To understand how individuals respond differently to stress and exposure to herbicides like roundup, West Virginia University biologist Jennifer Gallagher is looking at small variations in humans’ genetic makeup.
But instead of studying human cells, she’s studying yeast.
Yeast’s ability to grow, divide, age and metabolize food is similar to human cells and provides researchers with a nearly perfect specimen to study cell processes and genetic variation, according to a press release.
The hope is that by using yeast, she can get a bigger picture about how human cells function under stress and exposure to herbicides than she would be able to using human subjects.
The research is funded through a $250,000, two-year grant from the National Science Foundation.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
People who have a terminal illness often prefer to spend their last days at home, rather than a hospital. WVU published research this month showing there’s a way to make it easier for those people to do so. In reality, it all comes down to paperwork.
Janet Black looks up from her bed. She is terminally ill with end-stage lung disease and is due to be discharged into hospice care any day.
Credit www.POLST.org
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www.POLST.org
West Virginia POST Form
“I can’t stay in a hospital forever so we had to look at alternatives to get me out of the hospital and to get me to where I could get the help I needed,” she says.
Janet Black is 73 and has known she was sick since September. Doctors give her about six months to live, although she matter-of-factly stated she thinks she has less time left than that. Her daughter Tammy was in the hospital with her.
“Coming home, that’s her decision,” says Tammy. “That’s what she wants and that’s what we’re going to do.”
Janet stresses she wants to be comfortable when she passes from this world, and that she doesn’t want emergency medical personnel to try and save her.
“I don’t want no CPR or resuscitation when it comes down to that point where there is nothing they can do – just let nature and God take its course and do what is supposed to be done,” she says.
So under her physician (Doctor Alvin Moss’) direction, she filled out a POST form. This form makes Black’s end-of-life wishes absolutely clear and, most importantly, the POST form is registered online where caregivers can easily locate it.Moss is coauthor of a study published this month in the Journal of Pain and Symptom Management, which found that 92 percent of West Virginians prefer to die outside the hospital, yet only about 60 percent are able to do so.
“You just want to be home where you can get the care and the love you need, so you can give care and love to them as well.”
Janet also has an Advanced Directive in place. That lets medical personnel know who she wants to manage her care. Signed forms are important. Moss’ study also found that 57 percent of patients who have signed an Advanced Directive, but no POST form, die at home, while the figure jumps to 76 to 88 percent for those who signed both of those forms.
The POST form has been available in West Virginia since 2002 – one of six states to pioneer the idea. Now 43 states either have a POST form or are in the process of developing one.
West Virginia is also one of the only states in the country with an electronic registry.
“We are the most comprehensive registry in the country,” says Moss. “Thirty-seven forms a day, 1,000 forms a month – up almost 200 percent since we started doing this three years ago.”
Moss says that prior to the forms being accessible online, about 25 percent of all forms – both Advanced Directives and POST forms – were lost, meaning that patients like Black often received end-of-life care, such as CPR or a tube down their throat, that they didn’t want.
“We actually even know that 550 times a month, physicians go online and find the form on a patient they want, so it’s working.”
Moss said that in the end, most Americans say they want to live as long and as well as possible and to die gently. The idea behind the form is to help people die with dignity.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
A team of researchers at West Virginia University is creating a unique portrait of the Mountain State. The Historic Timbers Project is unveiling West Virginia’s human and environmental history one dusty old barn at a time.
On a cold November day, Kristen de Graauw and Shawn Cockrell are climbing around an old barn near Hillsboro in Pocahontas County. Kristen is a Ph.D. candidate in Geography at WVU and the project manager for the Historic Timbers Project. Shawn is the lab manager for the Montane Forest Dynamics Laboratory at WVU and the lead technician for the project.
The project has two, interrelated goals: to figure out what the pre-settlement forests of West Virginia were like and to date historic structures.
Since there aren’t many old trees left, the only way to figure out what the forests of West Virginia used to be like is to take core samples from old logs that settlers used to build barns, cabins, and houses.
Today, Kristen and Shawn are exploring a barn owned by the McNeel Family to determine if it’s a candidate for tree-ring dating. The barn is the size of a large two-story house and made of big faded brown logs.
They are searching the structure for tree bark so they can determine if there are enough logs to take samples from to accurately date the structure. A log is a good candidate sampling if it still has bark on it because that means they know the outermost layer of the log is intact.
Which is important because they use dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating, to determine the age of the structures. Kristen explains how it they use tree rings to date structures.
“If we having a living tree that’s a really old, maybe it’s a three hundred years old tree, but it’s living,” she said. “If we take a sample out of that, we know that the outer date on our sample is the year that we’re currently in. Then we are able to count back through time and figure out what the inner most date is on that tree is. We can then compare our log structure data we have with those tree rings and find the overlap between that living tree and that log structure were the patterns lock in.”
Credit Andrew Carroll / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Kristen and Shawn speak with Bill McNeel from the Pocahontas County Historical Society outside of a barn build by his ancestors.
Shawn adds that the process is exciting for the researchers and the building owners.
“We meet people just as enthusiastic as we are, but coming from a different angle,” he said. “We’re enthusiastic because we’re gaining access to this great storage of ecological data and the people who own these structures get us to come in and take the sample and tell them an inferred construction date. Everyone is just as excited as the next person.”
After their initial survey, the researchers will return in the summer and use drills to take core samples from the logs. From these samples, they can gather not only an inferred building date of the structure, but also a lot of data about the environment that the tree grew it.
Kristen says she can determine a lot from looking at tree rings.
“I can look at a tree ring and see the growing season and dormant season of that tree. So it’s not just annual data that we’re look at. We’re looking at seasonal differences,” she said.
Which is really important because there aren’t many other ways to gather this kind of data in West Virginia due to heavy logging during the turn of the 20th century.
Kristen is working on this project as part of her dissertation. However, she didn’t start with the idea of working with historic structures in West Virginia. Her initial research sent her to Mongolia to investigate ancient forests, but that wasn’t for her.
“It was great but my heart wasn’t in it,” she said. “But what I do know is that I like West Virginia. I like historic structures and I like the idea of knowing what our forests used to look like.”
And she couldn’t be happier with her decision to work in West Virginia.
“It was kind of amazing. Now I’m doing what I want to do. I’m enjoying it. I’m motivated. I’m excited.”
Credit Andrew Carroll / West Virginia Public Broadcasting
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West Virginia Public Broadcasting
Shawn and Kristen walk around the Kee Cabin on the grounds of the Pocahontas County Historical Society Museum in Marlinton later that afternoon as they work to determine if the property can be tree-ring dated.
They have already worked on dating five structures in Greenbrier, Pendleton, Pocahontas and Preston counties with more buildings set to be dated this summer. The inferred building data of the structure is then used by individuals and groups working to list the structures on the National Register of Historic Places or apply for grants to aid in preservation.
Kristen says this provides researchers with often-overlooked environmental data held in the logs.
“The people who go in and date historic structures, I don’t think that they’re even thinking about it. Not only can we date this barn, but this whole barn was a forest and it’s just sitting there. It’s archeology now.”
Historic Timbers Project will continue its work this summer with support of the West Virginia Humanities Council and the Montane Forest Dynamic Lab at WVU.
Childhood obesity could be related to the absence of one particular hormone according to research presented this week during a conference in Huntington.
Losing weight is as simple as having more self-control. At least that’s what some think. A new study though shows that maybe it’s not that simple, maybe obesity is tied to a hormone called Leptin. And when people don’t have enough of it in their system, their body tells them to eat more.
Dr. Jeffrey Friedman of Rockefeller University in New York, presented these findings at a Childhood Obesity Conference in Huntington hosted by the Marshall University School of Medicine. The focus was on fighting childhood obesity and its causes, including alternative ideas like Friedman’s.
Friedman said he along with other researchers want to look deeper into body weight than just saying people need more self-control.
“We study the genes and biological factors that regulate body weight and we now know that there are several genes that when defective can cause obesity in humans and this has led us to a deeper understanding of the neural circuitry in our brain that regulates appetite and weight,” Friedman said.
Scientists are studying genes related to the hormone Leptin, which plays a role in regulating the appetite. Leptin is a protein produced by fatty tissue and is believed to regulate the fat storage in the body. Scientists believe people with low or absent levels of Leptin tend to eat much more. Friedman said these are factors that people can’t control.
"This is not simply a matter of lack of will power or a toxic environment, that different people have different genetic endowments that lead some people to become obese and others not," Friedman said.
“I think the bottom line here is that this is not simply a matter of lack of will power or a toxic environment, that different people have different genetic endowments that lead some people to become obese and others not,” Friedman said.
Friedman said these findings could lead to an entire new way of thinking for scientists.
He says it could take 10 to 20 years for those treatments to emerge. He also says only a small amount of people are lacking Leptin, but that it could lead to other research that might combine Leptin with other drugs to solve some obesity cases. Friedman said obese individuals need a new mindset when trying to lose weight.
“It should focus our attention much more on health than weight per say. And the health benefits of weight loss can be achieve with pretty modest amounts of weight loss. And so I think it’s going to be important based on what we know about the biology to not focus on people normalizing their weight, but rather reducing their weight sufficiently to improve their healt,” Friedman said..
Athar Nawab is a first year medical school student at Marshall. He said Friedman presented an entirely new way of looking at obesity.
“I thought his ideas of obesity and the genes involved were pretty enlightening and it’s a different way of thinking about it as opposed to blaming the person that’s obese, there could be deeper issues,” Nawab said.
Michael Andryka is also in his first year of medical school.
“It’s not necessarily an issue of will power or environment, but there may be some hormonal control and some genetic role. And I think this is probably a pretty promising line of research or it seems to be,” Andryka said.
The students think it could open the doors for different treatments as they become doctors.
One Marshall University professor’s research is pretty unique. She’s examining the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, which isn’t in West Virginia. The…
One Marshall University professor’s research is pretty unique. She’s examining the eastern diamondback rattlesnake, which isn’t in West Virginia. The research will take her to the Marine Corps training base in South Carolina.
Jayme Waldron is an assistant professor of biology and conservation biologist. As a Marshall University undergrad she took part in studies looking at salamanders. That research took her to South Carolina where she gradually looked at reptiles and then rattle snakes.
“Did research for my dissertation at Clemson University and I never stopped, kind of got obsessed with it, but they’re fascinating creatures that are horribly misunderstood,” Waldron said.
“They’re really not that scary, don’t get me wrong you should respect them, but they’re not out to get you, they try to avoid people,” Waldron said.
Waldron’s newest research project will allow her and a team of researchers to continue looking at eastern diamondback rattlesnakes at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at Parris Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina. There she’ll look at effects of military land use on the rattle snakes. The Marine Corps often changes the base’s landscaping for various training exercises. The Corps wants the research done to try to prevent any encounters with the rattlesnakes while also making sure they’re not threatening the eastern diamondback population.
She said what they’ve found is unique.
“So they wanted to monitor them to make sure there wouldn’t be conflicts. So it started out with mark-recapture surveys and we were like wow they have a good population of diamondbacks. Why aren’t there conflicts?” Waldron said. “There’s never been a bite on the island and there really aren’t any conflicts and as it turns out the rattlesnakes are really good at avoiding people even though there a lot of people. We’re not exactly sure about the details of the mechanism and how they’re so good at avoiding people, we’re trying to figure that out now”
Due to declining numbers and widespread loss of habitat, the species of eastern diamondbacks are under review for possible protection under the Endangered Species Act. So the question is — how does she and her team catch one? The answer is — very carefully.
“The way we catch them is we encourage them to go into this long clear plastic tube and they think it’s a hole and they’re escaping,” Waldron said. “You put them on the ground and you touch them on their tail and sometimes that doesn’t work, it’s an art to get them in the tube sometimes.”
Waldron has been studying the area since 2008, but the most recent $87,800 grant from the U.S. Department of the Army allows her and a team of researchers to continue to track the snakes. For the study Waldron said they’ll conduct mark-recapture surveys and use radio telemetry to monitor free-ranging diamondbacks over a period of two years. They will also monitor the vegetation associated with how the marine uses the land.
Waldron said the eastern diamondback can’t be found in West Virginia, but timber rattlesnakes can be found here.
The eastern diamondback’s habitat is in the southeastern part of the U.S. along the coasts of North Carolina down through Florida and along the Gulf Coast, including on several U.S. Department of Defense Installations.
Waldron said there research will be used in different ways.
“So far we haven’t detected any negative effect to training operations on eastern diamondback rattlesnakes, good right? Check. Now with any changes that might occur to training operations or habitat use, is that going to effect the rattlesnakes? Which they’re a candidate species,” Waldron said. “So the application is all management driven, management of training and management of natural resources.”
Waldron says the results will be used by other military bases on the east coast and along the gulf in how they deal with the snakes and their training practices.
