Sausage of Science

What happens when hypercapitalism intersects with human fertility? Professor Diane Tober joins Chris and Mallika to reveal some of the nuances of Assisted Reproductive Technologies, with a focus on egg donation. ------------------------------------- Diane Tober is Associate Professor at the University of Alabama Department of Anthropology and Institute for Social Science Research. She is a medical anthropologist with a focus on biocultural aspects of health, gender and sexuality, the commodification of the body, science and technology studies, bioethics, and social and reproductive justice. She has been conducting research exploring egg donors’ decisions and experiences within the global market for human eggs since 2013. With funding from the National Science Foundation, she is comparing egg donation in the United States and Spain. She has conducted field research in Iran, Spain, and the United States. Prof. Tober can be contacted via her website: https://dianetober.com/ Her book, "Romancing the Sperm," discussed on today's show can be found here: https://www.rutgersuniversitypress.org/romancing-the-sperm/9780813590783 ------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Mallika Sarma, Website: mallikasarma.com/ Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu

Welcome Sausage of Science's newest host Dr. Mallika S. Sarma! Mallika joins Chris as co-host while Cara is out on sabbatical. In this episode, Mallika and Chris chat with Dr. Paula Tallman about several aspects of water insecurity, notably an important overlap with gender-based violence. Dr. Paula Skye Tallman is an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Loyola University Chicago. Her research examines the drivers of health inequities among marginalized populations in South America and Southeast Asia, with a focus on connecting this scholarship to environmental and social policy. Dr. Tallman received her B.A. in Behavioral Biology from Johns Hopkins University, her Ph.D. in Biological Anthropology from Northwestern University, and completed a postdoctoral fellowship focused on indigenous well-being and conservation at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. Her recent publications discussed on the show can be found at the following links, titled: Water insecurity, self-reported physical health, and objective measures of biological health in the Peruvian Amazon https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23805 Water insecurity and mental health in the Amazon: Economic and ecological drivers of distress https://doi.org/10.1002/sea2.12144 -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Mallika Sarma, Website: https://mallikasarma.com/ Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu

Chris and Cara discuss underappreciated athletes before unpacking Big Data with Dr. Elizabeth Miller, an Associate Professor at the University of South Florida. Dr. Miller is a biological anthropologist interested in evolutionary and biocultural approaches to maternal and child health. Her research program spans the study of human milk composition and infant feeding practices, infant immune function in diverse ecologies, maternal iron homeostasis, and early microbiome maturation. In this episode, she breaks down her use of a biocultural approach to early growth using data from NHANES to test the effects of social inequalities on birth weight and later height and how it can be used to contextualize potential pathways of embodiment that link social structure and biology. Her latest publication can be found in AJHB, titled: A critical biocultural approach to early growth in the United States Find it here: https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23726 ------------------------------ Dr. Miller's e-mail: emm3@usf.edu Twitter: @humanbiolab Website: https://humanbiolab.wordpress.com/ -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: cgildee@uw.edu

On this show Dr. Asher Rosinger joins Cara and Chris to discuss his new paper in the American Journal of Human Biology (AJHB) titled “Cross-cultural variation in thirst perception in hot-humid and hot-arid environments: Evidence from two small-scale populations.” Dr. Rosinger’s paper is available here:  https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.23715  For more insight on this topic please see the upcoming AJHB special issue on Extreme Climatic Events and Human Biology and Health, which will be released in January and ties into the theme of thirst and extreme thermal environments.  Applications for the NSF REU field school mentioned on this episode can be accessed here:  https://anthropology.columbian.gwu.edu/koobi-fora-field-school  Correction: During the podcast Dr. Rosinger mentions “Sarah Fenestra” but her last name is Hlubik.  --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Dr. Rosinger is an assistant professor of Anthropology and Biobehavioral Health at Penn State University where he is the director of the Water, Health, and Nutrition laboratory.  Dr. Rosinger’s full bio and e-mail address can be found here:  https://hhd.psu.edu/contact/asher-rosinger  -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu

Chris sits down with Dr. Emily Pollock, a Prevention Effectiveness Fellow at the CDC in the Division of Sexually Transmitted Disease Prevention, where she brings a more robust understanding of human behavior to the challenges of STI modeling for public health. Dr. Pollock earned her PhD in Biological Anthropology from the University of Washington, with a certificate from the Center for Studies in Demography and Ecology at the same institution. Her dissertation, "Epidemics as Complex Systems: Demography, Networks, and Treatment of Chlamydia trachomatis," focused on applying dynamic network analysis to understand how behavioral, biological, and biomedical factors influence chlamydia reinfection. Most recently, she worked as a data analytics and modeling team member for the CDC's response to the monkeypox outbreak. She has helped develop agent-based network models to understand behavioral drivers of monkeypox transmission and the effects of behavior on the epidemic's trajectory. She discusses two papers: First, the monkeypox model she and her team recently published: "Modeling the Impact of Sexual Networks in the Transmission of Monkeypox virus Among Gay, Bisexual, and Other Men Who Have Sex With Men" which you can find at: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/71/wr/mm7135e2.htm?s_cid=mm7135e2_w And this paper: "Impacts of Changing Sexual Behavior on Chlamydia and Gonorrhea Burden Among US High School Students, 2007 to 2017," which has some fascinating insights into changing rates of sexual behavior and their contribution to some declines in adolescent STI diagnoses. Find it here: http://dx.doi.org/10.1097/OLQ.0000000000001390 [dx.doi.org] ------------------------------ Emily's e-mail: ruu7@cdc.gov -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: cgildee@uw.edu

Prof. Lynnette Leidy Sievert joins Chris and Cara to discuss how hot flashes, and other symptoms of menopause, vary around the world. Stick around for "offboarding" career advice and a conversation about fish! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Lynnette Leidy Sievert has studied variation in age at menopause and symptoms at midlife for more than 30 years. In collaboration with local researchers, she carried out studies of menopause in western Massachusetts; Hilo, Hawaii; the Selška Valley, Slovenia; Asunción and Mbaracayu, Paraguay; Puebla and Campeche, Mexico; Sylhet, Bangladesh; and London, UK, as well as pilot studies in Odisha, India, and Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia. Sievert also studies and writes about the evolution of menopause and post-reproductive life. Of late, she has been disentangling the experience of hot flashes from the heat and humidity of Campeche, Mexico, and planning to study hot flashes in the winter cold of Mongolia. Her current study is on hot flashes in relation to estimates of brown adipose tissue. Sievert is an elected Fellow of the AAAS, served on the Board of Trustees of the North American Menopause Society, and was the Editor-in-Chief of the American Journal of Human Biology, the journal of the Human Biology Association. Her paper discussed on today's show, titled "Hand grip strength, standing balance, and rapid foot tapping in relation to the menopausal transition in Campeche, Mexico," can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ajhb.23781 Contact Prof. Lynnette Sievert via e-mail at: leidy@umass.edu. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu

Cara interviews Dr. Monica Keith, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University and Data Scientist who studies longitudinal health and child growth in a biosocial framework. Monica uses Bayesian models to assess predictors of growth and health outcomes and integrates health, socio-ecological, and genetic data to study human variation and health disparities in diverse contexts. Monica currently works with three ongoing field studies in Dominica, Bangladesh, and Argentina, researching health, growth, and biodemography in rural and Indigenous populations. She also uses data from the NIH National Institute of Child Health and Human Development to address disparities in reproductive and maternal health in the US. She joins Cara to discuss her most recent work (in review) titled: "Racialized/ethnic disparities in pathways linking social determinants of health, markers of allostatic load, and hypertensive disorders of pregnancy among nulliparous US women." ------------------------------ Monica's e-mail: monica.h.keith@vanderbilt.edu Website: https://www.monicahkeith.com/ -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: cgildee@uw.edu

Cara returns to join Chris in interviewing Kathy Wander, a biological anthropologist and epidemiologist working at the intersection of human evolutionary biology and health. Much of Dr. Wander's research seeks to understand how humans (and in particular, children) cope with nutritional and infectious disease stress and the impact of malnutrition and infectious disease on the protective and pathological capacity of the immune system. She has recently published papers about a method developed in her lab (https://www.wanderlab.org) to describe immune activity in human milk; the impact of gender and kinship on risk for chronic disease; and, how genetic adaptations to high altitude may decrease the risk for chronic disease among Himalayan-descended populations. She has active grants to investigate nutrition and infectious disease risk in Tanzania and Nigeria. Check them out here: "Tradeoffs in milk immunity affect infant infectious disease risk" https://doi.org/10.1093/emph/eoac020 "Human milk lactoferrin variation in relation to maternal inflammation and iron deficiency in northern Kenya" https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23812 ------------------------------ Kathy's e-mail: katherinewander@binghamton.edu -------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Cristina Gildee, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: cgildee@uw.edu

Ale Geisel-Zamora is an undergraduate student at Dartmouth College working under the direction of Prof. Zaneta Thayer. Ale won the Hilde Spielvogel Award for Outstanding Presentation by an Undergraduate Student at this year's HBA meeting for her poster "Social support promotes postpartum mental health among US-based participants during the COVID-19 pandemic." The poster, and supplements, can be found here: https://sagz.myportfolio.com/ Ale also chats with Cara and Chris about her undergraduate thesis work examining how Tiktok use affects stress. Ale can be contacted on Instagram here: https://www.instagram.com/alegoesglobal/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu

Dr. Alison Murray joins Chris and Cara to discuss how activity levels during puberty have lifelong effects on bone structure in human females. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Dr. Murray’s research examines the evolutionary and behavioral mechanisms shaping variations in human bone and body composition, as well as sex differences within it. To do so, she/they combine the study of archaeological skeletal remains with engineering-based musculoskeletal computer modeling and the experimental study of living humans, including athletes and control subjects. Her paper discussed on today's show, titled "Tibial cortical and trabecular variables together can pinpoint the timing of impact loading relative to menarche in premenopausal females," can be found here: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/ajhb.23711 Follow Dr. Murray @ali_murray & Dr. Murray’s research group @PhaseUVIC on Twitter -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Contact the Sausage of Science Podcast and Human Biology Association: Facebook: www.facebook.com/groups/humanbiologyassociation Website:humbio.org/, Twitter: @HumBioAssoc Cara Ocobock, Website: sites.nd.edu/cara-ocobock/, Email:cocobock@nd.edu, Twitter:@CaraOcobock Chris Lynn, HBA Public Relations Committee Chair, Website: cdlynn.people.ua.edu/, Email: cdlynn@ua.edu, Twitter:@Chris_Ly Eric Griffith, HBA Junior Fellow, SoS producer: E-mail: eric.griffith@duke.edu