United States tariffs on China increased in 2018 during the Trump administration, prompting a trade war with the economic powerhouse. Since coming to office in 2020, President Biden has maintained those tariffs. Nonetheless, expectations of a prolonged trade war were low during the Trump years, yet have remained high during Biden’s term in office.

What accounts for this discrepancy?

To answer this question, Ģ����ý economist and his coauthors analyzed historical data to construct an economic model predicting the probabilities of a prolonged trade war. That model takes into account parallels with the US-China trade war during the presidential tenures of Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan, from 1977 to 1981, and 1981 to 1989, respectively.

The conclusions, which Alessandria calls counterintuitive, are discussed in a National Bureau of Economic Research working paper titled “”

Alessandria, an expert on international trade, attributes the differing probabilities of a prolonged trade war to the changing expectations of individuals and firms.

Q&A about the trade relations between US and China

What is a trade war in economics?

• A trade war occurs when two countries impose higher tariffs or taxes on imported goods or services from each other, which increases the cost of those goods or services, and shifts purchases away from these goods to other sources.

Alessandria: There’s no technical definition of the term trade war. It’s like obscenity; you know it when you see it. Essentially, a trade war exists when one country tries to get another country to pay more for its goods. That’s done by imposing tariffs (essentially taxes) on imports. For a true trade war to exist, both countries need to be imposing higher tariffs.

Probably the best-known trade war happened during the Great Depression. In June 1930, the United States raised import tariffs through the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act. The aim was to protect American businesses and farmers, but then the rest of the world ended up raising their import tariffs. The net effect was a reduction in global trade and an even worse world economy.

How do trade wars typically affect the US and global economies?

• Trade wars raise the price of imported goods and lead consumers and firms to substitute for those higher-priced products. That substitution builds more or less through time depending on how long people expect a trade war to last.

Alessandria: At the most basic level, trade wars raise the cost of buying a set of goods from certain trade partners. This leads firms, and ultimately consumers, to buy less of these products. They shift to other sources, which could be other trade partners or domestic producers. Trade then falls, particularly on the most affected products. Trade wars work in the opposite way of trade peace and , such as the , an updated version of the North American Free Trade Agreement, or NAFTA. These agreements open markets by reducing or eliminating tariffs on select goods moving in either direction.

The effect on the aggregate economy of a trade war is harder to sort out. Economists have found that raising tariffs will in general lower economic activity, lower real income, and reduce jobs. However, in the short-run you might get a boost in economic activity since you might have to hire more workers to adjust production lines and supply chains. Those investments are needed to offset some of the higher costs of doing business.

What happened after the Trump Administration imposed tariffs and COVID-related exclusions on thousands of Chinese imports in 2018 and 2019?

• As expected, the United States reduced its purchases of the goods with increased tariffs. But, importantly, the initial shift away was relatively small because the tariffs weren’t viewed as likely to last for very long.

Alessandria: No one really thought Trump was going to raise the tariffs; they thought he was just posturing. But once Trump raised the tariffs, everyone—economists, policymakers, pundits, firms, the general public—assumed he was just trying to get a deal, or that the tariffs would go away when he left office. In other words, people figured, “Sure, Trump raised tariffs, but it’s likely only for a year or two.”

In the meantime, in true trade war fashion, China raised its tariffs on US exports. They also lowered tariffs on exports from other, non-US sources to shift trade away further from the United States while mitigating some of the effects on their consumers and producers.

Why did the US-China trade war accelerate under President Biden, even though he didn’t raise tariffs?

• By not reducing tariffs, President Biden and the Democrats indicated to consumers and firms that tariffs would remain higher longer than expected—subverting their expectations.

Alessandria: When Biden didn’t reduce tariffs—which he could have done on day one of taking office, but didn’t—people’s expectations changed. As a result, Biden and the Democrats were perceived as being more anti-trade than originally thought. People and firms realized that the trade war between the US and China was a big deal after all—and that tariffs would likely remain high a lot longer than expected.

I’ll give you an analogy. Suppose there’s going to be a tax holiday during which sales taxes are temporarily reduced or eliminated. Knowing that information, fewer people would buy dishwashers in advance. But once the tax holiday comes, many more people will buy dishwashers. A rational person would wait for the tax holiday in order to save money. Economic decisions—by individuals, by firms, and by nations—are based on a combination of information about what’s happening today and expectations of what will happen in the future.

What lessons from the Carter and Reagan administrations helped you understand today’s trade war?

• There are parallels between the trade reform of 1980 and the increased tariffs of 2018, with the responses to both being similar in magnitude and trajectory. But the big takeaway is that expectations about a leader’s trade policy position can have an outsized impact on trade relations between countries.

Alessandria: In terms of trade flows, we see parallels between the decrease in tariffs in 1980 and the increase in tariffs in 2018. The trade responses before and after these two reforms are similar in magnitude, but in the opposite directions. The 1980 reform took a while for people to believe it would last, and so trade grew slowly and only really picked up in Reagan’s second term. Trade then really grew a lot. We’re at a similar stage right now. We’re buying less from China, but we haven’t cut back as strongly as we could.

The other thing we learned is that trade policy reflects wider geopolitical concerns. It was a complicated relationship between the US and China going back to 1949 with the establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The US had backed the Nationalists, under Chiang Kai-shek, over the Communist forces, which eventually won. Soon after, we were on opposite sides of the Korean war. The result was a long period of hostile relations between the two countries.

Years later, ping-pong diplomacy—the exchange of table tennis players between the US and China in 1971—paved the way for Nixon to visit China the following year, which began the return to normal trade relations.

Then at the end of 1978, when China got a new government under Deng Xiaoping, then-President Carter decided to recognize China, which meant establishing official diplomatic relations. But the thawing of relations with China went against the more conservative wing of the Republican party, which Reagan saw as an opportunity to strongly position himself as anti-communist.

When the tariffs fell under Carter in 1980, people started buying more Chinese goods. Once people start buying more stuff, firms typically start trying to find more customers and making investments to tailor products to consumers in those export markets. And that second round of growth comes because firms think that the tariffs are going to be low in the future. After Reagan was elected, trade between the two countries suffered because of expectations that the new president would increase tariffs. Trade relations, however, did begin to improve five years later after Reagan visited China. But the initial downturn in trade relations was largely based on expectations.

Tariff increases in May to take effect on August 1. What role (if any) does Biden’s decision in July to end his presidential re-election campaign have on the economic conflict between the US and China?

• Changing candidates probably doesn’t change the Democratic Party’s approach on trade policy, but it would be worthwhile to hear about this issue from the candidates in the lead-up to the election.

Alessandria: I don’t think the outlook on trade policy changes much with Kamala Harris as the presumptive Democratic nominee, although it would be good for the candidates to discuss these issues. Our economic model recovers estimates of switching between trade war and trade peace from the actions of the firms most affected by these tariffs. These firms probably thought there was a chance that Harris could be president when making their decisions. It would be good for Harris and Trump to debate this issue.

How long do you think the current trade war with China will last?

• Based on the way firms have been changing suppliers, our model predicts there is a less than 20 percent chance the trade war is over by 2025.

Alessandria: Our model estimates that the US-China trade war has a 17 percent chance of ending in 2025, so it will most likely last at least four or five more years. Of course, there’s always a chance that something will break this logjam. It was a big surprise in 1971 when Nixon lifted a 21-year trade embargo on China. Nixon was attempting to get us out of the Vietnam War, and he was hoping the Chinese, who were supporting the Vietnamese, could put some backroom pressure on Vietnam. But it’s not clear what factors exist today that could pull us out of the current trade war.

So, is one party or the other tougher on trade?

• The researchers find a bigger increase in the expected path of tariffs under Biden than under Trump. This is counterintuitive since tariffs rose under the Republicans and did not change under the Democrats.

Alessandria: Our research allows us to recover a time-changing probability of the tariffs the US will apply on Chinese goods. Using those probabilities and the tariffs that products face in war and peace, we can forecast an expected path of future tariffs. And we can make these forecasts at various points in time. In other words, we have a forecast before Trump is elected; when Trump leaves office; and today. These forecasts differ because the trade war has continued and the outlook has shifted based on the state of the economy and relations between the two countries.

Using changes in the path of those forecasts, we can attribute policy changes to different administrations. We find that while Trump raised tariffs, because they were expected to come down quickly, and he changed the distribution of product specific tariffs, when he left office the path of tariffs had fallen compared to when he entered office. In contrast, the path has shifted up under Biden. Some of this is counterintuitive since Trump raised tariffs, but it’s important to remember that firms always believed there could be a US-China trade war and expected tariffs to go up in the future—it just hadn’t happened for a while.

Meet your expert

Professor of Economics George Alessandria is an expert on international trade and finance. Prior to joining the Ģ����ý faculty in 2014, he was a senior economic advisor and economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. His research interests are in macroeconomics and international trade. In his use of dynamic models to study trade flows, Alessandria and his peers pioneered a new approach to the field of international trade that allows us to understand the effects of business cycles on trade. Through a microeconomic analysis of the behavior of firms, Alessandria’s work has given insight into what were long-standing puzzles concerning the slow response of trade patterns to economic volatility. He has published in journals such as the Quarterly Journal of Economics, American Economic Review, and the Journal of Monetary Economics. He has served as an associate editor at some of the most prestigious journals in economics.

• Learn more about Alessandria.

The Ģ����ý’s (LLE) will receive $99.4 million in federal funding from the ’s ’s (NNSA) Inertial Confinement Fusion (ICF) program for its Omega Laser Facility for the 2024 fiscal year. The funding was included in a of six appropriations bills approved by both houses of Congress and signed into law by President Biden.

“At the forefront of laser fusion and high-energy-density-science research for more than 50 years, the Ģ����ý’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics is internationally recognized for developing innovative technologies and scientific breakthroughs,” says University President Sarah Mangelsdorf. “I especially want to thank Senator Schumer, Senator Gillibrand, and Representative Morelle for their longstanding support and tremendous efforts on behalf of the URochester. Their leadership to secure record funding for LLE will enable important research critical to both our national security and to help solve one of the greatest challenges of our future, harnessing fusion to power an ever better and more secure future. I also want to recognize and thank Representative Langworthy, Representative Tenney, and the other members of the New York Congressional delegation for their support.”

The new funding will be used to conduct ICF research in support of the NNSA’s Stockpile Stewardship and Management Program, which maintains the safety, security, and effectiveness of the US nuclear deterrent. Additionally, the funding will allow the facility to continue its work toward advancing research into fusion and , for example, at the pressures of giant planets. The increased funding is to sustain the two largest lasers at a university anywhere in the world, ensuring researchers can access these facilities well into the 2030s.

“Every year, our facilities conduct 80 percent of the NNSA’s sponsored high-energy-density and fusion shots for the national laboratories’ and other academic researchers,” says Chris Deeney, director of LLE. More than half of the 2,100 experiments each year are conducted by 100 national and international researchers who visit Rochester to add their vibrancy and productivity to the work being conducted by LLE’s own scientific and engineering team. LLE’s operational teams maintain the facilities to a very high standard despite the two facilities now being almost 30 and 20 years old. “The increased investment in LLE will ensure experimenters have a high-quality facility not only in 2024, but also in 2034 and beyond,” Deeney says.

LLE is the largest university-based US Department of Energy program and hosts the Omega Laser Facility, which houses the two largest and most capable academic lasers in the world. Rochester’s Omega Laser Facility is one of the nation’s three primary ICF and high-energy-density (HED) science facilities, along with the National Ignition Facility at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and the Z Pulsed Power Facility at Sandia National Laboratories.

Federal funding also supports LLE’s efforts to maintain a highly skilled workforce. Uniquely based at an academic institution for its size, the Omega Laser Facility is the only major (i.e., tens of kiloJoules) facility that trains graduate students in ICF and HED science. As such, the OMEGA Facility plays a critical role as a pipeline for attracting the talented scientists and engineers who make up the future national security workforce, a need highlighted in the 2023 National Academies Report,

Support from government officials

Elected officials expressed their support for the federal funding, which they helped secure:

US Senator Charles Schumer: “I am proud to deliver this $99.4 million boost in funding for Rochester’s Omega Laser Facility to ensure the over 1,000 local workers supported by the lab including the 450 scientists, engineers, and others directly employed at the lab can stay laser-focused on continuing their groundbreaking energy research and keeping America’s nuclear stockpile safe. The Ģ����ý Laser Lab research is essential for our national security and is vital to our regional economy, employing hundreds of scientists and bringing millions into the Rochester area every year. As majority leader, I am proud to secure this funding and will always fight to advance America’s energy leadership, protect our global technological competitiveness, and ensure Upstate New York has the federal resources to lead the nation in scientific discovery.”

US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand: “As a longtime advocate for the Ģ����ý’s Laboratory for Laser Energetics (LLE), I’m proud to have helped secure $99.4 million for this facility. LLE is a unique asset for the nation and for Upstate New York, and I am eager to see the continued success of the NNSA partnership. LLE serves a critical role, operating on the front lines of research that contributes greatly to our national security. With continued research in inertial confinement fusion, the university has the potential to lead on groundbreaking applications in clean energy, and I look forward to the breakthroughs to come.”

US Representative Joe Morelle: “The Laboratory for Laser Energetics has cemented its place as a world-class institution and leader in innovative scientific research. I am proud to be a longstanding champion of the Ģ����ý’s work to support the future of our community, and this $99.4 million in federal funding I helped secure will allow them to continue doing just that. Congratulations to the Ģ����ý on this exciting announcement, and I cannot wait to see all the amazing discoveries in inertial confinement fusion and other scientific fields that result from this investment.”

Ģ����ý the University’s Laser Lab

LLE was established at the University in 1970 and is the largest US Department of Energy university-based research program in the nation supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration as an integral part of its Stockpile Stewardship Program. The LLE also receives annual support from the State of New York.

As a center for the investigation of the interaction of intense radiation with matter, LLE is a unique national resource for research and education in science and technology. Current research includes exploring fusion for national security and as a future source of energy, developing new laser and materials technologies, and better understanding high-energy-density phenomena. In addition to its vital roles in various areas of scientific research and its support of the local high-tech economy, LLE plays an important role in educating the next generation of scientists and engineers.

As the DOE National Laser Users’ Facility (NLUF), LLE hosts scientists and students from across the nation and around the world to carry out fundamental research, training, and education. Additional facility access for qualified external researchers is made possible through LLE’s participation in LaserNetUS.

has awarded $3 million to the Ģ����ý to support the cluster hiring of three new tenure-track faculty members in the . The grant, from the Mellon Foundation’s , will be used to recruit leading faculty who work in the subfields of Black geographies, Black sexuality and/or trans studies, and an additional open-field search.

The funding comes a little over a year after Provost David Figlio announced the creation of the Department of Black Studies at Rochester, one of the few national centers for multidisciplinary research and engagement with Black life and culture in the US and beyond.

“I feel very strongly that a university must strive to be great and must strive to be good,” says Figlio. “The Mellon grant ensures that the Department of Black Studies will be an extraordinary example of that philosophy, especially as we grow the department in alignment with the  that inform the University’s new .”

The cluster-hiring approach—which typically involves recruiting multiple faculty members based on shared interdisciplinary research goals—can attract talented candidates who are able to make connections and forge collaborations within and across disciplines.

“We’re building a department that houses scholars who don’t conventionally fit within traditional disciplinary modes,” says Jeffrey McCune Jr., the Frederick Douglass Professor and principal investigator for the grant, who has championed Black studies at Rochester since joining the University in 2021. “Our scholars are working at the edges of the humanities and social sciences—often using literature and performance—to understand the phenomena within their fields.”

In its inaugural academic year, the department hired two full-time faculty members. One is , a scholar-artist who studies and explores Black feminist performance, aesthetics, and politics. The other is , whose research focuses on racial inequality, housing, and policing.

The Mellon grant is expected to help the department achieve its goal of having ten or 12 faculty members by the 2025–26 academic year, only three years after its founding.

Prior to the 2023–24 academic year, Black studies faculty at Rochester held appointments with the University’s Frederick Douglass Institute for African and African American Studies. With a dedicated Black studies department established, the institute is now able to focus exclusively on its programmatic function, which involves engaging communities on and off campus through symposia, conferences, and speaker series.

“We at the URochester are committed to fostering more just and equitable societies both in our local community and worldwide,” says Nicole Sampson, the Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. “I am so proud that the School of Arts & Sciences can lead on this critical priority with the expansion of a department that will inspire conversation, research, and ultimately action. This new investment will allow us to build a consequential department, making Rochester a leader in working to understand the global African diaspora.”

McCune believes that the cluster-hiring approach will yield academic benefits that extend beyond the Department of Black Studies. He envisions a robust interdisciplinary department that collaborates with scholars across the institution who want to explore the role of Blackness in their particular fields, including economics, psychology, anthropology, art and art history, and political science. In addition to engaging the University community, McCune believes the new faculty will prove pivotal in connecting with the off-campus community, too. “It’s about the department being a resource for advancing the lives and conditions of Black people,” he says.

The latest Mellon funding for Black studies at Rochester furthers the fruitful connections between the Foundation and the University. “We deeply appreciate Mellon’s generous new investment in our Black studies department,” says Figlio. “The Foundation has been an invaluable partner in Rochester’s humanities and social justice programs in recent years, providing critical support for Rochester programs and partnerships like our , the (in association with the Eastman School of Music), the Humanities for Life program, and our .”

Sometimes, procrastination pays off—at least it did for Melissa Balmain.

Balmain, now an instructor in the at the , was writing the book (Faber & Faber, 1998) when she learned that two friends from college were writing and sharing short comic poetry via email. Thinking she had discovered a fun way to procrastinate, Balmain contributed a few poems. Then a few more. And some more after that.

While she did manage to finish her book, she also started a new career as a light-verse poet.

“I was always writing some kind of poetry or lyrics, and it was almost always comic,” says Balmain. “But it wasn’t until I was in my 30s that I started writing a lot of comic poetry.”

She hasn’t stopped writing since. Her latest book, (Paul Dry Books, 2023), “explores the lighter side of dark times.” Those dark times, described by Balmain as a “descent to hell,” included climate change, crazy politics, and the modern plague, better known as COVID-19. Yet that descent is followed by a poetic effort to climb out from the depths, albeit with some side trips to Limbo along the way.

“Many of us have coped by relishing the good that’s in the world, whether that’s family, great works of art, or humor, even silliness,” says Balmain, who was experiencing some major changes in her personal life, including a looming empty nest. She herself embraced humor and silliness as a both a coping mechanism and creative fuel, which resulted in more than a few poignant observations that crop up in her latest book.

The collection opens with “On Looking at an MRI Cross-Section,” a poem juxtaposed with an image from an MRI scan of the author’s brain, one that was taken when Balmain was experiencing unusually severe headaches. While no brain abnormalities were discovered, Balmain nonetheless found the episode “a little bit paralyzing.”

“This is a very good example of seeking humor in a subject that is absolutely terrifying,” says Balmain. “The scan showed all these objects in my brain. Then I started to think how those freaky objects are the very things generating my poem.”

Satan Talks to His Therapist touches on a wide variety of topics, including Shakespeare, Niagara Falls, donuts, middle age, grief, birdwatching, and pandemic-era masks. Most of the 63 offerings are humorous—85 percent by Balmain’s estimation. That should be no surprise, considering how she’s wired. “I discovered pretty early on that if I was being funny, I got people’s attention,” explains Balmain. “It’s just natural for me to seek the humor in situations, sometimes as a coping mechanism.”

But don’t mistake comic poetry—or light verse—as something trivial or carefree. Balmain is constantly working to dispel that assumption. As she says, “My favorite kind of light verse wrestles with something true about the human experience, whether that’s society or human nature.”

Balmain has had her share of professional experiences that inform her writing. In addition to a brief stint as a mime during and after college, she’s been a journalist; newspaper columnist; college professor; and is now the editor-in-chief of America’s longest-running journal of comic verse, .

Once she discovered the satisfaction of light verse, Balmain got serious about the not-so-serious. She wrote two books of poems: (Able Muse Press, 2014) and (Humorist Books, 2021). Over the years, her writings, including prose, have also appeared in, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and The Washington Post, among other outlets.

The groundwork for her success was laid in her early school years when she would read authors like Dorothy Parker, Erma Bombeck, and Russell Baker, and listen to the (often humorous) lyrics of Stephen Sondheim and Tom Lehrer. As an undergraduate at Princeton University, she took courses with writing luminaries, including John McPhee, Sandra Gilbert, Russell Banks, and Joyce Carol Oates. Her education continued after college, when she had opportunities to study with poets Dick Davis, Rhina P. Espaillat, Emily Grosholz, R.S. Gwynn, X.J. Kennedy, Joshua Mehigan, and Timothy Steele.

Having learned the craft of writing from accomplished writers and poets, Balmain’s career came full circle in 2010 when she joined the English department faculty at the URochester as an adjunct instructor. Among the courses she teaches is a 200-level class on humor writing.

“It’s a matter of helping people to do the most they can with what they have. Will I be able to turn Debbie Downer into Tina Fey? Probably not,” says Balmain. “But I do think that with techniques that we study in class, it is possible for someone to be funnier on the page.”

One of those techniques—the most important one, according to Balmain—is generating surprise. “If it doesn’t surprise your readers, they’re not going to laugh.”

Laughter is one of the main objectives of her latest project. She’s working with the managing editor of Light to compile an anthology of the journal’s best poetry since 1992.

When she’s not editing and teaching, Balmain will continue writing. Because, as she says, “People who write poems are always writing poems.”

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In 2022, the Ģ����ý established the as an academic center for multidisciplinary research, education, and engagement with Black life and culture in the US and beyond. Ahead of the 2023–24 academic year, the department appointed its first two full-time faculty members: Jordan Ealey and Philip V. McHarris.

“The Department of Black Studies provides the campus with scholars and thinkers who are serious about the issues and contributions of Black people from across the globe,” says , the Frederick Douglass Professor, who has championed Black studies at Rochester. In the discipline generally and at the University specifically, he adds, “Professors Ealey and McHarris offer much-needed intellectual interrogations of the health and wellness of Black people and communities in a world of anti-Black, white supremacist patriarchy.”

Meet the inaugural faculty of this burgeoning academic department centering the complexities and nuances of the Black experience.

Q&A with Jordan Ealey

Jordan Ealey is an assistant professor of Black studies and a scholar-artist whose research explores Black feminist creatives, with particular attention to theatre and performance. Ealey joined Rochester after earning a doctorate in theatre and performance studies at the University of Maryland.

What attracted you to Rochester?

EALEY: I was very excited by the prospect of joining a brand-new department and having the opportunity to shape its future. I have also long admired Jeffrey McCune’s work, both as a scholar and an academic leader, and was thrilled by his appointment to steer the establishment of the new Black studies department. The Ģ����ý has incredible resources to support my work as an artist-scholar, and the small, liberal arts feel of the campus will allow for fruitful interdisciplinary collaborations. Finally, this is a place with a rich history of activism, having been home to civil rights giants such as Frederick Douglass and Susan B. Anthony, and that energizes me as a researcher, teacher, and artist.

Tell us about the courses you’ll be teaching this academic year.

EALEY: In the fall, I am teaching a course called Black Drama: Performance and Contemporary Issues, which focuses on contemporary Black theatre and performance from the 1970s to the present. In the course, we read plays and analyze essays about the theory and philosophy of Black art from prominent Black theatre artists, most notably Ntozake Shange, Pearl Cleage, August Wilson, Tarell Alvin McCraney, and Aleshea Harris. We also practice skills in playwriting, dramaturgy, and directing using the principles we’ve learned.

In the spring, I will be teaching Black Feminist Theory. That course serves as an “ABCs” of Black feminism, where I introduce students to the theories, philosophies, and practices of Angela Davis, Marsha P. Johnson, Janet Mock, and other Black feminist thinkers. We engage a wide range of material from critical essays, expressive culture, lectures, speeches, and much more.

Your scholarship focuses on the “transformative possibilities of Black creativity through language, sound, and movement.” What’s an example of such a transformation?

EALEY: As someone who studies arts and expressive culture, I consider transformation to happen in the types of spaces where art happens. For example, I study musicals by Black women. When I say that I write about musical theatre, there is a tendency to assume that these musicals are all happening on Broadway. In fact, many of them never make it to Broadway. Instead, they happen in community theatres, churches, schools, and other “amateur” places. So, transformation refers to the impact the musicals taking place in these places have on the local communities.

What’s your favorite thing to do on a weekend?

EALEY: I consider myself a little bit of an amateur antiquarian. I am a music lover; I collect old vinyls and want to get into restoring them. I love to haunt record shops in any city I visit to see what gems I can find. I also love to explore used bookstores for similar reasons and am on a mission to grow my collection of rare books and other ephemera by Black creators.

Q&A with Philip V. McHarris

Philip V. McHarris is an assistant professor of Black studies whose research focuses on racial inequality, housing, and policing. He joined the University after having served as a presidential postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University’s Department of African American Studies.

What attracted you to Rochester?

MCHARRIS: Rochester boasts a rich history, especially having been home to figures such as Frederick Douglass who played a monumental role in advocating for the rights and freedoms of Black people and the abolition of slavery. Being in a city steeped in such historical legacy and culture is an enriching and exciting place to be a scholar and professor.

The opportunity to be part of the inaugural faculty in the Department of Black Studies was also compelling. The formation of this new department, along with the strength of the already-established Frederick Douglass Institute, signifies a commitment by the University to advance the understanding of Black experiences, histories, and scholarship. Given my research and interests, joining such a collaborative and evolving space was an incredibly enticing prospect.

Tell us about the course you’ll be teaching this academic year.

MCHARRIS: I will be teaching Black Geographies, which offers students an introduction to the foundational concepts and theories in the field. In this course, we’ll delve into an interdisciplinary collection of texts to understand how Black communities both shape and are shaped by space and place. The course seeks to demonstrate the intricate relationship between spatial matters and Black experience. In the spring, I will be teaching Introduction to Black Studies, which will introduce students to the long-standing history of radical Black thought and key issues central to Black life throughout the world.

Your upcoming book, Brick Dreams: The Unfinished Project of Public Housing, centers on a high-rise public housing development in Brooklyn. What issues are you exploring in the book?

MCHARRIS: Brick Dreams is an ethnography-based manuscript that delves deep into the New York City Housing Authority’s contemporary challenges and realities. In the research, I focus on pressing concerns among residents, particularly issues related to safety, policing, building conditions, and cycles of poverty. I detail the various strategies, such as tenant association activism and community organizing, that residents mobilize to navigate and challenge these concerns.

What’s your favorite thing to do on a weekend?

MCHARRIS: On weekends, I enjoy the outdoors, staying active, and playing pool. Lately, I’ve been discovering all of the nature surrounding Rochester! And, of course, I like spending time with family and friends.

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Several years ago, , a professor of anthropology at the Ģ����ý, gained some insight into the meaning of progress during a conversation with a staffer at a non-governmental organization. The staffer was disparaging social conditions in Honduras, a country that Reichman had studied extensively. While true that Honduras has a high level of poverty and low levels of consumption and industrial output, Reichman pointed out that Honduras was emitting less carbon than other countries. “In this one measure, Honduras was ahead of, not behind the rest of the world if we rearranged the variables that define progress,” writes Reichman in the preface to his new book, (Cornell University Press, 2023).

Reichman admits he was being deliberately provocative. He wasn’t advocating poverty, surely a major reason for the country’s low carbon emissions. He was instead pointing to the environmental and social costs of the developments that, in the Western world, have traditionally been defined as progress.

In Progress in the Balance, he raises bigger questions about the concept, which, like the concept of “development,” he argues, is “completely dependent on context.” In doing so, he knocks the traditional equation of progress with industrialization and material wealth off its pedestal.

But he’s careful not to advocate for any singular definition of progress in its place. Instead, he presents in each chapter a different story about progress as it has played out in Brazil as the nation remade itself from a major agricultural producer and exporter to a producer, exporter, and a nation of consumers.

He finds that every story of progress wrestles with a competing narrative that reveals a tension at the heart of contemporary Brazilian society. He writes: “Rapid modernization has created what many Brazilians see as a façade of progress that hides an unstable foundation. There is a clear sense among Brazilians that the state has squandered an opportunity to achieve dreams of national greatness by investing in symbolic and sometimes spectacular projects that hide deep, structural problems in Brazilian society.”

Q&A with Daniel Reichman

You’ve done a lot of work on Honduras. What drew you to Brazil, especially Santos?

REICHMAN: Throughout my career, I focused on economic anthropology and Latin America. My first big project was in Honduras, a troubled country where things weren’t getting better. After I had finished my first book, I decided that I wanted a different perspective. I was drawn to Brazil because, at that time, the country was in the middle of a boom with the fastest growing economy in the world. Its president at the time, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, was extremely popular, and huge offshore oil reserves had been discovered. What was remarkable was that Brazil had a left-wing government that was very much on the side of big business. So it seemed like Brazil had created a new model for progress that synthesized help for the poor—which included redistributing the profits of business to society—without alienating the wealthy. For a very long time, Latin America was marked by extreme inequality, with a small, wealthy, elite class, and a very large, lower class, and not much of a middle class. Brazil seemed to have broken that paradigm.

Secondly, I had studied the coffee industry throughout my career. Brazil is the world’s number one producer of coffee, both now and throughout history, yet very few people in my field had studied Brazilian coffee. And unlike the picture many people have of peasant farmers picking beans by hand and eking out a living, Brazilian coffee is more like Iowa corn−a big agribusiness with multi-million-dollar operations and a great deal of foreign capital.

Progress is not a simple concept. You refer to relativistic and universalistic progress. What’s the difference?

REICHMAN: The term relativistic comes from cultural relativism, which is probably the most important concept in anthropology. Instead of judging a culture in terms of right versus wrong, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the people in order to understand their beliefs. This idea emerged in the 19th century when missionaries would say that certain populations had demonic beliefs and needed to be converted, or that they had no notion of reality. Anthropologists stepped in to say it’s important to understand how that culture makes sense to its participants. That’s what cultural relativism is; it’s understanding another culture in a non-judgmental way.

There isn’t simply one way to think about progress. Today there are often protests aimed at factories and big development projects because of their impact on climate change. In the past, smokestacks were seen as evidence of development progress. An anthropologist simply wants to understand these different versions of progress. That’s what’s meant by relativistic.

On the other hand, people who advocate a specific standard of progress—whether it’s individual rights, political freedom, or security of body—adopt what’s called a universalist standard of progress.

How did you go about making sense of progress in Brazil?

REICHMAN: Brazil became hugely important for the global food supply as China’s population started to consume more beef and grain and oil. The country became the new breadbasket of the world with all these goods moving in and out of Santos, the most important industrial port in Latin America. This is a port that developed through the coffee trade, but it seems like coffee has now been relegated to history as Brazil has transition from an agricultural to a modern, industrial country. But I started to think. Brazil is still the number one coffee producer in the world; coffee is still a billion-dollar industry; coffee continues to flow through the port. So why is it invisible? That, in turn, led me to think about the mythology around Brazil’s golden age of coffee. There’s a notion that everyone was making money and it was just the greatest time, yet a great deal has been erased from that story, including the use of slave labor to harvest the crops. I wanted to understand the meaning of that mythology. In Santos, progress was about moving from being an agricultural country that depended on North American and European consumers to buy the stuff that they were growing, to being a self-sufficient, consumer economy. It was more important to be the person in Starbucks buying the coffee, than the person growing the coffee. In other words, progress meant moving from being a producer to a consumer.

With that in mind, I traced different stories about the meaning of progress, whether they had to do with museums, monuments, literature, or people.

Does mythology serve a purpose?

REICHMAN: For one thing, giving the area a unique identity makes it easier to attract tourists. The mythology also helps to brand Brazilian coffee in the world market, giving it the patina of being the original Latin American coffee.

Finally, there’s a historical dimension. In the years before the Great Depression, coffee was the thing that was going to launch Brazil into the modern world. Santos, a city that was once a tropical backwater, became the New York of Latin America. You could buy goods from all over the world. You could go to a casino and theater and country clubs. There was a huge boom around coffee in the early 20th century that made Santos a destination.

I’m struck by the idea in Brazil, that progress during the was a miracle was progress at any cost. Can you talk about that?

REICHMAN: This idea is sometimes called developmentalism. The rationale behind it is this: Countries outside of Europe and North America were behind the West in terms of capital investment and technology. As a result, they were dependent on inventions, capital, and heavy machinery that they couldn’t produce themselves. Developmentalist ideology was essentially a kind of catch-up game. The role of government should be to jumpstart a country into modernity as quickly as possible, no matter the cost.

European countries polluted the air through the industrial revolution for several hundreds of years before anyone cared, so why should South American countries have to slow down? As a result, Brazil adopted an aggressive pro-business, pro-development view of government in which workers’ rights, human rights, and the environment took a backseat. Santos was once described in the New York Times as the worst place in the world because of the pollution. The beaches, for example, have a huge problem with sewage running directly into the water. Instead of swimming, people often just walk on the beach.  They might go in up to their knees, but the water is too polluted for most people. For me, that symbolizes the compromise that comes with progress-at-any-cost.

The chapters in your book focus on key tensions. Why is that?

REICHMAN: If a country is fragmented politically, which most countries are, there are going to be moments where the fragmentation becomes public. The most obvious events are things like the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. But you can also find evidence of fragmentation in more mundane events. One example has to do with trucks at the port, which is adjacent to a historic downtown area. Truckers come in and idle for hours waiting to unload their goods. The people eating at nice restaurants and cafes don’t want to be sitting next to a rumbling truck for five hours, so the business owners want the truckers to locate elsewhere. Meanwhile, the truckers had a big protest in the center of town saying they need places to stop, go to the bathroom, and eat. As they see it, they’re a big part of this economy, but others want to make them invisible. That conflict involves two models of progress. Each chapter uses everyday events to illustrate deeper social conflicts.

Along with coffee, Brazil is known for soccer, particularly legendary superstar Pelé. Why did you devote a chapter to the Pelé Museum?

REICHMAN: Pelé became famous playing for the Santos Football Club, which some would consider the New York Yankees of Brazilian soccer. He was a godlike figure. The government of Brazil invested a huge sum of money in creating a museum to Pelé that was really about telling the history of Brazil’s development. Pelé went from being an innocent, unknown country boy in the interior of the country to becoming one of the most powerful and important celebrities in the world. The museum traced that history, which I saw as being a metaphor for the story of—what seemed to be—Brazil’s resilient progress. Ironically, though, the museum was a total failure; people didn’t go, and it was bleeding money. After a great deal of fanfare and the amazing restoration of an old mansion, the success story of the museum turned into a bust.

What’s the lesson of the book? When somebody closes it, what should the takeaway be?

REICHMAN: The takeaway is that there is no universal definition of progress. But it is necessary for societies to have some collective sense of where they are headed−and what a better future would look like−in order to get people to participate in things that are greater than their own personal, private interests. I don’t see myths as falsehoods. I see them as socially useful narratives that bind people together and create community.

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One of the biggest decisions that parents in the United States make is about where to send their children for school from kindergarten through grade 12.

, an associate professor of at the Ģ����ý, studies the intersection of public economics and the economics of education—specifically, the topic of school choice. With a new school year already underway or on the horizon for many, he shares insights everyone should know about school choice, whether or not you’re currently the parent or guardian of school-age children.

“Taxpayers are now financing education at charter schools and, to some extent, private schools,” Singleton says. “So, there are very real concerns about the impact on resources at traditional public schools, and what that means for public education and society more broadly.”

First, what is school choice?

School choice refers to a set of policies that create options for families and students that are not directly linked to their neighborhood of residence.

The concept of school choice has changed drastically in the last three decades. Until the mid-1990s, it typically involved moving to a different neighborhood or sending a child to a private school at the parent’s or guardian’s expense. Then, in 1991, Minnesota passed the country’s . In the three-plus decades since then, charter schools and other school choice options have proliferated.

Today, school choice means that parents can opt to send their K–12 children to:

• Public schools, where children are often assigned based on area school boundary maps and zoning.
• Magnet schools, which are a category of public schools that often focus on specific areas of study, such as STEM, and may have selective admissions.
• Charter schools, which receive government funding yet operate independently of state school systems and local districts. Charter schools are tuition-free and must accept all students who apply, as long as there is room for the students.
• Private schools, which are run by private, sometimes religious, organizations, charge tuition, and may be selective. In a growing number of states, voucher or scholarship programs exist that provide government funding to defray the cost of tuition for eligible students.

(Parents can also opt to homeschool their children, but Singleton limits his work to school choice policies adopted by school boards and governments.)

An important point to keep in mind, Singleton notes, is that in the United States, “fewer than ten percent of all students are attending charter schools, and maybe another ten percent attend private schools. So, by and large, most students are staying in the public school system.”

Safety is a major factor for parents when choosing schools.

In exercising school choice, parents consider a variety of factors when evaluating school alternatives. Says Singleton, “Parents wonder, is this going to be a stable school environment? A safe school environment? Do the teachers care? Are they putting in a lot of effort? Are the school’s values aligned with my own?”

Although it can be challenging to discern exactly what parents are thinking when choosing schools, “there’s that one of the things they’re concerned about is school safety,” he says.

School choice seems to benefit both individuals and the public education system as a whole.

On an individual or family level, a student may be assigned to a local public school that’s not the best fit for them or that may not be a good school overall. “School choice creates options for those students to find a better or safer school, or one that better matches specific values, such as respect, service, or compassion,” says Singleton.

On a broader level, school choice has what’s called spillover effects. Exercising school choice potentially benefits not only the individual student, but also the students who stay in their assigned public schools. Why? Because school choice creates competition in the education sector.

“If money is following students from public schools into private schools and charter schools, that creates incentives for public schools to retain students, so they’ll have to raise their productivity,” he says.

Of course, how exactly those positive spillovers manifest remains a major question in the empirical literature.

Notably, private school vouchers are not benefiting the students they were originally designed to help.

While private schools have long been a schooling option for families, explains Singleton, there are often barriers to entry, including admission standards or tuition fees.

Private school voucher programs use public funding to give students scholarship or other financial support to attend private schools. These voucher programs have historically targeted economically disadvantaged students attending low-performing public schools, explains Singleton. Yet the students who actually use such vouchers tend to be more advantaged, higher-performing students.

Why aren’t more economically disadvantaged students using vouchers? The reasons are twofold, according to Singleton. The first is information: “Parents and students may not know that they are eligible for vouchers or know how to navigate the process of redeeming it to attend a private school,” he says.

The second reason is access. “Just because a student is eligible for a voucher does not mean there’s a high-quality private school that agrees that the school fits the student’s needs. Also, transportation to private schools is typically not available to economically disadvantaged students,” he says.

Few high-performing students from disadvantaged backgrounds are applying to selective schools, such as magnet schools and private schools.

There’s been a lot of discussion about how to make the student body in selective schools more diverse. What policies can be enacted to make such schools more reflective of a school district’s student body?

Part of the issue, according to Singleton, has to do with students who are not applying.

“If you look at students from disadvantaged backgrounds—who are often from underrepresented minorities—those students are much less likely to be applying to selective schools in the first place. These are students who we would reasonably believe would be very successful at these schools, but they’re much less likely to be applying to those schools than students from other backgrounds. Why that’s happening is an open question right now,” he says.

Some of the best evidence about charter schools’ effectiveness comes from lottery situations.

Charter schools are not allowed to turn away students unless there are capacity constraints. If schools are oversubscribed, a lottery is held to determine who gets admitted.

These lottery situations produce random assignment, explains Singleton: “The students who get into the charter schools through a lottery serve as a treatment group, while those who don’t get in serve as a control group.” Studies have shown that students who received lottery offers to charter schools ended up with better test scores and college outcomes compared to those who didn’t receive lottery offers to those charter schools.

“This conclusion, however, only applies to the specific lottery situations studied,” he cautions.

Charter schools don’t necessarily outperform traditional public schools.

“The average charter school is often not better than the average public school. In some cases, they’re actually worse,” says Singleton, who bases this assessment on data estimates he’s generated from Florida and North Carolina, two states with large numbers of charter schools.

He adds, “If we expand school choice, we have to take into account that not everyone is going to attend a high-quality charter school. Market factors may force some schools to go out of business, and there’s some evidence suggesting those forces may be at work. Parents, however, may still prefer those schools for other reasons, such as values or safety.”

But charter schools do tend to improve student performance at nearby public schools.

This is likely for the same reason that school choice in general benefits public education: spillovers and market competition.

According to Singleton, the research indicates that when a charter school—particularly one that emphasizes math and reading—moves close to a local public school, the test scores of the students in the public school go up relative to the scores of public school students who do not live near that charter school.

“If a charter school moves next door, the nearby public school risks losing students. As a result, the public school is going to increase its productivity, increase its effort, and hire better teachers,” he says.

So, while people are right to worry about the fiscal impacts of charter schools on traditional public schools, it seems the overall educational impact on public schools is positive.

Expect a very different school choice landscape post-COVID, says Singleton.

“There was a lot of momentum for charter schools under the Obama administration, and there was a lot of stated momentum under the Trump administration that never really materialized,” he says. “Now, though, charter schools have fallen by the wayside as a priority in federal-level education reform circles.”

Some of that can be attributed to the legacy of the COVID-19 pandemic, which presented an unexpected shock to the school choice system as a whole.

“COVID forced many families to evaluate if they were satisfied with their children’s schooling,” he says. “Were they pleased with what was available, or were they going to seek alternatives? I think we’re still seeing that quandary play out—and it’s going to have longer-lasting effects than the pandemic itself.”

Stanley Engerman, a professor emeritus in the at the , is being remembered by colleagues as an internationally recognized economist and economic historian. Engerman died on May 11 at the age of 87.

In naming Engerman a Distinguished Fellow in 2005, the praised him for making major contributions in economics and history as a researcher, editor, and teacher and for helping to increase the importance of economic history within the discipline of economics.

Engerman, who would become the John H. Munro Professor of Economics in 1984—a title he held until his retirement in 2017—and a professor of history, joined the Rochester faculty in 1963, shortly after earning his PhD in economics from Johns Hopkins University. Over the course of a career that spanned more than five decades, Engerman coauthored or coedited 17 books and more than 100 articles, while teaching courses on economic history and the economics of sports and entertainment.

A pioneer in economic history

Engerman’s most important work is widely considered to be Time on the Cross: The Economics of American Negro Slavery (Little, Brown and Company, 1974), coauthored with fellow economic historian Robert Fogel, who would go on to win a Nobel Prize. The book examines the economic underpinnings of American slavery, upending the conventional belief that slavery was not economically viable.

“One point that was destroyed by Time on the Cross was the idea that slaveholders kept slaves for prestige, rather than economic reasons,” says , a professor emeritus of history at Rochester who coedited with Engerman the 1992 book The Atlantic Slave Trade: Effects on Economies, Societies and Peoples of Africa, the Americas and Europe (Duke University Press). “Engerman and Fogel made it clear that slavery was a business enterprise centered on economics,” he says. As the authors explain in their book, “There is no evidence that economic forces alone would have soon brought slavery to an end without the necessity of a war or some other form of political intervention.”

Time on the Cross was noteworthy not just for its conclusions, but also for its analytical techniques. “Stan and Robert Fogel employed standard econometric techniques in their research, something that was typically not done at the time in analyzing questions of history,” says , a professor of economics at Rochester. Engerman was instrumental in the development of cliometrics, the application of econometric techniques to the study of history. In honor of his contributions, the .

Known for his extensive work on slavery, Engerman coedited a number of publications on the topic, including Between Slavery and Free Labor: The Spanish-Speaking Caribbean in the Nineteenth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), British Capitalism and Caribbean Slavery (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), the three-volume Cambridge Economic History of the United States (Cambridge University Press, 1996), A Historical Guide to World Slavery (Oxford University Press, 1998), The Lesser Antilles in the Age of European Expansion (University Press of Florida, 1996), and Slavery (Oxford University Press, 2001).

While Time on the Cross is Engerman’s best-known work, Claudia Goldin, a professor of economics at Harvard University who worked with Engerman on the 1991 paper “,” says that his other great contribution was his impact on fellow economists. “If you check the papers that were published in the last 50-plus years, you will see thanks and acknowledgments to Stan in an extremely large number,” says Goldin. “Before we had the internet, we had Stan, and he was incredibly important to everyone.”

Among Engerman’s major contributions, explains Goldin, was his work with economic historian Kenneth Sokoloff, which included publishing a series of articles in the book Economic Development in the Americas since 1500: Endowments and Institutions. They developed what came to be known as the to explain why some countries have different economic growth rates. The duo studied 16th-, 17th-, and 18th-century historical data from the Western Hemisphere and attributed growth differences to initial levels of resources—including human capital—and inequality. Their research revealed that high levels of inequality within a society can lead to inadequate institutions that perpetuate low growth rates.

A generous colleague with an ‘encyclopedic memory’

Colleagues remember Engerman as patient and generous, with a remarkable depth of knowledge. “He was famous for this encyclopedic memory,” says , the Hazel Fyfe Professor of Economics at the University. “He had bookshelves everywhere, and all the books were double-stacked—behind every book was another book. If you asked him a question, he would go to the shelves, quickly pull out a book, and immediately turn to the appropriate page. It was amazing.”

Engerman didn’t hesitate to put his encyclopedic memory to use in helping colleagues. “Stan would read anybody’s paper and read it almost instantly,” says Wolkoff, “and he wouldn’t hold back on making corrections.”

In addition to Engerman’s generosity and achievements, Wolkoff was struck by his modesty. “Shortly before he passed, Stan thanked me for all he learned from me,” says Wolkoff. “I did all I could to keep from laughing, because whatever he learned from me couldn’t compare to what I learned from him. Yet he had the graciousness to make that statement.”

A career marked with honors

Among other awards and accolades over the decades, Engerman received a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as fellowships from the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was elected the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions at the University of Cambridge for 1998–99. Along with being named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Economic Association, he was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Arts & Sciences. Engerman served as president of the Social Science History Association and the Economic History Association.

He is predeceased by his wife, Judy, who died in 2019. He is survived by his three sons—David, Mark, and Jeff—and his sister Natalie Mayrsohn.

As a sophomore, Zoë Bross ’23 learned about Bee Campus USA from a friend at the University of Utah. And she said to herself, “I like sustainability. I like pollinators. Why isn’t the a certified Bee Campus USA?”

That began a two-year effort to earn that certification.

The certification—along with one for Bee City USA—comes from the Xerces Society for Invertebrate Conservation. According to its , “Bee Campus USA provides a framework for university and college campus communities to work together to conserve native pollinators by increasing the abundance of native plants, providing nest sites, and reducing the use of pesticides.”

“Pollinators keep plants alive and are the very reason we have the food we eat,” says Bross. “But bee populations are threatened because of human activities, like climate change, urbanization, and pesticide usage. That makes pollinators a keystone group for everything we need and use in the world.”

Bees feed pollen to their young, explains , a senior instructor in the and a coauthor of (Princeton University Press, 2019). “Some of the pollen bees collect from one plant are dropped off at other plants they visit. In that way, bees help flowers to reproduce.”

For Bross, an environmental studies major, the ideas of plant reproduction and sustainability struck close to home. She went to her adviser, , an associate professor of instruction in the and cochair of the University Council on Sustainability, who directed her to the person responsible for the upkeep of the campus greenery: John McIntyre, manager of .

“This was a student initiative, so I was just a guiding tool,” says McIntyre. “We already met a lot of the program needs for the certification. I just had to supply documentation to the student group.”

That documentation was only one of many requirements for certification. Others included having pollinator habitats, reducing the use of pesticides, incorporating pollinator conservation studies in the classroom, and establishing a Campus USA committee made up of students, faculty, and staff.

Bross’s efforts paid off on April 10 when the University was certified as Bee Campus USA affiliate.

A fine example of community engagement took place on April 19 as about 150 students—along with faculty, staff, and University mascot Rocky—got together to plant a pollinator garden of native plants at the intersection of Intercampus Drive and Library Road.

“I would have been excited to get 15 people for the planting,” says Bross. “The turnout completely blew me out of the water.”

Bross would like to see a ripple effect from the garden planting. Seeds were given away at the event, and Bross hopes that some new yarrow, coneflower, aster, and milkweed plants will soon sprout at the homes of the people who turned out.

Ultimately, the event and the certification itself are about education. Minckley agrees that bee populations are being hurt in areas where people have disturbed their habitats. He says, “The Bee Campus certification will help educate our community about the importance of reducing pesticide use and favoring native plants.”

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Mammography is the gold standard for breast cancer diagnosis, but it’s not reliably accurate in all cases, especially in people with dense breasts. At the , ’77M (Res) a professor of imaging sciences at the , and , a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the , wanted to do better. Along with Jihye Baek, a PhD student in , they launched a research project incorporating ultrasound with machine learning for previously detected masses. The end result: nearly 98 percent accuracy in predicting breast cancer in these masses.

The sensitivity of mammography can range from 40 percent for dense breast tissue to a high of just above 90 percent. “While 90 percent sounds good, a higher accuracy rate means we can help many more women,” says Parker.

The findings were published last November in the journal . Parker’s team combined ultrasound with a feature-based machine-learning method for breast cancer detection, adding a color overlay map showing the probability of malignancy.

Mammography versus breast ultrasound

Mammography and ultrasound are the two main methods of breast cancer diagnosis. Mammography relies on an x-ray system to take an image of breast tissue. Breast ultrasound, as the name suggests, produces an image of breast tissue—a sonogram—from sound waves. A handheld wand called a transducer scans the breast with sound waves, and the resulting sound echoes create the image.

As the researchers point out in their paper, ultrasound is less expensive than mammography, portable, and radiation-free, making it a desirable tool, especially in developing countries. But at present, ultrasound is used only as a complement to standard mammography. That’s because, as O’Connell explains, ultrasound finds many masses within a breast, most of which are not cancer. “Breast imagers need new ways to reduce the number of false positive biopsies,” she says.

Ultrasound better than mammography at imaging dense breast tissue

Improving breast cancer screening and diagnosis is an active area of research locally and nationally. At the Medical Center and its , for example, a unique 3D ultrasound system has been developed separately for patient care and continues to be evaluated.

Improved ultrasound diagnostics are especially important for women with dense fibroglandular tissue. According to the National Cancer Institute, that includes nearly half of all women age 40 and older who get mammograms. “For them, the sensitivity is as low as 50 percent with mammograms,” says Parker. “With advanced ultrasound, we may be able to get into the upper 90 percentiles of accuracy.”

Parker believes their system also has unique features in that it simplifies the process. While some researchers are looking at many features in the breast—some as many as 30—the Rochester team focuses on five key biophysical features involving the distribution of cells, blood vessels, and proteins.

Machine-learning ultrasound: a promising new means to improve diagnosis, reduce false positives

The team’s approach involves machine learning, which is a type of artificial intelligence, or AI. From the data the researchers input, the computers develop algorithms that enable them to learn patterns and better recognize cancerous tissue. The new image that is produced by the algorithm shows the probability of malignancy within lesions, using a color overlay with blue and green corresponding to benign tissue and red corresponding to a high probably of malignancy.

Parker and O’Connell are pleased with the 98-percent accuracy rate, but they note it was accomplished with only 121 scans of suspicious breast lesions from patients at the URochester Medical Center.

“In the next stage of our research, we’ll be working with much larger sets of data,” says Parker.

Given the need for more data, it’s difficult to say how quickly their framework for computer-assisted ultrasound can be put into practice. O’Connell says, “More research is needed on many more patients for this to be widely adopted.”

But that’s how any task based on machine learning works. Computers get “smarter” with more data, producing more precise algorithms, translating into better diagnostics, and in the case of breast cancer screening, more lives saved.

Improving diagnostics in developing countries

Because ultrasound is portable and less expensive than mammography, it’s a desirable tool in developing countries. But it still requires an experienced sonographer.

In a separate research paper published in , by  ’17M (MD), a clinical instructor in the Medical Center’s , along with Parker, O’Connell and their collaborators, the authors describe the possibility of combining a type of ultrasound—called volume sweep imaging (VSI)—with artificial intelligence to provide an automatic and inexpensive form of breast mass diagnosis. Since VSI does not require an experienced sonographer, they hope this approach can make a difference in low- and middle-income countries, where access to breast cancer diagnosis and care poses a challenge.

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