Temple physicist Zein-Eddine Meziani has become the new Chair of the Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator Laboratory’s User Group Board of Directors.
“This is a unique opportunity to organize working groups and go through a series of workshops and assess the physics that could be achieved perhaps with a collider that could be built at JLab,” he told JLab’s newsletter, ONTARGET.
Meziani (left) and his postdoctoral researcher Brad Sawatzky prepare a Threshold Cherenkov Detector during tests they conducted at JLab
Meziani has become one of the leading researchers in trying to understand the spin (intrinsic magnetism) structure of the proton and the neutron in terms of its constituents, namely quarks and gluons. He conducts the majority of his research into nucleon and nuclear physics at the Department of Energy’s Thomas Jefferson National Accelerator facility.
He has previously played an instrumental role in the upgrading of the Continuous Electron Beam Accelerator Facility at JLab, which is located in Newport News, Va.
The Delaware River, the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi, provides drinking water for 15 million people, including the cities of Philadelphia and New York. The basin is home to nationally designated wild and scenic rivers, endangered species, and a thriving population of American Bald Eagles.
A map of the Marcellus Shale along the Appalachian Basin
The Delaware River basin is also underlain by the Marcellus Shale formation which is the largest known shale deposit in the world with an estimated 488 trillion cubic feet of recoverable natural gas.
Can this natural gas be recovered without destroying the Delaware River’s ecosystems and recreational areas and without endangering the water supply and quality of life for millions of residents? The wells needed for the drilling would require 1-3 million gallons of water per day, per well, with 30-70 percent of that water would come back as wastewater that would 5-10 percent saltier than the ocean, says Robert Ryan, assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Temple. That wastewater will have to be treated. One early proposal to truck that wastewater to Chester for treatment has already been scrapped.
Ryan has helped organize a public forum, “Protecting Our Waters: The Impact of Marcellus Shale Drilling in the Delaware River Basin,” for Temple’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, along with Damascus Citizens for Sustainability. Tonight’s forum, which will be held from 7-9:45 p.m. in Room 021 of Gladfelter Hall, 12th and Berks Sts., will feature activists, lawyers and engineers discussing the potential environmental, legal and social impacts of drilling for natural gas within the Delaware River Basin area of the Marcellus Shale, particularly in the counties of Northeast Pennsylvania.
A few months ago, Temple podiatry faculty and staff began shipping boxes of much needed foot care supplies to soldiers stationed in Iraq. The project’s coordinator, Kathya Zinszer, has a sister stationed there who told Zinszer of the dire straits her soldiers were in. Acting fast, Dr. Zinszer rallied her own troops to put together the first of several foot care packages.
Earlier this month, the boxes finally arrived to a group of very grateful soldiers. “They were very excited. A couple of days later I got the arch supports, and they went like wildfire,” said Donna Rigel, Zinszer’s sister.
It’s no secret there’s a recession going on, and it’s making the holidays hard for many families, who want nothing more than to make sure they can give something to their children.
Like last year, many families are scaling back their festivities. That can mean less traveling, less holiday parties, and less gifts. Listen to Temple child psychologist Ronald Brown’s advice for talking to your kids about having a lean holiday season.
This week, members of the Public Health Graduate Student Council (GSC) wrapped their annual Thanksgiving food drive and assembled 30 boxes for donation, which went to members of the Berean Presbyterian Church and Greater Ebenezer Baptist Church in North Philadelphia.
Each box contained 4 cans of vegetables, 2 cans of cranberry sauce, 2 jars of gravy, 2 boxes of stuffing, 2 boxes of mashed potatoes, 2 boxes of macaroni and cheese, 2 boxes of cornbread mix, and snacks to ensure each family had a hearty holiday meal.
Each box also had packets on healthy eating habits, which included fact sheets on reading nutrition labels, diabetes, and hypertension.
Despite what the retail world would have you believe, the holiday season 
officially kicks off next week at Thanksgiving, and people are preparing to see family they haven’t seen in a while.
And it’s causing some anxiety.
Emotions tend to run very close to the surface during this time of year, and it can lead some heated debates, and less-than-happy holiday gatherings. Temple psychologist Herbert Rappaport says that one of the best things to do is to simply refuse to feed the fire.
“That’s the worst thing you can do, because then it becomes a schoolyard battle,” he said. Instead, he suggests discussing sensitive issues quietly, and not in front of the rest of the family.
There’s a time and a place to air grievances, he says, and the dinner table’s probably not the best place.
“Think about the family gathering as if you were in a church or synagogue or mosque. You wouldn’t be fighting or bickering with each other there,” he said.
2 for $1 honey buns are just part of the problem
Temple’s Center for Obesity Research recently published a study which found that for a little over a dollar, young children can go to their local corner store and load up on things like chips, candy and soda – and add a whopping 360 extra calories to their daily intake.
Research has shown that school based programs can help cut obesity rates among urban school children in half, but the folks at CORE are afraid that external factors like these corner stores – which some children frequent twice a day, everyday – could be undermining those efforts.
Lead researcher Kelley Borradaile says that knowing the price points and preferences for these students can help store owners come up with healthier options – single serving snack packs, or dried fruit, or baked chips, for example.
The Christmas holidays are a little more than two months away and more people than ever will be doing their shopping online as opposed to brick-and-mortar retail stores. With October being National Cybersecurity Month, now is the time to make sure you make those online purchases safely, so as not to become a victim of credit card, or more importantly, identity theft.
“Most people confuse credit card theft with identity theft and they are really two different things,” says Abbe Forman, a computer and information science instructor in Temple’s College of Science and Technology.
Credit card theft is the theft of either your physical credit card or credit card number by someone who wants to spend up to your credit limit and max out your card, while identity theft is the swiping of someone’s actual identity, says Forman, an expert in computer ethics.
“Generally, with identity theft, someone will get hold of your social security number and use it to get themselves credit cards in your name or take out a mortgage–which can be a huge amount of money–in your name or take out loans in your name and just spend, spend, spend,” she says. “Meanwhile, they’re destroying your credit which can take seven years of very hard work to correct.”
While most credit card companies have mechanisms in place to catch fraudulent charges on your credit card, people who have had their identity stolen may not be aware of it for a long period of time.
Forman suggests routinely checking your credit card and bank statements for suspicious activity 
on your accounts. She also recommends checking your credit report, which you can often acquire for free, every year or two.
If you are going to buy something online, make sure the Web site is legitimate and secure.
“When making an online purchase from a legitimate site, make sure that the Web address bar starts with ‘https’ as opposed to the normal ‘http,’” Forman says. “When the ’s’ is included, it tells you that the Web site is using secure socket layers and that your information is being encrypted both ways.”
And lastly, Forman warns, never, ever respond to an e-mail that requests you to supply your personal information, no matter how legitimate the e-mail might look.
“Thieves have gotten so good that they’re using Photoshop to recreate actual looking Web sites in their e-mails,” she says. “If you get an e-mail that says your account has been compromised, call the company to verify it.”
Students, staff and faculty from Temple School of Podiatric Medicine participated in the Step Out Philly walk on Saturday, to raise awareness (and funds) for diabetes research. All told, Temple teams raised more than $12,000! For more information, visit the Step Out website. Check out photos from the walk below, courtesy Dr. Kathya Zinszer:
As another way to promote the University’s sustainability goals, Temple has launched a new initiative to encourage and build a bike culture on campus.
“Bike Temple was begun as a way to make Temple more bike-friendly,” said Glenn Eck, assistant superintendent of grounds in the Office of Facilities Management and a member of the bicycle subcommittee under the Office of Sustainability. “We want people to see bicycles as a reliable, routine form of transportation, not just a toy, or sorely recreational.”
A campus survey conducted last spring found that a lot people are interested in riding a bike for commuting to and from campus, but are hesitant because they don’t know where to purchase a bike or where they would get it serviced. They also indicated a need to learn bicycling skills that would give them a comfort level riding on busy city streets.
Temple has partnered in this initiative with Fuji Bicycles; Breakaway Bikes, a Center City bike shop; and the Neighborhood Bike Works, a non-profit organization headquartered in West Philadelphia. Fuji is offering about a dozen styles of bikes to Temple students and employees at a
discount though Breakaway Bikes, which has opened an on-campus shop/repair facility outside Barton Hall on 13th Street, between Berks Mall and Norris Street.
Bike Temple is part of Temple’s total movement towards carbon neutrality and part of its climate action plan, said Sandra McDade, director of Temple’s Office of Sustainability.
“By biking to and from campus, you reduce the amount of greenhouse gas emissions that you put into the air,” she said. “Many things that you do to reduce greenhouse gases have to do with behavior changes and clearly the bike culture is very well organized in how it’s moving its agenda forward. I would like to see that culture change where people accept biking as a reasonable transportation alternative to driving or even taking public transportation.”
Additional information about Bike Temple can be found at http://www.temple.edu/sustainability/.
