a good mood which helped my life significantly especially with the stress of finals coming up. But why did this happen?

Did you know that gardening has been known to uplift people's moods and cure depression? Start digging, get a little dirty because "dirt don't hurt", and harvest your own food. Your natural chemicals that produce feelings of pleasure and happiness will kick in keeping depression at bay.

My mood when learning I had to garden. Photo credit here

The two chemicals that are most important for keeping us happy are serotonin and dopamine and they are affected by our environment. Serotonin levels are increased when dealing with soil because contact with a bacteria known as Mycobacterium vaccae that is found in soil triggers the brain to release the chemical. With a lot of serotonin, you are bound to feel happy and less prone to sadness so with lack of serotonin in your brain, depression is caused. Now with dopamine, the chemical is released in the brain when harvesting plants and fruits. According to research that has been found, the simple sight, smell, or touch of picking a fruit from a plant releases a rush of dopamine. Isn't that cool ?!?!... You can have a sudden feeling of bliss and happiness without even trying. Dopamine is a chemical that has been linked to harmful addictions such as drugs because it rewires the brain by releasing and giving off a feeling of sensation whenever a behavior is repeatedly done by a person who enjoys doing it. However, when it comes to gardening, it is okay to continuously crave the beauty of nature and cause tons of serotonin and dopamine to rush through the brain making you feel extremely great.

How I feel after gardening. Photo credit here

I bet that before you read this blog, you did not know that there were antidepressant microbes in soil that are very beneficial to one's health. I was surprised by the thought myself! Gardening is very important overall aside from its effects on people's feelings of happiness and relaxation. Planting your own fruits and vegetables is healthier since it is fresher and you won't have to go out buying it at the grocery store. Also, harvesting your own food is helpful to our environment; an environment which is already suffering from many problems caused by the actions that people living in it are making. Gardening can make you feel good in a sense of just knowing that you accomplished something new. I definitely got out of my comfort zone with these trips to Rand Park and I am proud of that because it's okay to be uncomfortable sometimes; it is the only way I'll experience new things.  Before writing this blog, I was still quite sketchy about the idea of touching dirt with my bare hands and thinking that it can lead to ringworms since that's what I've grown up being told by my mother. However, I now see it in a much more optimistic point of view that I never thought of and I will start gardening more often just for pleasure. 

The dirt that we fear of touching without

knowing that it's really where all the magic

happens.

Stay Golden!

     In the summer I often see these little golden finches in my front yard, devouring the seeds from the pink echinacea flowers. You might have seen these birds in your own garden. This cute little birdy is the state bird of New Jersey, Iowa, and Washington. It gets its food from many types of flowers, the echinacea flowers we planted in Rand Park being one of their absolute favorites.

Goldfinches eating echinacea

     Goldfinches, Spinus tristis, and cone flowers, Echinacea purpurea, have a mutualistic relationship in which both organisms benefit. The coneflower is a food source for the finches, and the finches help the coneflower reproduce by dispersing its seeds.

     In the spring and early summer, adult males are bright yellow with a black forehead, black wings with white markings, and white patches both above and beneath the tail. Females are a duller yellow and more olive colored. Winter birds are drab in color, brown with blackish wings and light wing markings. Although these birds lose their colorful coats in winter, they can still be identified by their notched tails, unique markings, and beak. Read more about goldfinch coloration here!

What a cute couple!

     When it's breeding time, males will perform a courtship ritual of fluttering his wings and singing a beautiful song. When the love is found, the new couple will typically settle down in deciduous shrubs or trees. The nest is built by the female and is so sturdy and compact it may even hold water. When the time is right to add a new member to the family, the female will incubate 4-6 eggs for about two weeks. The parents work together to feed the young until they leave the nest two weeks after hatching. 

Feeding time!

     Goldfinches are native to the U.S. and they are very important to the biodiversity of our ecosystems. Invasive birds, like sparrows and starlings, threaten to outcompete the goldfinches. To help the goldfinch species in our area, we grew Echinacea and filled birdfeeders with seeds that they prefer. Hopefully this will help the birds thrive and we will see a lot more of them next year!

Goldfinches kissing and sharing seeds

By Maureen Dunn and Lily Cunningham

It's time to make your house (sparrow) your home

Have you ever had something that you once thought was cool but starts to get boring and annoying after a while? Well that seems to be the case for people in New Jersey with house sparrows.

Bored/annoyed child

House sparrows, Passer domesticus, are a bird species that are extremely common in North and South America. The males have a brown back and a white chest, and the females typically have a light-brown back and a light-gray chest.

Male house sparrow

Female house sparrow

House sparrows may be getting on some people's nerves because of how abundant they are. According to the Cornell Chronicle, the abundance of house sparrows has created a negative impact on other species of birds because they occupy so many nesting sites. They can be found around houses, parks, and many other places. Although there are so many of them, house sparrows are not native to North America. According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, house sparrows were introduced in Brooklyn, NY in 1851 from Europe, and by the 1900s, they had spread throughout North America. The reason these birds ended up in Brooklyn was actually because of some dedicated Shakespeare fans. Some people in the late 1800s thought that it was necessary that all the birds that were in Shakespeare's plays be brought to America. So that is, surprisingly, how house sparrows came to be in this country.

So why is the house sparrow so common in North America? Well you can thank the abundance of manmade structures. House sparrows tend to prefer to live in areas that are manmade, rather than in the forest or in a natural habitat. They have become accustomed to living in these places, so suburban areas and cities, naturally, are a great place for them to live.

According to the Bern Convention of 1979, a native, or indigenous species, is one that has been observed in the form of a naturally occurring and self-sustaining population in historical times. Even though the house sparrow is not considered an indigenous species, one can make the argument that it is. It has been able to sustain itself for many years by showing flexibility in where they live. Also, the fact that they are so abundant shows that if they are not yet an indigenous species, they are well on their way. 

Female house sparrow

Although house sparrows are literally everywhere and many people find them annoying, I personally like them. I think that they are very beautiful birds, and I think that if there weren't so many of them, they would be more appreciated. My one complaint about them is how jumpy they are. I spent over an hour at Rand Park trying to take a picture of a house sparrow, but every time I came even slightly close to one, it flew away. I finally got a decent picture, but boy oh boy did they make me work for it. Gotta love 'em!

Ginkgo Trees: Earth's Living Fossils

Rand Park is home to many fauna and flora in Montclair, including ginkgo trees! These trees are personally my favorite trees, and whenever I see them, I always point them out to whomever I'm with. As the only living things on Earth that do not have known relatives and have remain unchanged for over 200 million years, ginkgo trees are living fossils with smelly fruits and medicinal nuts. They're mainly found in urban areas and are noted for their elegant fan-shaped leaves that turn a beautiful shade of yellow in the fall.

Aren't they gorgeous?

Ginkgo trees line New York's East Village. 

Ginkgo trees, or Ginkgo bilboa, have supposedly been around since the time of the dinosaurs (isn't that crazy?!) and are native to Southeast Asia. They were brought to America in 1784 and are known for their many medicinal properties found in their leaves and seeds.

An illustration of a Ginkgo tree that was published in Europe in 1835.

Another very interesting fact about the maidenhair tree is that the outer part of its seeds produce a very pungent odor. Ginkgo trees are dioecious, which means that separate individuals have either the male or female reproductive organs; a tree is either female or male and it cannot be both. Only the female trees produce seeds that smell and, quite frankly, it smells like vomit. Scientists believe the smelly seeds serve an important role in the dispersal system. The smell attracts animals, such as dogs (and had attracted dinosaurs in the past), which allows the seeds to be transported to different places. As a result, the trees have a higher possibility of survival in environments with less competition for light and resources.

Lastly, ginkgo trees are sturdy, drought-tolerant, and they can survive pollution, the constant salting of roads, and poor soil. And you know about the atomic bomb that hit Hiroshima, Japan during World War II, right? Well, ginkgo trees are so tough that six trees survived that bomb, without any deformities. And, they're still alive to this day. The fact that we have such an amazing tree in our park just outside the Annex is absolutely fascinating!

My favorite trees survived that.

Six trees survived the bomb, while roughly 100,000 people died.

A survivor of the a-bomb.

Here are some pictures of a ginkgo tree in our beloved Rand Park:

What a pretty leaf! 

I can't wait for them to turn that gorgeous shade of yellow! 

They provide just the right amount of shade.

Behind the Scenes of Clinical Trials

As a nine year old I encountered one of the scariest moments of my life- a seizure. It was uncontrollable and took my breath away. After long and tedious debates with my pediatrician, I was finally referred to a neurologist where he found- what no parent wants to hear- that I had tumors throughout my body. More pressingly, I had Bilateral Vestibular Schwannomas, which were the key factor in diagnosing me with a rare tumor disorder, Neurofibromatosis Type II (NF2). NF2 is caused by a mutation on my 22nd chromosome which prevents the production of merlin, a tumor-suppressor protein. NF2 causes benign tumors to grow along the nerves in my body. They arise from Schwann cells, which help insulate the nerve and increase productivity.

Where the Mutation Is On Chromosome

Being so young, I understood very little of this vocabulary, and entrusted my parents to choose the best options for me. Many years involved "watching and waiting" to see when the right time to act was. Acting too soon or too late could result in permanent hearing loss. It was all about finding that right moment. This moment came for me during the most important four years of my life.

When I entered high school, I could only think of the excitement I had for getting into college and what the next four years could mean for my future, but I never could have imagined that my brain had the potential to help a community suffering from a rare disease. In the beginning of my sophomore year  of high school, I lost more hearing than I had before, and my tumors began to grow to an uncomfortable size. For years I was considering starting treatment on a drug, Avastin (Bevacizumab,) which is a Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor (VEGF) inhibitor. This drug inhibits angiogenesis from ocurring. This, in simple terms, means that it prevents the growth of new blood vessels that stem from pre-existing blood vessels, specifically ones that feed tumors. Avastin has been approved for many conditions such as kidney, lung, and colon cancer, however, Avastin was not FDA approved for my condition.

Avastin (Bevacizumab) Pathway

Fortunately for me, I found a Phase II clinical drug trial that was testing the dosing of the drug on NF2 patients. This meant that not only would I have the chance to have tumor shrinkage and an increase in hearing, but that I would be able to participate in groundbreaking research. For the first six months of the trial, everything was looking up. My hearing was increasing, my tumors were shrinking, and the side effects were minimal. It was not until the dose of the drug was lowered that my tumors became resilient.

Every month I saw my tumors grow and my hearing decrease. The most frustrating thing was the incapability of the doctor's to acknowledge the change because of the large margin of error when looking at this data. Tumors are difficult to measure so researchers in this trial allowed for an approximate twenty percent margin of error. As my tumors grew so did my frustrations, but I kept thinking about the so many people I would help by participating in this trial.

When I entered my junior, my symptoms only got worse. By February, I was having such severe headaches that I ended up in the hospital for a week. After that week, I felt better but unfortunately the medication I received was what my neurologist would later call a "bandage medication". I fell back into my headache cycle, and my doctors tried every medication possible. One of the most obvious obstacles was that I could not receive blood thinners due to my high bleeding risk. Blood thinners make up a great majority of migraine medications, and from those left over, I had tried almost all of. My doctors were stumped. They couldn't find an exact cause until I received my latest MRI reports in May. They confirmed that my tumors grew enough that they were no longer stable, and I was categorized as progressive disease. The theory then became that the pressure from the tumor growth was causing my migraines.

The next day I called the principle investigator of the study, the one who created the trial and did the main research, and told him I wanted to leave the trial. He assured me that waiting two more months would be more valuable than leaving and increasing my dose of Avastin. When he told me that he had just found the last participant for his trial of twenty two, which took him four years to finally accomplish, I knew I could not stop. Every morning I go for a walk but I never want to finish it. When I think about it, it's a lot like my clinical trial. I am almost at the finish line and I just keep moving. My journey moving forward is uncertain; I don't know how how my health will change, but I know my perseverance will help me through any challenges I will face.

Treatment with Avastin (Bevacizumab)

Success With Avastin (Bevacizumab)

MRI of Brain Pre and Post Avastin  (B and then A) (Bevacizumab)

Want to know more about clinical trials? Look at these websites:
The FDA process for approval 
Reexamining clinical trials
Phases of a clinical trial
Drug development
Pressures from government for faster approval
Learn more about NF2