Welcome to On Q magazine.

I'm Stacy Smith.

What do you get when you crack open the egg of a chicken?

Well, it might sound like the beginning of a joke, but for researchers at Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh, the inside of a chicken egg just might hold the answer as to why so many children die from heart complications.

On Q managing editor Michael Bartley shows you the fascinating chicken embryo research that is now being monitored by the worldwide medical community and by families desperate to find a cur for heart defects in children.

It is tonight's cover story.

Throw snowballs at you.

At me?

You're on.

Let's go.

Let's get your coat on.

Yeah.

Are you coming out?

Yep.

So, at the urging of four year old George the whole Carney family heads outside.

Theres Daddy!

Get him!

Hurry up!

Get daddy!

Mother Judy, Dad Kevin, Three year old JJ, and little George wasn't kidding about the snowball.

No, no, I just gave you... Hey JJ, Im going to get you come here!

Every day is a special day.

when little George Carney can laugh and enjoy life.

He plays like a normal child.

He just tires a lot easier.

And it's very frustrating for him because he just doesn't understand why he can't keep going.

He knows there' something wrong with his heart.

He really does.

Even though he knows something is wrong, all this four year old seems to want is to dazzle visitors with his outgoing personality One more time.

[Singing ABCs] [Singing ABCs] [Singing ABCs] [Singing ABCs] Now I know my ABCs.

Very good.

Next time wont you sing with me?

[Applause] Very good, George.

Thank you.

It almost seems hard to believe George has suffered so long.

You see, George was born with his hear on the right side of his chest, rather than on the left side like the rest of us.

That defect brought on a myriad of heart problems.

George has a large hole in the upper chamber of his heart.

Too much bloo is flowing into his small lungs.

Santa gav you guys a lot of presents, huh?

George has had several major surgeries.

He spent 90 days in Children's Hospital just last year.

More surgeries are planned to keep George alive.

Were worried and afraid that, you know this isn't going to work.

And for for us, it's.

You know, it's really hard.

When you have a child.

It's difficult.

Any kind of surgery, any kind of illness on a child is difficult for a parent.

When he's sick and he's in the hospital we all live there.

All of us do, you know?

I stay there 24/7 with George.

And so the youngest one doesn't get to see us as much.

So it's hard on everybody.

It's hard on more families than you might believe, according to George's cardiologist.

Many people are surprised to hear that 1 in 100 children has a heart defect.

They're aware of heart disease in adults, they're aware of high blood pressure, coronary artery disease, and stroke.

What they don't realize is in fact heart disease in childre is the leading cause of death.

That's outside of accidental, causes for children.

So, Doctor Bradley Keller, chief of pediatric cardiology here at Children's Hospital and a leading researcher, is trying to help prevent children's heart problems from developing in the first place.

So we're going to measure pressure in this embryo in his Oakland laboratory.

Keller and his staff are betting tha what you are seeing right here will lead to early detection of heart problems and better life saving treatment for kids like George, even before they're born.

This is not the beating heart of a human.

It is the beating heart of a unborn chicken, a chick embryo.

It may surprise people, but the heart of a chicken in the heart of a human are almost identical.

Their difference in size.

But the function, the structure?

Almost identical.

Four day after sitting in an incubator, the chick embryo is ready to be taken from the egg.

Researchers ever so carefully use special tweezers to chip away at the top of the egg, delicately peeling away small bits of shell.

And with the naked eye, amazingly, after the yellow and red veiny mass of the inner egg is exposed, look closely to the center.

An embryo heart is beating.

The chick embryo is then put under a microscope, its image enlarged and seen perfectly clea for study on a large TV monitor.

Doctor Kelle says the similarities of chicken and human heart function are seen right here, and you can actually see the heart fill and then contract and empty with every beat.

And the first three days of development, that beat is around 120 times per minute, which is the same rate as a normal child would have.

So you can actually see the blood pumping through the embryo.

And particularly we focus on it's pumping in the heart.

The chick embryo essentially allows us to study the heart from the onset of the very first heartbeat, until the heart is entirely formed.

So along the way, researchers study why heart defects are formed and what can be done to intervene or correct the defect even before a child is born.

I would say the ultimate goal is to understand what causes heart defects in children that would result in a range of therapies.

For some children, their heart defect is so mild that once it's recognized, it requires no therapy for other children a single operation can be used.

For some children, in fact, they won't survive pregnancy and be born without some type of an intervention that intervention would be required actually during the fetal period.

So identifying heart defect is done with the chick embryos studying how to intervene or repair heart defects is done with mice embryos.

As part of the study, Keller's group has this one of a kind, fully functional operating room for pregnant mice.

It has a tiny anesthesia station, a mouse sized operating table with probably the tiniest surgical gas mask in the world.

The goal here discover how to best reverse heart defects in an unborn mouse by injecting, for example, healthie cells into its pregnant mother.

All this research is being don with kids like George in mind.

If only there was a way t detect George's heart problems and cure them before he was born.

That's the aim here.

This research, if all works out, you could intervene before someone like George is born.

We could intervene, really in what we call prenatal intervention for certain selected problems.

We know that in congenital heart disease, the children that are born usually will not live a long and normal life unless there's some type of an intervention.

Doctors around the world are watching this chicken embryo research because the stakes are high.

With one and 100 kids lik George, born with heart defects.

But we're not so sur how many are as brave as George Honey when you're in the hospital.

What do you think?

Going in and playing.

You like going in the playroom at the hospital?

What else do you like to do at the hospital?

[Chatter] [Chatter] The seventh floor where they have where they have that pool table in the other playroom.

They have a pool table?

Yeah.

On the seventh floor.

Yeah.

The last time he was in, for this last surgery, he said to us, I'm not gettin out of the hospital this time, am I mom?

And to hear that come from a four year old, at the time he's still three.

It's very difficult.

It's very hard to hear your son say that.

It's heartbreaking.

It's heart wrenching.

How do you get through that when a four year old says that to you?

While you just explained to him, that he is going to get out and that he is going to get bett I want for George, I want him to be the best he can be.

I hope that as time goes on, technology, gets better.

And I hope that for George that he can have as normal a life as anybody.

♪ W X Y Z ♪ Good.

Very good George.

What a great kid.

George has yet another majo surgery in a couple of months.

We wish him the best.

And we thank the Kearney family from Kennedy Township for sharing their story.

Doctor Keller says it's too difficult to say when the chicken embryo study may lead to key discoveries about heart defect formation and what can be done to prevent defects, but there are advances every single day and the embryo of a chick jus might hold the key in the end.

So another example of Pittsburgh being on the cutting edge of major medical worldwide research.

Okay, this may sound silly to you.

A lot of people, us included, will have eggs for breakfast.

I know.

Is it the same egg that we eat or what?

Are they using a different egg?

Believe me, it is not a silly question.

People do ask the doctor as well.

The answer is yes.

We eat chicken eggs but they're not fertilized eggs.

The eggs with the embryos used in research are from certain hens at a hatchery, and they are fertilized.

Specialized research eggs.

Research eggs.

Research eggs.

We can still have our morning e And don't even worry about it.

I'll have some tomorrow.

Okay, all right.

And good luck to George also.

Yeah.

What a sweet kid.

Absolutely.

Thanks, Michael.

You're welcome.

Still to come, the story of America' first African-American forester.

A Pennsylvania man who helped to shape the way foresters are taught today.

And Crayola crayon.

Another Pennsylvania claim to fame.

We're going to take you on a tour of the Crayola Factory Discovery Center in eastern Pennsylvania.

That's still to come, so stay connected.

You're watching On Q magazin because these foundations care enough about local programing to help pay for it.

The Howard Heinz endowment.

The Richard King Mellon Foundation, the McCune Foundation, the Pittsburgh Foundation, the Hillman Foundation, the Grable Foundation.

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You may not recognize the name Ralph Elwood Brock, but if you love nature, gardening, and Pennsylvania's forests, it is likely that you will appreciate Mr.

Brock after this story.

Tonight, On Q contributor and Post-Gazette gardening columnist Doug Oster shows you why.

More than a century ago Ralph Brock came to Mont Alto, Franklin County, to learn at the country' first public forestry academy.

He brought with him what the school required in those days.

Just a good horse.

But what he didn't know was when he arrived, he was making history.

Ralph Brock is known as the first African-American forester in, in the United States.

Not only was he in that first class of 13, he actually worke with the founders of the campus to open the campus and was involved in the formation of, the Forestry Academy.

Doctor David Nagy is campus executive officer for the Penn State Mont Alto campus.

Students can still learn forestry there, but can also work towards over 180 different degrees.

The custom of inclusion started by Brock continues today at the school.

One of the strengths of this campus is its commitment to students from traditionally underserved populations within the 12 campuses of Commonwealth College.

We have the highest percentage of students from underrepresented populations.

It's up right now about, I believe, 15% of our total studen population are African-American, Hispanic, or some other underserved population.

That is something we're quite proud of.

It's a tradition that goes back to the the opening of the campus.

This whole grove of spruces was planted by the students.

Alex Day, nursery operations manager for the Bureau of Forestry, is the amateur historian who first uncovered Brock's letters and records.

He spent the last six years passionately digging to learn everything possible about Brock.

How did you do this or how did you do that?

I'd love to talk to him.

It all started when he opened file boxes forgotten for years in storage.

When I discovered they were there, I just said, this is a story that tells me what my predecessors did.

Let's dig into it.

And that's really when I came in contact with Ralph's writing and a lot of his correspondence, as well as pictures and so forth, and references to his work, he did.

And I thought, what a story this has just got to be told.

So that's, that's how I came across all these things.

Brock's interest in forestry can be traced back to his high school year in West Chester, Pennsylvania.

His high school principal was friendly with the ma who would become Pennsylvania's father of forestry doctor Joseph Rothrock, who happened to live in the same town.

The principal of the school said to Doctor Rothrock, I have a bright young fellow here that likes to be working with th in botany, and Docto Rothrock had a degree in botany and he was, of course, founding this academy.

And so Doctor Roderic said, certainly send him my way.

And that's how Ralph became a student at the at the Academy in the first class.

Brock excelled at his studies and was one of the Academy's brightest students.

He was particularl adept at forestry and forestry topics like botany and, measuring trees and so forth.

And he was fascinated by things, measurements that had to do outdoors.

And he liked chemistry, you know that.

And he liked the study of soils.

And so when it became, time to graduate, it seemed to be a good fit that he would be in charge of the tree nursery.

Brock was charge with clearing land on the campus as a home for a variety of seedlings.

He supervised the other student that would work with the trees throughout the nursery.

The records show that while he was a nursery manager, he experimented a lot, and he just read and read everything he could get his hands on to tell him about what type of soil he should have here, what type of a pH should have in the soil to grow the trees they were growing, which were mostly pines or conifers.

And he perfected the idea of using composts in the soil as an amendment to keep the soil healthy and viable.

Those methods are still use today to keep plants thriving, and Day thrives in his role as historian, driven to tell Ralph Brock's story.

Every time I read an old letter, that I get my hands on, it makes another piece of the puzzle come to life.

It's just an exciting tim to get a hold of these letters.

And each one of those old letters he reads brings him close to his colleagues of the past.

Well, I feel like I'm back here.

with the school, with the kids.

You know, in 1910 or 1915.

Kind of close your eyes, and since I'm a graduate of the campus myself, I can picture the things they're saying.

I know the places that they're talking about.

It's trying to relive their thoughts and their activities when they were here It's a very stimulating process.

Do we know anything about him being an African-American supervisor in a time where there weren't many African-Americans supervisors?

Were there struggles there?

Yes, there certainly were some struggles here.

One of the reasons that Ralph was, resigned his job here because, getting, getting along with the students and in the nursery, and the students were working in the nursery, and they had a little, as you can might imagine, at that time, there was some, racial unrest and, that led to, some of the students, you know, saying things they shouldn't say and get getting the other students all excited.

Other sources have also pointed to racism forcing Brock to move on.

One quote from the book, written by a former librarian, Elizabeth Thomas, refers to a a fist fight at the nursery, which was, students of different opinions getting into, fisticuffs ove the fact that they were working for an African-American and they didn't like it.

So forth.

That' a footnote to Ralph's history, but it nevertheless is is written as fact.

Brock has been recognized with a plaque place at the entryway of the campus.

But that's just the beginning.

Day hopes it will help him get more information about the forestry student.

We had a historical marker dedicated to Ralph, and it's right here on the Penn State Mont Alto campus.

And we're very proud of that.

That's not the end of Ralph' story, as far as I'm concerned.

That's just anothe little glimpse into the future.

We just like to know some of Ralph's current day descendants if they're still alive.

And that's the big thing.

But more than that, it's also, the story of forestry in Pennsylvania as well as forestry in this country.

Ralph Brock blazed a trail for many to follow and open doors for others to walk through.

Day and his fellow foresters are continuing the work begu over a century ago at Mont Alto and deeply appreciate the foundation laid by Ralph Elwood Brock.

The fac that we have a more open society now, as far as racial minorities and women goes, it's making this forestry business a lot more interesting.

It's like adding spice to the whole profession.

Now, besides being a contributor, reporter for On Q, Doug Foster also writes for the Post Gazette.

And after a Doug story on Ralph Brock ran in the PG, a family from Penn Hills say, said that they saw a family resemblance in the old photo of Brock.

They did some research and they learned they were related to America's first Black forester.

Now, if you would lik more information on Ralph Brock, you can go to our website, wqed.org and click On Q on the first page.

Well, you may not realize it, but one of Pennsylvania's top tourist destinations is a factory in the eastern part of the state.

In fact, families wanting to get inside the Crayola plant in Easton used to find themselves on a two year waiting list.

So that's why the company stopped doing tours at the actual plant and opened a place for visitors called the Crayola Factory Discovery Center.

Here now is a look inside both places.

Thanks to On Q contributor Dave Now this is what you'd call a color-full parade when the Crayola company celebrated its centennial, the entire town of Easton took part.

After all, these ar the people who make the crayons.

Although they did ge a little help from Fred Rogers back in 1990, he stopped by to personally mold and label the Binney and Smith Company's 100 billionth Crayon.

More recently, we stopped by to see how they do it.

What he's got right no is the dry color, the pigment, and that's what gives the wax its color and what makes it a crayon.

Crayola manager Warren Corr says crayons are made with hot wax 190 degrees hot.

We're making yellow-orange.

And you can see this is a mixture of the pigments and the wax.

And right now we're mixing it to make sure that it's uniformly mixed.

Sort of like double, double toil and trouble, Orange wax makes quite a bubble.

Exactly.

Ingredients arrive in railroad cars, which roll right up to the Binney and Smith plant, where the secret crayon recipe has remained a secret for more than 100 years.

But Warren doesn't mind showing you the process.

We pump the liquid wax and the pigments over onto the mold, which is right over here through this pipeline right here.

And this mold is set up so there are a lot of little holes.

You can see them right there that are in the shape of a crayon.

And the robot right there is pulling out crayons and emptying those little cavities right there.

Nothing is wasted.

There's a little bit that stays on the top.

We call it the cap.

You can see that it's solidified.

And what we're doing here is we're just scraping that cap off.

It's remounted, and we can make crayons out of it again.

With so many shades to choose from, you really can't tell the color without the wrapper.

Here the robot is bringin the crayons over from the mold and it drops them into the hopper.

The labeling machine.

The crayons work their way through and on to this chain.

This chain is then fed over into the labeling machine.

They're cut, and then they're wrapped around the crayon.

So you have unlabeled crayons coming in and labeled crayons coming out.

The platoon of orange crayons marches in formation to the final checkpoint where humans take over.

She rolls them and looks for any unlabeled sticks or any problems.

She will then lift them up and look at the back ends to make sure they're correct.

And then she puts them in the stock box.

Denise will look at about 200,000 crayons in a day.

You know how certain smells remind you of your childhood?

Well, the waxy aroma in this room brings back happy thoughts of construction paper and coloring books.

Oh I would have loved having this when I was a kid.

Every one of them perfect too.

Of course, they've had a century of experience to draw upon.

The crayons are loaded into carton and delivered to the warehouse.

We have about 150 million crayon sticks right here in this warehouse, waiting to be packed out over in our packing department.

The packing department is the final step where crayons are transferre from big cartons to little boxes A box of 64 is the most popular one.

From here, the crayons will be loaded onto trucks and shipped to little artists around the globe.

The company no longer gives tours of the plant, but for kids who want to see how they're made.

A short hop from the Crayola factory.

You'll find the Crayola Factory.

But this building in downtown Easton is more like a hands on museum.

I'm going to put this tray on my table because this tray also has 1200 holes in it.

Manufacturing under glass.

Kids get an abbreviated look at how their favorite coloring implements are made.

Then they have an opportunity to roll their own hands on is not always preferable.

Are you surprised at how difficult it is?

Yes.

Did you have any idea?

No.

But it sure is fun to play with them.

The Crayola Factory Museum is primarily a discovery center for kids, according to Crayolas Stacy Gabrielle it's really mean for kids to explore with their imaginations and just have fun playing with their creativity.

An area where they can color with sidewalk chalk, there's an area for painting, there's an area where they can just dance around, and a colorfu display will appear on a wall.

Its just really meant for them to have fun.

The Binney and Smith Compan was founded in 1903 by partners Edwin Binney and C Harold Smith.

And teachers were asking for a more affordable but good quality wax crayons.

And they had some expertise in industrial type marking crayons and what they did was they reformulated it and made those crayons in eight colors and made them available to schools.

That number has expanded to 120 different colors.

But when eight of the old timers were eliminated to make room for others back in 1990 the move evoked strong passions.

This is the original box.

That's the original 64.

They've arbitrarily taken eight of them out of there, and they jus they've gone to Crayon heaven.

New colors include Banana Mania, Fuzzy Wuzzy, and Outer Space.

Speaking of names, Crayola was coine by Edwin Binney's wife, Alice.

She took the word craie, that's French for chalk, and the word oleaginous which means oily, and she shortened that up and then joined the two word together for ‘cray and ‘ola.

And that's almost al there is to know about crayons but just don't ask for that secret formula.

Learning to stay inside the lines at the Crayola factory.

I'm Dave Crawley for On Q. I can never stay inside the lines and always pick the wrong color.

Once again, the Crayola Factory Discovery Center is open to the public.

The actual Crayola plant is not, and there is more information on our website wqed.org.

Just clic the On Q logo on the first page.

Thank you for watching.

We'll see you again live at 7:30 tomorrow night.

Stay connected and have a great night.