Tag: Biological Sciences

When miners abandoned Michigan’s Copper Country, they left a lot of the red metal behind, and not in a good way. Waste from the mining operations still contains a high fraction of copper, so high that almost nothing can grow on it—and hasn’t for decades, leaving behind moonscape expanses that can stretch for acres.

Now, however, Assistant Professor Ramakrishna Wusirika (Biological Sciences) and his research team may have discovered how to make plants grow in the mine-waste desert and soak up some copper while they are at it.

Wusirika began his research using several species of Pseudomonas bacteria from the sediments of Torch Lake. In the region’s copper-mining heyday, the lake was used as a dump for mine waste. “We found bacteria that are resistant to high levels of copper,” he said. “We thought we might be able to use them to help plants grow better on contaminated soils.”

So Wusirika’s research team added copper to soil samples and then inoculated them with a copper-resistant strain of Pseudomonas. Finally, they planted the samples with maize and sunflower seeds and waited.

As expected, seeds planted in copper-free soil thrived, and seeds planted in the copper-tainted soil without bacteria were stunted. But seeds planted in the coppery soil enriched with bacteria did much better; some were nearly as vigorous as plants grown without the toxic metal.

“The bacteria seem to help with plant growth, and they also help maize and sunflower uptake copper,” said Wusirika. That means some kinds of naturally occurring bacteria could make soil more fertile and, in concert with the plants, remove at least some of the copper, a process known as rhizoremediation.

Their work, coauthored by PhD student Kefeng Li and Wusirika, was published online March 1 in the Journal of Hazardous Materials. For their next project, Wusirika’s team has been testing how well their technique might work in a real copper-mining desert. They are in the process of using these bacteria to promote plant growth in stamp sands collected near the small UP village of Gay, where the copper-processing byproduct covers about 500 acres.

Published in Tech Today.

The Tech Theatre Company, the Keweenaw Symphony Orchestra and a large cast of local actors, students, faculty and production crew bring Rodgers and Hammerstein’s epic musical “South Pacific” to the Rozsa Center stage at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Friday and Saturday, April 14-16.

James A. Michener’s exotic “Tales of the South Pacific” come to life in this Pulitzer Prize-winning classic. The musical takes audiences on a romantic journey to two islands in the South Pacific during WWII. The song “Bali H’ai” sets a mysterious tone, “Cockeyed Optimist” will charm one and all, and “There is Nothin’ Like a Dame” will get everyone’s toes a’ tapping.

According to Patricia Helsel, production director, “This is the first large-scale musical we’ve done at Michigan Tech for some time.” Choral Director Jared Anderson is the vocal coach and music director. Assistant Professor Joel Neves will conduct the KSO pit orchestra. Students and faculty have committed their talents to the design and production of what promises to be a phenomenal musical spectacle.

Mark Oliver, a seasoned community actor, is playing Emile. Chemistry senior Tanya Johnson plays Nellie. Christopher Schwartz, PhD candidate in biological sciences (research area: exercise science), plays Lt. Cable. Michigan Tech student Kiersten Birando, also a graduate of Houghton High School, plays the role of Liat. Alesha Fumbanks, a chemical engineering major, plays Bloody Mary. Chip Rohrer, a theatre and electronic media performance major, takes the role of Luther Billis.

1940’s haircuts are courtesy of Hairsmiths Inc. Bicycle props are from the Bike Shop. Portage Health sponsors the Department of Visual and Performing Arts.

Ticket prices are $15 for the general public, $7 for students, and free for Tech students with ID. To purchase tickets, contact the Rozsa Box Office at 487-3200, the Central Ticket Office (SDC) at 487-2073, or go online at www.tickets.mtu.edu .

No refunds, exchanges or late seating, please.

submitted by Visual and Performing Arts
Published in Tech Today

It’s more than a bit ironic that Jason Carter, chair and associate professor in exercise science, health and physical education, has a touch of insomnia, since he is studying sleep deprivation in his lab. Carter’s malady may partially stem from having a new child at home; some 90 million Americans have such reason (for the most part) for such suffering. As part of a $400,000 National Institutes of Health grant, Carter and his research team are looking at sleep deprivation’s links to hypertension, among other issues, and differences by gender.

“We are trying to figure out why women are more susceptible to developing hypertension as a result of reduced sleep, and it may relate to reproductive hormones,” Carter says.

“In the women, we are looking at levels of estrogen and progesterone and if they relate to the sympathetic nervous system [the fight vs. flight response],” Carter says. “We don’t know why women respond more dramatically to sleep deprivation from a cardiovascular perspective, but we aim to find out if an overly active nervous system is partially responsible.”

The research focuses on differences in the nervous system’s response to stress. Researchers can measure this response using a specialized technique called microneurography. This invasive procedure includes inserting a microelectrode into the peroneal nerve just below the skin surface in the lower leg. This provides them with direct measures of sympathetic traffic that can be quantified several ways.

This inquiry aims to compare male and female subjects with a normal night’s sleep and those who have been awake for twenty-four consecutive hours. For the keep-awake crowd, that means no coffee or food for the entire night, as the tired men and women camp out in the SDC under the watchful eye of students and researchers.

Master’s student Robert Larson of Chassell assists Carter in the lab and focuses on “how sleep deprivation affects blood pressure and anxiety, and how your body responds to changes in blood pressure.” Sometimes this work gets comical. “The subjects can get loopy,” Larson says. “We ask them to count backwards by fours, for example, and they can’t do it.” Larson ultimately aims to obtain a PhD and work with people in research labs in a hospital or academic setting.

The ramifications of sleep deprivation can go beyond the lab, Carter says. If his work can lead to treatment for the sleep-deprived women and men, that could in turn lead to lower health care costs, since many other health factors are impacted by a lack of sleep.

“Sleep medicine is really only a twenty- to thirty-year-old science,” says Carter. “We are just beginning to realize the importance of getting a good night’s sleep. There is a cumulative effect from not getting enough sleep.” And that seven to eight hours of sleep is becoming more elusive to Americans, he says, hence the urgency for his research and the NIH grant.

“We spend one-third of our lives asleep, and we still don’t know the real physiological purpose.”

Published in Tech Today.