Professor Tomie is an addiction research scientist. He is interested in the early stages of the drug addiction process, when drug use slips out of control.  Professor Tomie is particularly interested in boosting awareness in young people of the stealthy nature of the drug addiction process, that allows drug addiction to sneak up on the unsuspecting.  To reach a younger audience, Professor Tomie's creative team (Barbara Zito, Creative Writer; Steven James Petruccio, illustrator) has published a series of fully-illustrated scientific short stories about a raccoon, named Sign Tracker, who suffers the loss of self-control.