MIAMI EU CENTER IS PIVOTAL LINK

Mate of the Union

aunch of the euro in January, development of a 60,000-person military Rapid Reaction Force, and expansion from the current 15 members to a potential 27 by 2004 are all part of the European Union’s personal growth initiative. Across the pond, the EU has its eye on free trade with Latin America, and it has enlisted the new Miami European Union Center for help.

The European Commission recently awarded a three-year, $425,000 grant to the University of Miami and Florida International University to jointly establish one of 15 European Union Centers in the United States, designed to foster understanding of the EU and related issues. The Miami center organizes research, classes, workshops, public lectures, global conferences, and a multilingual Web site.

A united Europe traces its origins to the aftermath of World War II, when member countries agreed to pool their industrial resources “to make war unthinkable and materially impossible,” explains Joaquin Roy, codirector of the Miami EU Center and UM professor. Likewise, the UM-FIU partnership supplants competition with “a pooling of resources,” says Roy, whose dedication to educating students about the EU has earned him the prestigious Jean Monnet Chair, an honor granted to only four U.S. professors this year.

In the process of defining itself, the EU is not a model of the UN, nor is it the “United States of Europe” that Winston Churchill once described. It is an evolving concept that has generated criticism among those who fear it will erase Europe’s rich multicultural tapestry on its way to becoming a world power.

The tough part for the EU, Roy says, is “selling Europeans what the United States has been selling—an identity of will. You are American because you want to be American, not because you were born here.” In contrast, he explains, Germans are citizens of Germany because it’s their heritage, and this model of a “cultural nation” remains pervasive throughout Europe. “If it’s going to be ‘Europe by will,’ then Europe has to deliver the benefits of cohesion, security, and a better standard of living,” he says.

Roy, who chairs the EU-Latin America-Caribbean Interest Section, a subset of the European Union Studies Association, says that facilitating free trade between the EU and the Latin America/Caribbean bloc was “on the table” when the EU sought a presence in Miami. It is a focal point that exists minimally, if at all, at other EU Centers.

“The primary objective [of the EU Center] is outreach and promotion, to know more about the European Union; it is still not very well-known,” Roy asserts. “But even less known is what the EU is doing in the United States and in its relations with Latin America and the Caribbean. We will be able to fill that vacuum.”

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PROFESSOR WARNS AGAINST CO2 DUMPING

Deep-Rooted Danger

ome like it hot, but a steady increase in global temperatures could put the fate of our world in some serious hot water. As our zippy cars and behemoth factories sputter out carbon dioxide (CO2) and other fossil fuel waste products, the greenhouse effect warms our air, disrupts our weather patterns, and melts our glaciers.

One proposal to curtail the damage is to use the ocean floor as a storage tank for excess atmospheric CO2. But Patrick Walsh, professor of marine biology and fisheries at the University’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, and his colleague Brad Seibel, of the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute, warn about the dangers to dwellers of the deep.

In an article published in the October 12, 2001, issue of Science magazine, Walsh and Seibel explain that increased CO2 decreases the pH of sea water, making it more acidic. Observing the effects of acid rain on freshwater fish, we know that a decrease in water pH has serious consequences for aquatic life, but low metabolic rates of deep-sea creatures make them particularly vulnerable. “The available data indicate that deep-sea organisms are highly sensitive to even modest pH changes,” the article states.

Mother Nature has designed the seas to soak up excess CO2 from the air, mostly through the help of tiny ocean surface plants called phytoplankton. Peter Brewer, one of Seibel’s colleagues at the Monterey Bay Research Institute, notes that this natural “passive uptake” of atmospheric CO2 has already lowered the pH of the surface ocean significantly over the past century. In a paper he presented last May at the First National Conference on Carbon Sequestration in Washington, D.C., Brewer asserts that the impacts of CO2 would be “far more benign,” in the deep ocean than at the surface level.

Brewer and his colleagues have been evaluating different forms of CO2 injection—an ice-like solid compound, a sea-floor lake, a dense fluid, or a rising plume of liquid. The amount of time it will take for the CO2 to ultimately mix with surface water varies, but Walsh says that “all of the methods create an area of maximum concentration initially that will have lethal impacts on organisms within close proximity.”

Walsh also is leery of ocean fertilization—adding iron to the ocean to spawn a bloom of phytoplankton which will absorb more CO2 from the air. “Essentially we’re messing with ecological systems that we don’t yet fully understand.”

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BUILDING AN EDUCATIONAL ICON FOR HERITAGE

Cuban Experience

onstituting 29 percent of the Miami-Dade County population, compared to less than 1 percent nationwide, Cuban-Americans are a key part of the cultural medley that gives this region its distinct flavor. The University of Miami is therefore the ideal setting for an information powerhouse that educates students, faculty, staff, and the community on the history, culture, and political future of the island nation 150 miles to its south.

Slated for completion this spring, the University will convert a 10,000-square-foot, two-story building on Brescia Avenue at the Coral Gables campus into the permanent headquarters of the Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS). The new facility also will house Casa Bacardi—a conference center, 3,000-square-foot exhibition hall, cinema, and educational forum funded by a $1 million grant from The Bacardi Family Foundation, Inc. Two interactive pavilions at Casa Bacardi will feature music listening stations and computer terminals with access to the institute’s online information database (http://cuba.sis.miami.edu).

“It makes sense because there is a community here that supports this and because there are people who will give continuous support to Cuba when there is no Castro regime,” says ICCAS director Jaime Suchlicki.

Established in 1999, ICCAS offers courses, produces publications, sponsors original research, and presents a variety of Cuba-related seminars, concerts, films, and exhibits. It also serves as the secretariat of the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy, the most prestigious international organization devoted to the study of the island’s economy.

The institute, which recently received a $1 million research grant from the U.S. Agency for International Development to fund its Cuba Transition Project, aims to prepare U.S. government agencies, businesses, the media, and the Cuban-American community for the economic, social, and political changes required for post-Castro reconstruction of the island.

This year is particularly momentous for the institute because it is filled with a host of programs and activities commemorating the centennial anniversary of the Cuban Republic, culminating in the May inauguration of Casa Bacardi.

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Toxic Tides Wipe Out Hearing in Goldfish

hen dead fish wash up on shore and the ocean breeze stings your eyes and lungs, it seems logical to blame human activities. But this scenario is often linked to the natural phenomenon of red tides, blooms of microscopic plant-like phytoplankton that produce potent chemical toxins. Along Florida’s West Coast, blooms of the phytoplankton Karenia brevis can kill hoards of fish, birds, and marine mammals.

Prompted by reports of dizziness and balance problems in people living near coastal areas affected by red tides, University of Miami researchers Zhongmin Lu, Seth Tomchik, and Zemin Xu investigated the effects of these brevitoxins on the central nervous system. They discovered that a purified version of a K. brevis neurotoxin, brevitoxin-3, causes significant hearing loss in goldfish.

“Not only does this lend insight into understanding the risks to marine life,” says Lu, assistant professor of biology, “but it also enhances our awareness of potential neurotoxic effects on the sensory systems of other vertebrates, including humans.”

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Lowe Turns 50

rt textbooks, their pages saturated with spectacular color and detail, can foster appreciation of the great masterpieces. Yet their impact wanes in comparison to beholding an authentic Gauguin or Lichtenstein in three-dimensional splendor. Which is why the Lowe Art Museum has been such a jewel for students, staff, and faculty of the University of Miami, as well as the Miami-Dade community, for the past 50 years.

The museum’s diverse permanent collection comprises more than 11,000 objects, 40 percent of which are exhibited at any given time. Visitors can literally warp through every time and place: the Greco-Roman classics, Renaissance Europe and beyond, Africa and Asia, the ancient Americas, Native American civilizations, and 19th- and 20th-century United States.

A special exhibit, Catalyst: 50 Years of Collecting at the Lowe Art Museum, commemorates the museum’s anniversary as well as its role as South Florida’s first broad public art collection. For hours and a calendar of events, visit www.lowemuseum.org.

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PICTURING THE LIFE OF THE MOCHE PEOPLE

Art of Communication

ometimes a cigar is just a cigar. And sometimes art is solely a creative aesthetic. But for those who study the Moche civilization, art chronicles a kingdom that thrived for centuries in a series of arid river valleys on the northern coast of Peru.

The luxuriant textiles and intricate, fine-line painted ceramics of the Moche (c. A.D. 100-800) reveal “a codified symbol system,” says Margaret A. Jackson, associate professor of art and art history in the College of Arts and Sciences and curator of the Ancient American Collection at the Lowe Art Museum. But unlike the “Old World paradigm,” which links ancient hieroglyphic pictures to modern alphabetic letters—both symbols evoking a verbal sound—Moche art tells stories through pictorial notation that is non-alphabetic. Recurrent themes offer critical details, such as the ubiquitous sacrificial scenes that describe a system of social hierarchy and human-deity relationships based on the plea for water.

“There’s a trend away from Eurocentrism,” Jackson says. “The paradigm shift allows people like me to study how symbol systems evolved in the New World.”

Jackson, whose early interests were in contemporary art and “the European traditions,” knew nothing about pre-Columbian art when she first visited the Museo Arqueológico Rafael Larco Herrera in Lima, Peru, shortly after receiving her B.F.A. from the Rhode Island School of Design. The floor-to-ceiling matrix of ceramics before her launched her career in a new direction, as she was “bitten by the bug” that still lights up her eyes when talking about her favorite subject. Jackson, who has since completed a Ph.D. in pre-Columbian art history, says that so much knowledge about art in the ancient Americas has yet to be discovered. “There’s an element of mystery—like detective work. I have a chance to make a contribution.”

To truly decipher the world of the Moche, however, teamwork is required. “Unlike other kinds of art history, where you can just study art, you have to integrate archeology, ethnohistory, and ethnographics,” Jackson says.

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Nup It in the Bud

iruses, those pesky critters that plague us with disease, are adept at concealing their weaknesses from scientists. But University of Miami researcher Beatriz Fontoura has made a key discovery that could help circumvent their modes of attack.

Viruses disrupt normal cell function by binding with a type of protein nicknamed a “nup,” or nuclear pore complex protein, which carries genetic information to and from the cell nucleus. Nups also have been identified as targets in some types of leukemia. Fontoura, who collaborated with 1999 Nobel Prize winner Günter Blobel of The Rockefeller University and other colleagues, found that interferon, released by the body as a defense against viral attack, increases production of nups. Interferon, currently used to treat several types of cancer and other diseases, therefore helps the body bypass these viral “roadblocks.” The study was published in the January 24 issue of the journal Science.

“It’s almost as though the virus stopped all the trucks that were used for transport and then interferon stimulated the production of more trucks,” says Richard J. Bookman, associate dean of the University of Miami School of Medicine. “Previously, we didn’t know that you could overcome the virus this way.”

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STUDENTS TACKLE GLOBAL BUSINESS DILEMMAS

Real-World Enterprise

 
nternational markets offer big opportunities for corporate America, but sometimes the best intentions go awry. Remember the Chevy Nova, a car that allegedly flopped in Spanish-speaking countries because the name translates to “no go”?

For over a decade, students at the School of Business Administration have been confronting such challenges. Each spring semester, the International Business Analysis course partners with a different high-profile company to present global business dilemmas to senior finance and marketing majors. Last year, Fort Lauderdale-based AOL Latin America wanted ideas on providing Internet services to lower-income consumers in Latin American countries. Backed by market analysis, sales projections, and a spectrum of graphs, the students recommended that the company join forces with an affordable retail restaurant chain such as Starbucks or McDonald’s. AOL was pleased with the proposal, but a competing company had the same idea and beat them to it a mere two weeks after the semester’s end.

Partnering companies, which have included Windmere, Johnson & Johnson Vision Care, Heineken, Disney Consumer Products, Burger King, and most recently Ryder, do not pay for the student consulting services, but some offer tokens of appreciation. Burger King provided lunch in the executive boardroom at their Miami headquarters, and Disney bestowed passes to its theme parks. Above all, the course gives students real-world experience and materials they can add to their portfolios. Occasionally, a company will hire a student in the class, says Andrea Heuson, associate professor of finance and one of three instructors for the course.

Lectures by Heuson and colleagues Tom Drake and Juan Rodriguez are supplemented by guest presentations from local business executives. Heuson notes that despite the “deer in headlights” look pervasive at the beginning, “By the end of the semester, they’re talking very comfortably about strategy, cash flow, technology, and the dynamics of each region.”

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