A report published by the West Virginia Center on Budget Policy said inmates receive highly processed, low nutrient foods that negatively impact their health and cost taxpayers more.
A report published by the West Virginia Center on Budget Policy said inmates receive highly processed, low nutrient foods that negatively impact their health and cost taxpayers more.
The report indicates inmates used to grow fresh produce outside and in greenhouses to cook healthy fresh meals under a state run prison food service program. However, as prison populations grew, the state looked to save money by signing a contract with Aramark food service.
Aramark is a national food service provider. The company received fines due to maggot infested food and food that had been tainted by rats. The food provider has also been cited for serving expired or unrefrigerated food products, the report said.
The authors of the report filed a Freedom of information act to find out how much the state pays Aramark, and to answer questions about conflict of interest. So far, they have not been able to receive any information.
In 2019 West Virginia lawmakers passed The Fresh Food Act that required 5 percent of the purchases made by Aramark to be fresh produce or meat from West Virginia producers. However, the Agriculture Commissioner complained in 2022 that the company has failed to comply with the law, and that the Department of Agriculture has no tools to enforce the law.
The West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitations issued a statement that said the organization is committed to the safety, quality of life, and wellbeing of those in the care of the legal system in the state and continually work to provide nutritional meals and quality of health care to those placed in their care.
Loren Anderson, a professor at the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, is studying the remnants of supernovas to better “understand the properties and dynamics of our galaxy.”
Their lifecycle is in millions of years, but stars in the Milky Way grow, produce heat and light and then they die. Some burn out in a spectacular supernova.
Loren Anderson, a professor at the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences at West Virginia University, is studying the remnants of those explosions to better “understand the properties and dynamics of our galaxy.”
News Director Eric Douglas, an admitted science and astronomy geek himself, sat down with Anderson to learn more.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: What is a supernova?
Anderson: So stars create energy, the process we know as fusion, where hydrogen atoms are combined into helium atoms, that’s the primary way. However, that process uses up the hydrogen in the stars. And eventually the stars run out. And at the end of their lifetimes, they kind of go on a frantic search for new ways to generate energy. But eventually those methods run out. And what happens is, during fusion, they kind of blow up, you know, the pressure from the generation of energy makes the star that’s present size. And then without that pressure, they collapse inwards and that collapse creates a rebound that leads to a supernova.
Loren Anderson, professor, astronomy, WVU Eberly College of Arts and Sciences.
Credit/West Virginia University
Douglas: So they literally explode, implode, and then explode bigger again.
Anderson: Without that initial explosion, what you said is correct. It’s generating energy, it’s stable. It’s producing the heat and the light that we need, but it’s going to run out and skip some of the very fast evolutionary steps, then it goes. Our sun will go through a different evolutionary path, however, so it’s only the most massive stars that do that explosion.
Douglas: An interesting thing I saw in the description of your research is that we know of about 300 or 400 of these supernovas that have happened. But, statistically, there should be about 1000 of them.
Anderson: Those numbers are only for our own galaxy — within the Milky Way. The supernova remnants, which after the explosion, there’s still some embers glowing, and we call those glowing embers, supernova remnants, but they only last a pretty short amount of time.
A supernova will go off and then it will relatively quickly become undetectable. That’s what leads to the relatively low numbers. They’re kind of hard to find. The fact that there’s many multiples more that should be discoverable, comes from studies of other galaxies, and comes from studying the population of stars that are in our galaxy that should explode to produce these things.
Douglas: Roughly speaking, we know there are X number of stars in our galaxy, compared to a similar-sized galaxy.
Anderson: That’s right. And just to be 100 percent clear, that’s not my research, that number comes from other people. That’s one method that is the strongest evidence for the number, but many people propose different methods and all of them arrive at the same answer that we’ve only found a fraction of what’s out there.
Douglas: Why is that important?
Anderson: It’s important just for understanding the type of galaxy that we live in. And so by mapping out all of these, we can learn about the massive star history of our galaxy over the last tens of thousands of years. We can put our galaxy in context of other galaxies in the universe. And also, there are a lot of interesting physics, none of which I do, but there’s a lot of interesting physics, of studying individual supernova remnants and understanding how that explosion progresses in time, and its interaction with the environment, all of that sort of stuff. Each one that we find is a new little laboratory for study.
Douglas: What’s the process for finding these remnant supernovas?
Anderson: It is surprisingly low tech. Essentially what I do is I bring up an image of a field of the galaxy, so a little part of the sky. And the data that I’m using for that are from the MEERkat telescope in South Africa, which is a 64 telescope array where all 64 telescopes work together to observe a patch of sky. It’s exceedingly powerful. We look at a little patch of the sky. And on that patch of the sky, we identify all the objects that are known to exist. And then I look for things that have a characteristic morphology of a supernova remnant, that are not known to exist yet.
No fancy algorithms. It’s just me and a computer monitor.
The lower two of these shell-like features are supernova remnants, with SNR G1.0-0.1 on the left and SNR G0.9+0.1 on the right. The uppermost shell is the Sagittarius D HII region, a site of recent star formation. SNR G0.9+0.1 has a pulsar wind nebula at its center, showing a tangled complex of radio emission. Polar outflows from this nebula appear to be distorting the shell of the supernova, particularly towards the north.
Credit/South African Radio Astronomy Observatory (SARAO)
Douglas: Just to be clear, MEERkat is a radio telescope. How does it translate into a visual format? I’m not sure how that works.
Anderson: Oh, right. So your standard radio telescope, like the Green Bank Telescope, takes an observation of one location at a time. If you want to make an image, like the pretty images from Hubble or JWST (James Webb Space Telescope), you have to move the telescope to make an observation at each pixel. But an array of telescopes like Meerkat or like the Very Large Array in New Mexico, you can get something just like what Hubble gets. What I’m working with are complete images of little patches of the sky.
Douglas: How long does it take to go through one of these files?
Anderson: The full search, this particular data set that I was working with, covers more than 100 square degrees. And the full search took me probably on the order of four months, fairly dedicated work. That’s not to say that going through one time would not take much time, but there’s a lot of checks afterwards to make sure that something wasn’t discovered yet.
And what I try to do is do the search, and then wait a little while and then do the search again to make sure that what I’m finding is actually able to be repeated. That’s one thing that is not a strength of the eye method in that it’s very dependent on my brain, which is not the same as your brain or anyone else’s. And so what I find could be different from what another researcher finds. Repeatability is important in science and so I do what I can to maximize repeatability.
Douglas: How many galaxies are there? Do we know a rough estimate of how many galaxies there are?
Anderson: We have very rough estimates and it’s certainly more than 100 billion.
Douglas: One hundred billion galaxies? How many stars like ours are in the Milky Way?
Anderson: It’s all kind of nonsense. These are numbers that we don’t deal with in our daily lives. So the Milky Way has about 200 billion stars.
Douglas: Wow!
Anderson: So that’s two times 10 to the 11th. So a 2, followed by 11 zeroes. And I said, there’s at least 100 billion other galaxies. The Milky Way is a little bigger than average. I’d still say conservatively, there’s probably a 1 followed by 22 zeros other stars out there.
Douglas: Yeah, those aren’t numbers that we deal with?
Anderson: No, it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. I can repeat them to you because I do them academically, but there’s not a lot of context behind that.
It’s something like there’s more stars in the universe than grains of sand on all the beaches in the earth, something like that. You could look up the exact quote but it’s a phenomenal number.
Douglas:. What haven’t we talked about?
Anderson: Well, there’s two other parts. So the second half of the research, we’re going to be doing some machine learning. I have a collaborator in South Africa, and she’s going to take the objects that I’ve identified, and use that as – what’s called a training set, basically train the computer to look for similar objects.
It turns out that humans are really, really good at pattern recognition. And this is something that computers are not as good at as they are at other aspects of artificial intelligence. So she has an algorithm that she would like to try this machine learning on. And so we’ll use what I find as a training set to try to classify these objects, and hopefully find new ones. That part of the research is the most exploratory.
Douglas: And you’re also doing some STEM training too.
Anderson: We have this outreach program called SPOT. And in SPOT, the program ambassadors — so college undergraduates give science lectures to the public and to high school students, as a way of training the ambassadors in public speaking and in science communication, and also in engaging the next generation of scientists.
My other collaborator on this project, Catherine Williamson, will be developing a new SPOT module focused on supernova remnants. This will be a talk that the ambassadors can give to their audiences on supernova remnants.
A group of researchers from West Virginia University has found a way to analyze duct tape and make it even stronger evidence in court.
In television crimes, duct tape is often used in kidnappings and murders. It turns out, it is often used in real crimes as well. Now, a group of researchers from West Virginia University has found a way to analyze duct tape and make it even stronger evidence in court.
This interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
Douglas: We’ve all watched a movie where someone has been kidnapped and had duct tape wrapped around their face to keep them quiet. What are some of the types of evidence you’re finding on duct tape in general?
Trejos: Duct tape is one of those materials that are not only very prevalent at crime scene shows, but in real crime as well. It’s very easy to find, you just go to a store and find it. And it has properties that are very convenient, also for the criminals, to get something to kidnap and put in their mouths, gagging the victim or restraining the victim. We unfortunately have this kind of evidence in many cases like kidnapping, murders, even suicides. Also, to produce improvised explosive devices. It’s very common that they use duct tape to hold different components as well as other types of tape like electrical tapes. When we have drug trafficking as well, it’s very common that they package those kilos with duct tape around to maintain the water or other environmental sources. Many different scenarios in which we can go to a crime scene site and find duct tape in many circumstances. So it becomes very viable for many reasons.
The tape itself, the physical and chemical properties of the tape, can provide a lot of information for the investigative leads. We can do very rapid physical examinations of the tape that changes depending on manufacturing source as well, manufacturing plants where this has been built, brands, they have their own formulations, chemical compositions, as well as physical features, even levels of quality. Just by the physical quality in the chemical formulation, we can tell a lot and provide lead information early on in the investigation about potential manufacturing sources that can lead to potential places where we can have areas that people purchased, and so on, and so forth.
Douglas: For this particular paper that you’ve published, you’re literally taking the edges of where duct tape is made to be ripped apart.
Trejos: Yes, that’s what makes the tape very strong. It has the adhesive that makes it sticky and it has the backing, which is the top surface, usually silver, but there are many other colors and in between is a mesh. Like you said it’s a fiber, a textile that has different fibers going in one direction and across. And the more fibers we have, the stronger that tape is. So that also has to do with the properties.
Douglas: You’ve been able to quantify when duct tape is ripped apart, the leading edges of the piece that was removed and the pieces still on the roll, you can yconnect those and and you’ve proven that that can’t be replicated. I mean, this is DNA-fingerprint kind of stuff.
Trejos: Exactly. So what we have known for many years is physical features, which is that alignment of two pieces that were once joined together, has a very high probative value in the courtroom, because it’s very likely that two pieces will fit together, just like a puzzle piece. When you rip it apart, whether it’s cut or torn by hand, there will be features that are distorting one edge and the other and they fit together. And the more those features and more individualizing those features, then the more your confidence in that those two pieces were once together.
When you have very high quality physical features, then what we have demonstrated is the assumption that our forensic examiners have had for years, because forensic physical theories have been out there for many decades. You have the two pieces fit together, it’s self explanatory and very easy also, to demonstrate in the court. We don’t need very hard science to demonstrate that the two pieces come together.
Douglas: This is still microscopic level though, right?
Trejos: It’s two stages. You need first to do a macro level, and then you go down to the microscopic level to demonstrate those features. The big assumption is that it’s unlikely that two pieces will fit together if they were not once together. However, just like many years ago in fingerprinting we had the assumption that no other fingerprint matches other individuals.
That’s where this project started. I’ve worked very closely with practitioners and laboratory managers to identify research that can help them to provide solutions to their needs. And one of them was a need to demonstrate that assumption can be proven scientifically.
Douglas: You mentioned something a moment ago, you said whether it’s cut or ripped apart. So even if it’s cut with a knife or scissors, you can still match up the leading edges microscopically, and prove that those two were together.
Trejos: There was also an assumption in our discipline, before we started doing the research, that if the cut is straight, there might not be many features. So there was a leading assumption that cut edges will be less informative and less probative. We demonstrated with experiments that that was not the case, even with cutting there are more angles, it’s more defects that can be built in the edges or will leave some impressions and defects that are very difficult to reproduce.
Douglas: Has this been substantiated in a court of law yet? Has this gone to court and been proven or been accepted?
Trejos: The physical examination is commonly accepted in the courtroom. But we are going a step ahead. Just like fingerprints, it’s been out there for many years. But we wanted to have the highest standards of science or the evidence that will present it. And this is where this comes along.
One of the advantages of this examination is that it’s very quick to do. I can provide lead information that can help a lot of investigations. It is not as costly as all this evidence that we collect, because we need a microscope, the brain and the human expert.
Douglas: Is there anything we haven’t talked about?
Trejos: The big message is that we really wanted to improve the objectivity and standardize how these examinations are done across different forensic units. Because one of the problems that we had till now is that there are no standard test methods. It seems to be so intuitive, that if I find features that I as an expert consider to be individualizing and calling this a fit, then I provide my judgment in my opinion in the courtroom and defend that, but what we wanted to make sure is that we are able to develop a method that is standardized, that we can create consensus based protocols.
No matter if I do the analysis in our laboratory here in West Virginia or somewhere else in the country or in the world, I will follow the same protocol. And I will be able to demonstrate that in the courtroom.
From the thousands of samples that we have analyzed in different qualities of tapes, different examiners, we didn’t have a single example in which we call it a false positive. In other words, we’re saying this is true period. When we really know from the ground truth that this was not joined together. So this is good news.
Justice said there is new scientific medical information now to consider that natural immunities are not the “smoke and mirrors” thought of in the beginning of the pandemic.
For more than two years, Gov. Jim Justice has urged West Virginians to get their COVID-19 vaccines. During the height of the pandemic, he called people foolish for not getting all their shots.
In a media briefing on May 11, Justice responded to this question from WSAZ reporter Curtis Johnson.
“With the end of the pandemic emergency, is there a specific subset of people that you and your administration worry about the most?” Johnson asked. “What’s your message to those people?”
Justice said during the pandemic, he didn’t have a playbook and tried to follow the federal government’s lead. But, in the briefing, he also referenced the West Virginians that chose to push back in regard to the vaccines.
“There’s a group that I would worry about in this day and time with the information that we have,” Justice said. “That group would have been the group that did not get vaccinated, but they may very well end up being the group that is the safest and healthiest.”
In his next media briefing on May 17, Randy Yohe with West Virginia Public Broadcasting asked Justice if his statement on those not vaccinated being the “safest and healthiest” was contradictory to his vaccine support all along. He answered by saying there is new scientific medical information now to consider that natural immunities are not the “smoke and mirrors” thought of in the beginning of the pandemic.
“Now, we’re told that the natural immunities, once you’ve had COVID, are real,” Justice said. “This has surely been a big-time moving target.”
Justice said if he had to do it all over, with the science he understood then, he would have still encouraged people to get their vaccines and boosters.
Justice remarked that he was fully vaccinated and still had COVID-19 twice – but he called the shots a lifesaver.
“I believe with all in me, if I hadn’t been vaccinated, it could have been really, really, really bad,” he said.
Justice said West Virginians should continue learning from the evolving scientific information on COVID-19.
The Senate Committee on Health and Human Resources Thursday took up the issue of PEIA reform. PEIA is the insurer for thousands of public employees. It has come under increased scrutiny for paying more in reimbursements to out-of-state hospitals than to in-state facilities, including WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.
The Senate Committee on Health and Human Resources Thursday took up the issue of PEIA reform.
PEIA is the insurer for thousands of public employees. It has come under increased scrutiny for paying more in reimbursements to out-of-state hospitals than to in-state facilities, including WVU Medicine Wheeling Hospital.
The hospital in January announced plans to stop accepting the state’s public employees’ health insurance (PEIA) by July 1.
Senate Bill 268 would change the requirement that PEIA conduct public hearings in each congressional district. It also repeals two sections of code related to retiree premium subsidies prior to 2010 and removes a cap on autism services.
The plan sets a minimum of a 20 percent cost share for in-state benefits when applicable, and a minimum of a 30 percent cost share for out-of-state benefits when applicable. That essentially attempts to level out the amount set by insurers for out of state and for in state co-payments.
The plan states that the Public Employees Insurance Agency shall use a nationally accredited network to provide care to its out of state members to bring down costs through the benefit of a larger network.
Sen. Tom Tabuko, R-Kanawha, wanted to confirm that the bill would not affect payment for critical access hospitals.
“I just want to confirm here that critical access hospitals, a lot of smaller communities throughout West Virginia, obviously depend on those because without them they may be an hour and a half away from any type of care whatsoever, they exist because they can get a higher rate,” Tabuko said.
Committee counsel directed the senator to confirm the answer with the West Virginia Hospital Association.
The plan would provide a minimum level of 110 percent be established for all providers.
The rate for hospitals would be set at 110 percent of the Medicare diagnosis related group covered by the state and non-state plans of the Medicare per diem per day rate applicable to critical access hospitals and exempts from rate setting a retiree health plan.
The bill deletes the requirement that the governor to provide an estimate for each fiscal year based on the percentage of growth and general revenue funds.
During committee discussion Sen. Mike Maroney, R-Marshall, asked Jason Haught, interim director and chief financial officer for PEIA, about rates, specifically if hospitals are allowed to negotiate with the PEIA for inpatient rates, or not.
“You know, that term negotiation, I believe…,” Haught started to say.
“Ah you used it, you, you really used it,” Maroney interjected.
Haught continued, “And I believe that we do allow negotiation with our in-state providers. The one that we’re talking about right now was done in 2002 with the West Virginia Hospital Association, and PEIA and the Department of Health and Human Resources, Bureau of Medical Services. They all sat down, came up with this Medicaid swap reimbursement that pulled in additional money for the hospitals, and it just ran stale. It didn’t it needed to be re-discussed and updated, and it just didn’t occur.”
Maroney went on to ask Haught about the last time PEIA premiums were raised.
“For the state fund, I believe it was 2018 or 2019,” Haught said. “The non-state pool obviously had one last year.”
The last time PEIA was allowed to negotiate prices on drug costs, for example, was 2002 when the interested parties came up with a plan that pulled in additional money for the hospitals.
The committee ended with a motion to send Senate Bill 268 to the full Senate with recommendation it pass after going to the Committee on Finance.
Over the last five years in Wheeling, an organization called Project Homeless Outreach Partnership Effort, or Project HOPE, has been giving medical care to people who live in the city without housing.
This regularly brings Project HOPE director and nurse, Crystal Bauer, to some unusual places, like under a certain highway overpass.
“We’re under a pretty busy bridge that is a major interstate, so there’s a lot of traffic overhead,” Bauer said. “It provides shelter, obviously, but it’s certainly not without being exposed to the elements. Like I said, the noise overhead, trying to sleep at night, I can’t even imagine.”
Scattered belongings surrounding Bauer and her team under this overpass. The graffitied concrete is a far cry from the usual sterile hospital room where emergency treatment is administered, but the people who set up temporary living in this spot, and many places like it, may be in need of medical attention. So Bauer visits regularly.
Credit Corey Knollinger / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Crystal Bauer and Dr. William Mercer are checking to see if the camp is inhabited to come back another day.
Street Rounds in an Appalachian Rust Belt Town
Bauer explained, bringing medical supplies and expertise to makeshift camps where people without access to housing stay is called street rounds.
In Project HOPE’s case, each week these rounds end at a local shelter where a semi permanent doctor’s office has been set up to be able to give more in-depth and sterile examinations to people who can make it there.
Because living in these conditions often results in shortened lifespans, Bauer said street rounds are critical to this population.
“Sadly enough the average lifespan for a homeless male is 58 years old. The average for a homeless female is 47,” Bauer pointed out. “Living outside is very, very hard on the body, especially when you’re someone who is a smoker, or someone battling addiction.”
Giving Hope to a Forgotten Community
A team of volunteers ranges from a group of three to six who go on the weekly rounds. Bauer is always in the group and so is Doctor William Mercer, the medical director of the Ohio County Health Department.
As Dr. Mercer explains, many of the people he encounters on these rounds end up becoming long term patients.
“A lot of these people I do end up taking care of. I find great reward in having them come to my office, I’m their doctor. It’s special to see them grow,” Mercer said.
Along with emergency medical care, Project HOPE also brings along clean socks, water, and food.
While under the bridge, one man arrived and did not look well. He didn’t want to be tended to medically nor did he want to talk to a reporter. Bauer said it’s very common for people to refuse treatment.
“I look at him and I’ve seen this appearance before and the outcome is usually one that’s not good. We have approximately a dozen people that die every year. And it’s hard, you know?”
Finding Strength in Street Medicine
Bauer said Project HOPE provides more than medical attention. She said visiting every week, you get to know people, their history, what makes them human, and you come to care for them.
“It’s hard for us when they die. We grieve their death. We see things in them that sadly because of mental health and addiction and all kinds of other things they just don’t see in themselves,” Bauer said.
But there are success stories, too. Bauer is especially proud of a couple she met earlier this year.
When Bauer first met Karen and David, Karen’s skin was yellow because of advanced liver disease, and she was using a walker. Now, only four months later, she no longer has that walker, and the couple has just moved into their own apartment.
“Project HOPE has been my lifeline. Honest to goodness, if it wasn’t for Crystal, and Dr. Mercer, and all of the other doctors and nurses involved, I wouldn’t be standing here today,” Karen said. “They just opened up their wings and took us under and ever since then everything’s finally lining back up.”
Project HOPE has recently received funding for a mobile exam room, which will provide a more sterile environment for things like vaccinations, or lancing a wound. Bauer hopes to receive funding to take the program county wide, and hopefully make this her fulltime job.
Right now, only one other well-established organization in the state performs street rounds is West Virginia University’s Multidisciplinary UnSheltered Relief Outreach Of Morgantown or Project Mushroom.
