MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Everyone’s heard the phrase “snake in the grass” at one point or another, but there’s more lurking in those seemingly innocent stalks of green than a metaphorical reptile.

Ergot alkaloids are chemicals produced by fungi that live in grasses found in most lawns and pastures, and they can really do a number on livestock. They can affect weight gain and fertility – two of the most desired outcomes in animal agriculture – in negative ways.

Above: Dan Panaccione and Katy Ryan examine fungi at the genetic level.
Photo by Lindsay Willey.

A West Virginia University researcher has been studying these ergot alkaloids and the fungi for over a decade, devising ways to minimize their negative effects without hampering their benefits to host grasses.

“Ergot alkaloids can be beneficial to plants,” said Dan Panaccione, Davis-Michael Professor of Plant and Soil Sciences. “They can help plants by discouraging feeding by insects and mammals.”

It’s that last defense mechanism that can pose a problem for livestock producers who rely on grasses as a significant component of their herds’ diet.

“These chemicals can cause poor weight gain, impair the animals’ ability to reproduce, make them more subject to heat stress, and even cause circulatory problems,” Panaccione said.

He’s studied the fungi that produce ergot alkaloids at the genetic level. Now, with the support of a $500,000 grant from the USDA, he’s taking that knowledge base to the next level.

“This grant will support our efforts to eliminate some of the genes of the fungi that live in the grasses and hopefully change the spectrum of ergot alkaloids that they create,” Panaccione said.

The goal is to produce several new types of fungi that produce different kinds of chemicals in common pasture and lawn grasses like perennial rye grass and tall fescue. Panaccione is exploring two possible paths toward that end. One is called a “gene knockout” that basically flips the off switch on the genes that create these ergot alkaloids. The other is to insert a gene that will direct the fungi to produce less perilous ergot alkaloids.

“The fungi that grow in these grasses are very difficult to manipulate genetically,” Panaccione said. “It’s a vastly complicated process.”

In addition to the USDA grant, Panaccione has some valuable student support in his efforts.

Katy Ryan is pursuing a PhD in genetics and developmental biology and has been working with Panaccione for two years.

“My research involves studying the unsolved steps in the ergot alkaloid pathway—studying uncharacterized genes, new intermediates, enzyme function, and so on,” Ryan said.

Developing a better understanding of which genes are involved at which steps in the pathway of ergot alkaloid creation and what intermediates are being produced has some intriguing potential applications.

“This research could then benefit others who want to manipulate the early steps in the pathway for uses such as synthesizing new compounds for medical purposes,” Ryan said. 

Some medical uses of ergot alkaloids include inducing labor and treating migraine headaches.

Sarah Robinson, a biology and psychology major in WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, took part in WVU’s Summer Undergraduate Research Experience in 2010 and started working with Panaccione shortly after that.

“Dr. Panaccione has given me my own project to work on,” said the Independence, W.Va. native. “This allows me to become more independent in the lab, but I still have a lot of one-on-one time with my professor and this helps me improve my molecular techniques.”

Christopher Powell, an applied and environmental microbiology major from Mannington, W.Va., is honing a number of basic skills that researchers need through his work in Panaccione’s lab.

“My job basically entails maintaining the laboratory,” Powell said. “I make the various types of media and solutions used in experiments. Also, I make sure that the laboratory equipment and the lab itself is clean and sterile so it can be used during experiments. Finally, I help with DNA extractions, culture transformations, pouring plates, growing fungus, and other tasks.”

-WVU-

CONTACT: David Welsh, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design

304-293-2394, dwelsh@wvu.edu

dw/5/11/12

Imagine you’ve got two bulls in front of you. They look equally healthy and robust; they’re roughly the same size. But one of them will cost you a whole lot more in feed over its lifetime to grow at the same rate as the other.

Can you tell which one is the grass guzzler, and which is more fuel-efficient?

West Virginia University can.

That knowledge has developed and advanced over an eight-year relationship between WVU’s Division of Animal and Nutritional Sciences and GrowSafe Systems, a Canadian company that develops feed efficiency technology.

Feed efficiency is a measure of how much animals eat as compared to how much they grow. Ideally, cattle will experience maximum growth with a minimum input of feed.

“Seventy-one percent of the cost of livestock production is feed,” said Gene Felton, associate professor of animal and nutritional sciences in WVU’s Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources and Design.

Producers have traditionally kept a sharp eye on what’s called the feed-conversion ratio, weight gain per quantity of feed consumed. WVU and GrowSafe are refining how feed efficiency is expressed and exploring residual feed intake.

“RFI goes beyond the ‘bigger animals grow more’ standard of the feed-conversion ratio,” Felton said. “Understanding RFI lets us know how much feed that goes into an animal goes into not only growth but into maintenance.”

The GrowSafe system features a feeding station that only one animal can use at a time. Each animal is tagged, allowing a system of sensors to record how much it consumed and how that feed consumption occurred over time.

At the end of the test period, system users can compare consumption quantities and rates with weight gain and body size, finding animals that are making best use of the feed provided. Efficient animals pass those traits onto their offspring, yielding generations of savings for livestock producers.

Each year, WVU tests the feed efficiency of around 155 bulls and 65 heifers. They’ve also been testing the feed efficiency of sheep for five years, and they’ve even used the system to evaluate goats, a small but promising segment of West Virginia’s livestock landscape.

“The amount of data the system collects is mind boggling,” Felton said. “There is so much data that we haven’t yet used all of it.” Felton noted the potential for intensive genetic research, spotting the link in an animal’s DNA that governs its ability to efficiently use feed.

That data is best evaluated in the long term. Looking at the evolution of WVU’s own cattle herd over the last eight years, Felton estimates that the animals’ feed efficiency has improved by about 40 percent, decreasing from a ratio of about 8.5 pounds of feed for each pounds of growth to about five pounds of feed per pound of growth.

Beyond the feed cost benefits for producers, WVU researchers are finding unexpected advantages.

“Our eight years of data indicate that feed efficiency is related to methane production,” a commonly criticized byproduct of livestock enterprises, Felton said. “The better an animal’s feed efficiency, the less methane they produce, which reduces the greenhouse gases associated with livestock.”

Feed efficiency work has raised WVU’s profile in the livestock industry. GrowSafe invited Felton and his colleagues (and two bulls) to the National Cattleman’s Beef Association in Nashville.

“West Virginia isn’t generally viewed as a livestock state, so what excited me the most about the kind of showcase we received in Nashville was that it positioned WVU as a national player in the livestock industry,” Felton said.

Felton has been involved with WVU’s feed efficiency program since the beginning, and his experience with the GrowSafe system stretches back even further. The first system installed at an institution of higher learning was at the University of Missouri, when Felton was completing graduate studies.

As Felton was helping to incorporate the GrowSafe system in Missouri, West Virginia cattle producers were reaching out to WVU for help in improving the feed efficiency of their herds. When Felton applied for a faculty position at WVU, his then-unique experience combined with industry interest. Felton came to work for WVU, federal funding was secured with the assistance of the late Senator Robert C. Byrd.

According to Allison Sunstrum, co-CEO of GrowSafe systems, that initial legislative investment has produced an excellent return.

“We’re seeing genuine improvement in feed efficiency for producers,” Sunstrum said.

Since WVU’s days as an early adopter of the GrowSafe system, more than 60 institutions and agribusiness entities in the United States, Canada, Australia, the European Union and Brazil now collaborate with GrowSafe on feed efficiency research. Over the years, results have been standardized, which puts data in a universal language and fosters scholarly cooperation among partner institutions and valuable feedback for the creators of GrowSafe.

“We started as a group of engineers and computer scientists,” Sunstrum explained, adding that the insights of animal scientists like Felton and his WVU colleagues helped GrowSafe refine its systems.

“Since we started, more than 300 peer-reviewed publications have resulted from these partnerships, and more than 40 Ph.D. students have used the GrowSafe system in their dissertations,” Sunstrum said.

At WVU the technology is used in undergraduate laboratory courses in animal nutrition and beef production. Kevin Shaffer, a graduate student in animal and nutritional sciences, incorporated the technology into his master’s research and is using it again as he completes his Ph.D.

For his master’s work, Shaffer studied the links between feed efficiency and potential fertility issues. As a doctoral candidate, he’s been studying the sources of variability in feed efficiency in animals. Shaffer will graduate in May 2012 and has accepted a position as the agriculture and natural resources agent for Barbour County with the WVU Extension Service.

Shaffer will continue to rely in the findings in his new Extension role, particularly in events like the West Virginia Young Sire Evaluation Program, more commonly known as “the bull test program.”

This program has evolved throughout its lifetime to best serve the current and future needs of the beef industry. Organizers have rapidly incorporated emerging technology to evaluate traits of economic significance. In addition to traditional measures of growth, fertility and body composition, WVU animal scientists can now measure individual feed intake and provide insight into each bull’s ability to convert feed into marketable product.

Since first reporting RFI in the sale catalog in 2005, the bull test program has marketed an average of 107 bulls each year to producers in West Virginia and neighboring states. Ninety-five bulls were sold in 2005, the only bulls to sell in the world that year with RFI data. In 2012, it is estimated that more than 30,000 bulls will sell with the same information.

“West Virginia University was an international pioneer in this respect,” Shaffer said. “Ninety to 95 percent of bulls sold through the bull test program are purchased by beef producers in West Virginia, although bulls are frequently sold into surrounding states. A few bulls have been purchased by producers from as far west as Nebraska and Montana and were purchased primarily because of their RFI data.”

From tangible results for producers who can better control their costs to contributions to the body of scientific knowledge and creation of opportunities for students, the partnership has yielded many benefits.

“I love what’s happened with GrowSafe at West Virginia University,” Sunstrum said. “It’s been a great partnership.”

-WVU-

dw/05/09/12

CONTACT: David Welsh, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources,and Design
304.293.2394, dwelsh@wvu.edu

West Virginia University mine safety expert Keith Heasley has been selected as one of three directors of a $48 million research fund created to improve mine safety in the wake of the Upper Big Branch disaster that killed 29 West Virginia coal miners in April 2010.

Heasley is, the Charles T. Holland Professor of Mining Engineering in the Department of Mining Engineering in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources. Other directors are: Michael Karmis, the Stonie Barker Professor of the Department of Mining and Minerals Engineering and the director of the Virginia Center for Coal and Energy Research at Virginia Tech; and David Wegman, Professor Emeritus in the Department of Work Environment at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and adjunct professor at the Harvard School of Public Health and the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Together, they will direct the Alpha Foundation for the Improvement of Mine Safety and Health Inc., created with an endowment from Alpha Natural Resources as part of its non-prosecution agreement with the U.S. District Attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia and the U.S. Department of Justice. Alpha purchased the Big Branch Mine from Massey Energy, which owned the underground mine in Montcoal, WV, when the tragedy occurred. Alpha has since announced it is shuttering the mine, which never reopened.

“As part of our land-grant mission and service to people of West Virginia, WVU is committed to excellence in mining education, research and extension,” WVU President Jim Clements said. “Through this work, we honor those who have lost their lives and seek to prevent such losses in the future.

“WVU pledges its experience and expertise to help this foundation with its important goals in mine safety research, ” he said.

Heasley, who earned a doctorate in mining engineering from the Colorado School of Mines and bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Pennsylvania State University, came to WVU in 2001 after a career in the mining industry and federal mining safety research.

He is currently working to develop a seismic system for locating trapped miners and to educate the next generation of doctoral level mining safety professionals. The research is funded by two grants totaling $1.2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Mining health and safety should be paramount to everyone associated with the industry,” said Gene Cilento, Glen H. Hiner Dean of the Statler College. “Keith Heasley’s scientific work in safety research and ground control will make him a valuable asset to the Alpha Foundation. I look forward to the committee’s work to fund advancements in this vital energy industry that is so important to the state and nation.”

The Foundation is a non-profit organization whose mission is to improve mine health and safety through funding projects by qualified academic institutions, not-for-profit entities, and individuals associated with those entities.

The three directors will meet early this summer to discuss funding priorities and organize the foundation’s activities. None of their own research will be eligible for funding from the foundation and each will recuse themselves from selection decisions around research from their respective institutions.

“I am extremely honored to have been selected to serve as a director for the Alpha Foundation and to participate in this tremendous opportunity to improve safety and health in the mining industry,” Heasley said.

Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, said: “Mine safety and health is a top priority for our company and imperative to the success of our industry. We are proud to establish and fund the Foundation, and also appoint three leading experts to advance its objectives. The Foundation has a tremendous opportunity to drive the latest developments and innovation in mine safety and health to the benefit of millions of miners around the world.”

-WVU-

jb/05/14/12

CONTACT: University Relations/News
304.293.6997

Legend has it that the Big Band or “Swing” Era in the United States began in 1935 at the Palomar Ballroom in Los Angeles when Benny Goodman and his orchestra began playing exciting “hot” new jazz and the jitterbug appeared as the new dance craze.

But according to West Virginia University music history professor Christopher Wilkinson’s new book, “Big Band Jazz in Black West Virginia, 1930-1942,” for black Mountaineers, the Big Band Era actually began almost a year earlier—in September 1934—at the National Guard Armory in Fairmont, where a black audience of 700 people danced to the music of African-American bandleader Jimmie Lunceford.

Wilkinson’s research shows that West Virginia’s unique economic conditions in the 1930s and early 1940s provided the foundation for an extraordinary musical culture in the coal mining areas of the state.

“No scholars studied this musical culture until now. This is new research,” Wilkinson said. “To many West Virginians, this may seem utterly unimaginable, given their understanding of the state’s musical traditions, but among African Americans living in the state, this was once common knowledge.”

Wilkinson specializes in the history of African-American music with particular attention to jazz. While researching another project, he listened to a recorded interview with New Orleans saxophonist Herb Hall, who traveled with big bands during the 1930s.

During the interview, Hall observed that: “All the bands were goin’ through West Virginia in those days, because the mines were in operation and everyone was employed.”

Surprised and intrigued, Wilkinson began pursuing the implications of Hall’s statement.

He researched the bands in old issues of The Pittsburgh Courier, one of two or three national African American newspapers of the time, as well as in other sources.

Before long, his research turned up a network of African-American entrepreneurs in West Virginia in the 1930s—with connections to a booking agent in New York—who organized the appearances by the big bands, which in those days were touring by bus throughout the country.

“The dances in West Virginia usually took place at National Guard armories, the gyms of black high schools or other rented spaces,” Wilkinson said. “They were segregated, but if on occasion a popular band came to play for blacks, whites would buy tickets to sit in the balcony and watch.

“And when the same African American bands played for the white audiences, the blacks watched from the balcony.”

Big bands in the coalfields

In the southern part of the state, the bands played mostly in Beckley, Bluefield, Charleston, Huntington, and less often, Welch and Williamson.

In the north, many of the dances took place in Morgantown and Clarksburg, but mostly in Fairmont because it was in the center of the northern (“Fairmont”) coalfield and had the largest black population of any town in that region.

The bands that played in the north also attracted fans from the eastern Panhandle of West Virginia, as well as Cumberland, Md., and Uniontown and Connellsville in Pennsylvania.

“Audiences in these areas had to undertake some serious mountain driving to attend the dances. Obviously, there were no interstate highways at that time, and it took several hours to drive one way,” Wilkinson said.

During the early 1930s, most of the bands that visited the Mountain State were “territory bands” that came from as far south as Florida, as far west as Texas and as far east as New York.

“Up until that time, the music scene in West Virginia was not very different from that of other states in the region,” Wilkinson said. “But in 1934, an unmistakable transformation occurred.

“Big-name bands from New York City—bands which had a national following—began to take notice of West Virginia’s improved economic circumstances, and the surge of interest in public dances was dramatic.

“For the next few years, these name bands played their way through the heart of the West Virginia coalfields by means of three, four or even five engagements on consecutive nights.

“It appears that local entrepreneurs were confident of attracting large crowds of dancers to successive engagements,” he said.

These big name bands included those led by Cab Calloway, Andy Kirk, Chick Webb,
and Don Redman, a native of Piedmont, W.Va., who by the 1930s was based in New York. Duke Ellington played three times in West Virginia: once in Fairmont in April, 1934, and twice in Charleston, in March 1935 and on Christmas Eve 1937.

Jimmie Lunceford and his orchestra

There were many big-name bands that played in West Virginia, but Jimmie Lunceford’s orchestra played here more than any of the others—a total of 19 times between Sept. 1934 and May 1942. It was one of the most popular black dance bands of the 1930s and 40s, and had been the house band for the Cotton Club in Harlem, following in the footsteps of Ellington and Calloway.

When Lunceford debuted in Fairmont in September 1934, fans came from Cumberland, Piedmont, Weston, Elkins, Morgantown, Clarksburg and Uniontown. Some of the repertory performed in Fairmont that night was no doubt music Lunceford’s band had previously performed to great acclaim at the Cotton Club, including the songs: “White Heat,” “Jazznocracy” (Lunceford’s theme song),”Breakfast Ball,” “Here Goes a Fool,” “Miss Otis Regrets,” “Unsophisticated Sue” and “Star Dust.” It also played its own arrangements of Ellington’s “Mood Indigo” and “Sophisticated Lady.”

“Lunceford’s band was different because it played and recorded a varied repertory that ranged from ‘sweet’ to hot jazz numbers,” Wilkinson said. “It included music for dancing, sentimental ballads, novelty tunes, and virtuoso ‘flag wavers.’”

Black mountaineers knew Lunceford’s music long before he appeared in Fairmont because they heard his band on the radio. The same would be true for many of the other touring dance bands.

“The impact of radio was profound,” Wilkinson said. “Electricity was widely available in the coalfields because it was essential to operate the mines.

“Seventy percent of the houses in company towns had electricity by 1927, when in much of the rest of the state electrification was rare or nonexistent. This made the coalfields cosmopolitan, and linked to the national culture.”

“The dances were organized by members of the black middle class, but by far the largest proportion of the audience members were miners and their families—the working class,” Wilkinson said.

Black miners prosper under New Deal

Why did so many black bands make it a point to tour the Mountain State?

“The simple answer is that black West Virginians enjoyed a degree of prosperity little known elsewhere in African America, and this was due to industrial policies associated with Roosevelt’s New Deal, which regulated and stabilized the coal industry,” Wilkinson said.

In 1933, the coal operators of the state and the United Mine Workers of America agreed to abide by the terms of the federal Bituminous Coal Code, which established uniform prices for all grades of coal and also allowed miners to organize and set union contracts.

“The United Mine Workers of America then shot around the coalfields and they were racially integrated,” Wilkinson said.

“Since the Union was racially integrated and contracts applied to all union members, African-American miners in the state received the same pay as whites. Additionally, thanks to the stabilizing of the industry, wages began to increase dramatically after 1933. Miners had money to spend, and many chose to spend some of it going to dances.

“Another consequence was that black miners in West Virginia could afford to pay touring dance bands more per engagement than did African American dancers—and European American ones, for that matter—elsewhere in the region,” he said.

End of an era

Ironically, it was also the mining industry that brought the glory days of the big bands in West Virginia to an end by the early 1940s.

That’s when a machine called the Joy Loader replaced the individual miners shoveling coal and black miners were the first ones fired.

“Also, when World War II came, it made it impossible for the bands to tour and the Swing Era for African Americans came to a halt,” Wilkinson said.

“Gas was rationed, the bands couldn’t get new tires for their buses, and there was no metal for new instruments.

“By the summer of 1942 the lively musical culture of big band jazz and dance music in black West Virginia came to an end,” he said.

Looking back on this period, Wilkinson noted the importance of those dances, each attended by hundreds of people. These social occasions brought the black community together, provided opportunities to socialize with people who might live at some distance from one another, and enabled everyone to hear and dance to some of the greatest bands of the Swing Era.

Wilkinson’s research demonstrates that the musical life of the Mountain State back then was varied.

“It was not just fiddles, banjos, and dulcimers, as many people believe,” he said. “It also included trumpets, saxophones, pianos, trombones and drums as well!”

-WVU-

By Charlene Lattea
WVU College of Creative Arts

CONTACT: Charlene Lattea, College of Creative Arts
304-293-4359, Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu“>Charlene.Lattea@mail.wvu.edu

WVU researchers examine eagles’ flight plans

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Some would make the argument that it’s not where you’re going, it’s how you get there. A team of West Virginia University researchers has gathered considerable information on the migratory paths of golden eagles, and now they’ve gained a better understanding of the moment-by-moment choices the raptors make along the way.

To maximize fitness, birds should maximize flight speed while minimizing they energy they expend. Soaring speeds of large-bodied birds like golden eagles are determined by their flight routes and the tradeoffs they face between minimizing time and energetic costs. In eastern North America large raptors either glide between thermals that provide lift or they soar along slopes or ridgelines.

Photo information: Golden eagles in flight at the Allegheny Front Hawk Watch in Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Photos by Michael Lanzone.

“This research is really about choices and trade-offs that birds face,” said Todd Katzner, research assistant professor of wildlife and fisheries resources. “Do you go fast and get to your breeding grounds early or go slow and get there well rested? Also, once it gets windy and thermals break down, do you migrate at a slower speed—and take a more energetically costly route—or do you stop flight and rest until weather improves.”

“Our research shows that it is better to arrive on your breeding grounds early—and presumably tired—than late and well rested,” said Adam Duerr, a research biologist with the WVU Research Corporation. “If an eagle is early, it can reclaim its breeding territory from the previous year or lay claim to another territory. Such early arrival will help to ensure successful breeding. Late arrivals to breeding grounds run the risk of not acquiring a territory, not finding a high-quality and experienced mate, or not finding a mate at all.”

The impetus for the research is to understand risks that wind energy development poses to golden eagles. Placement of wind turbines is dependent upon adequate winds in terms of both speed and consistency.

“In the western United States., there are wind developments that kill multiple Golden Eagles each year, Altamont Pass of California being the most extreme with nearly 70 eagles killed per year,” Duerr explained. “In the eastern United States, wind development is accelerating with little understanding of the potential interaction between turbines and eagles.”

Additionally, the population of eastern Golden Eagles is small (thought to number 2000-5000 individuals) and therefore vulnerable.
“Goals of our research are to fill these knowledge gaps and determine risk of colliding with turbines that eagles face during migration based on their flight choices,” Duerr added.

“To understand risk, it is critical to understand how birds fly,” Katzner concurred. “This research is our first step in the process of characterizing flight behavior so that we can understand how birds fly and then evaluate risk to birds from development of wind energy.”

Katzner, Duerr, and colleagues in the Mid-Atlantic United States and Canada used GPS-GSM (global positioning system-global system for mobile communications) telemetry units that his company, Cellular Tracking Technologies, LLC created to study the eagles’ flight choices.

“Such a study as ours would not have been possible with other technology,” Duerr said. “The high-frequency data, one location every 30 seconds, allows us to distinguish the different flight types and compare speed of flight. Other competing technology does not provide great enough temporal resolution—the eagle locations are spaced too far apart in time with locations once every hour.”

The team placed GPS-GSM transmitters on many eagles to record the specific locations and altitudes of flight. For a subset of these eagles, WVU wildlife biologist Trish Miller categorized flight types, and the team then analyzed flight speed by flight type.

“Understanding flight speed helps us to understand the trade-offs between early arrival and energy demands on breeding grounds,” Duerr explained. “With better understanding of such trade-offs, we have a much better understanding of the age classes of eagles that are potentially at risk.”

Flight speed, amount of time spent using different flight types, and altitude of flight also play important roles in determining the amount of time that eagles may spend at the same altitudes above ground level as spinning turbine blades.

The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. Partners in the research came from Penn State, Lafayette College in Easton, Pa., the Virginia Department of Game and Inland Fisheries, the West Virginia Division of Natural Resources, the Ministries des Resources naturelles et de la Faunes of Quebec, Canada, and the USDA Forest Service.

Their findings were published by PLoS ONE, an international, peer-reviewed, open-access, online publication.

-WVU-

CONTACT: David Welsh, Davis College of Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Design
304-293-2394, dwelsh@wvu.edu

WVU faculty and students met and engaged thousands of middle and high school students April 28 and 29 at the USA Science and Engineering Festival in Washington D.C. The event featured more than 3,000 fun, interactive exhibits, more than 100 stage shows, celebrity guests and 33 presentations by authors.

WVU made its first appearance at the event with a bang.


Its contingent included students, faculty, administrators and recruiters who showcased the broad scope and range of the University’s academic opportunities. But its calling card was a new, innovative, educational display that included hands-on demonstrations and features designed to grab students’ attention.

The display included blood spatter intrigue, in which students examined paper stained with fake blood to simulate a forensic investigation; a cut-away model of a Toyota Prius, which revealed the inner workings of an alternative fuel vehicle like those found at WVU’s National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium; an iris scanner, in which students had their eye scanned – part of biometrics data collection that’s a included in the curriculum at WVU’s Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources – and received an enlarged print-out; and more.

Representatives from WVU’s Eberly College of Arts and Sciences were be on hand to answer questions as was Nigel Clark,, vice president for academic strategic planning. There were also representatives from the Statler College, computer screens displaying a microsite with WVU information and a Wiffiti display that aggregated students’ Tweets from the event. Parts of the display was labeled with QR codes that also provided links to more information.

WVU’s attendance at the Festival was not a random idea – but a thoughtful strategy in line with the institution’s Strategic Plan for 2020.
“In the plan, we speak of student success and this requires that we recruit great students,” Clark said. “The plan also speaks of increasing diversity on campus. At this event we will have opportunities to recruit students from minority and under-represented groups.”

In March, Maura McLaughlin, an associate professor of physics, kicked off WVU’s participation by providing a lecture as part of a festival initiative called “Nifty Fifty Program: Top Scientists and Engineers Will Tell Their Stories in DC-Area Schools.”

McLaughlin presented “Seeing in the Dark: A New Window on the Universe through Gravitational Waves,” at Westmar Middle School in Lonaconing, Md.
Joining the school’s officials in April were six students from West Virginia high schools who participated in WVU’s Health Sciences and Technology Academy program.

Peter Bandettni, PhD, one of the first to apply functional MRI imaging to cognitive neuroscience in the early 1990s was one of five top experts who conducted a special workshop at West Virginia University on MRI-based technologies for neuroimaging.

The event was a part of WVU’s program for core resource support under a neuroscience CoBRE grant. It was the first in an annual series of workshop that officials call a “stay at home sabbatical” that offers opportunities to learn new techniques fro and the means to incorporate new skills into research programs.

The workshop consisted of nine sessions that took participants from the very basics of how an MRI scanner works through an actual data collection session on a 3 Tesla MRI scanner in the Center for Advanced Imaging and analysis of resulting data. Participants were instructed on a range of software tools, but focused on new tools under development by the visiting experts.

Each workshop session had from 15-25 faculty and graduate student participants, from the Departments of Psychiatry, Psychology, WV Nano, Bioengineering, Physiology, Radiology, and the College of Business and Economics.

The point person on the event was Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, the contact person for the core facility operations in the Center for Advanced Imaging served as the point person for the workshops with the assistance of laboratory technician Chris Frum; graduate student Bill Talkington; MRI physicist, Dr. Bob Hou; and Center for Neuroscience events manager, Erica Stewart.

The Department of Radiology made the 3T MRI scanner available Friday morning for the workshop. The event was overseen by Center for Neuroscience director, Dr. George Spirou.

By Conor Griffith

It’s not quite like sitting at the starting line, waiting for the green flag to drop, while revving the engine.

It’s more like sitting at the starting line, waiting for the green flag to drop—while building the engine!

“Time is probably our biggest challenge, sometimes we’ll be here working on it until two in the morning,” says Tyler Jacobsen, one of 22 students on the latest iteration of West Virginia University’s team in the Mini Baja Project sponsored by the Society of Automotive Engineers.

“Between class, work and having a social life it’s hard to balance everything, said Jacobsen, of Exchange, WV. “Our girlfriends hate us.”

The next competition is set for April 19-22 in Auburn, Ala., and will feature 100 teams from the U.S., Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, India and Israel.

“Sticking to building the car the way we designed it is the hardest part,” Nicholas Ellis of Clifton, Va., said. “A lot of times what you can build easily on a computer program is not so simple in real life. In any building project when you have a problem, you have to solve as you go in the workshop.”

The fall semester serves as the capstone class for WVU’s mechanical engineering students; they design the vehicle and build it in the spring. The students are asked to create an off-road vehicle that will survive the severe punishment of rough terrain and, possibly, water.

Read More and listen to audio on WVU Today

Ask Marcello Napolitano about aircraft safety, and you get a detailed explanation of his research.

Ask him about his West Virginia University students, and you get a litany of praise of their abilities and accomplishments.

Ask him about himself, and you get, well, not much.

Nothing about his skills as a musician, an artist, a creator, a thinker.

Nothing about how his research saves lives.

Nothing about the many teaching awards he’s received.

Ask others about Napolitano, a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor in WVU’s Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, however, and you get an outpouring of praise – even for his homework assignments.

“It’s homework that really challenges you to think about what you’re learning. I like that,” says Trenton Larrabee, a first-year master’s student in mechanical and aerospace engineering from New Cumberland.

“I also like the fact that the homework has real value for what we’re doing. In one class, we built a flight simulator,” he recalled. “It’s kind of a basic one, but that was cool to take what we were learning and not just say, ‘Here’s the equations.’ We implemented it and actually built something, so that was really cool.”

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For hundreds of years, historians have proposed, examined and fought over just what made the Mongol hordes of the 11th Century tick. A West Virginia University researcher discovered some unexpected insight into what might have caused the hordes to rumble and roll into one of the world’s most terrifying empires after she visited Mongolia and brought home some very old and odd slices of wood on a whim.

Theories about the Mongol conquests have sparked almost as many questions as answers.

Were they migrating with an attitude in search of food?

On a horse-backed rampage for treasure, like land-locked pirates?

Satisfying a thirst for power and domination in a wave of warfare that led to an empire that straddled Eurasia?

Mongol leader Genghis Kahn forged an empire that eventually stretched from Asia’s Pacific coast to Eastern Europe and southward into Persia and Southeastern Asia – a feat that may have cost more than 40 million lives.

One of the most popular theories for the Mongol expansion was that the hordes started taking from their neighbors when they were forced to flee drought conditions that made resources of their own very scarce. But a discovery by Dr. Amy Hessl, WVU associate professor of geography in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences, just might turn that theory on its ear by proposing that the spark behind the great Mongol empire expansion just may have been rain, not drought.

Hessl is a dendrochronologist – a trained expert in analyzing past climate conditions by studying the growth rings in trees. It is an activity that requires skill, patience, powers of observation on a microscopic level and a keen interest in the past. But before she settled on that career path, she was fascinated by history and the waves of human activity that sparked the rise and fall of the world’s great empires. She thought she was headed for a career in archeology, sifting through literal sands of time for clues about ancient civilizations.

“I used to bury things in my backyard and dig them up again,” she said of her childhood in an interview with National Geographic for an on-line bio.

Then, efforts to understand and preserve a changing earth environment captured her imagination. On a summer internship working in Yosemite National Park, she met famous dendrochronologist, Lisa Graumlich and the stage was set for her new career path.

Hessl said she found her “career happy place” where twin interests of history and environment peacefully coexist – even while trudging over an inhospitable Mongolian countryside in search of wood scraps that unexpectedly shed light on 800-year old mysteries.

“I am focused on the interactions between humans and the environment over the past 500-1,000 years,” she explained.

So, when the opportunity came up to work as the principal investigator on a National Geographic-sponsored project in Mongolia focused on how climate change might have affected the region’s wildfire risks, she jumped at the opportunity. Last summer, she teamed up with colleague Neil Pederson of Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Baatarblieg Nachin of the National University of Mongolia and a squad of local helpers to head out into a remote Mongolian countryside in search of tell tale wood samples.

Their targets for research were wood remains in a 7,000 year-old lava flow. Hessl explained that tree rings can tell the tale of a region’s environmental history. They can indicate whether abundant water supplies promoted growth or drought conditions inhibited it. And, as all high schoolers are taught, counting rings can tell you how many years the tree lived.

Because trees grow more slowly in periods of drought or other environmental stress than they do under more favorable conditions, the size of the rings they produce varies. Looking at the pattern of a tree’s rings can reveal information about the environmental changes that took place while it was alive and growing.

The team of scientists expected to find tree samples that would give them an idea of environmental events going back 500 years or so – adequate for the purpose of their fire risk study. They packed up their laptops, microscopes, chain saws, data collection tools and survival gear and headed into the old lava flow for a search at a spot near the ancient seat of the Mongol empire, the Orkhon Valley where they intended to conduct on-site examinations of samples and document their findings.

Instead, a series of unexpected misadventures occurred that eventually led to unexpected discovery.

When her colleague became too ill to venture out into the hot inhospitable region to pick over the remains of old dead wood and examine old living trees; her Mongolian assistants misjudged their tolerance for dehydration; equipment malfunctioned and time ran out, there was nothing left but Plan B – gather up samples of the feasible dead wood they could find and lug them back to the U.S. for further study in the laboratory.

The exhausted researches trudged back to civilization determined to salvage their excursion. They succeeded beyond their expectations.
Hessl was shocked after her return from Mongolia when researchers began looking closer at the samples they brought back as Plan B. They didn’t turn out to be 700 years old. They turned out to be more than 1,300 years old – dating all the way back to about AD 650.

“We had all this environmental history all of a sudden that we never expected to have,” Hessl said. “It’s all about energy. What we are seeing in the rings is that around the time of the rise of the Mongols, there was abundant rain. Abundant rain made the grasses grow and grass powered the horses that grew the cavalry that conquered the region.”

Hessl said it was “all about energy” again years later when the Mongols, after already establishing a massive empire, suddenly moved their capitol. More evidence from the tree rings indicates that at the same time they moved their capitol from Mongolia to Beijing, there had been a rapid decline in moisture in the Orkhon Valley.

“The move was all about energy again,” she said in her Morgantown lab where a Mongolian flag hangs on the wall between shelves and shelves full of tree trunk slices. “The Mongols were forced to diversify when the grass became scarce. That had traditionally been their energy source for their horses.”

She said that when the Mongols moved, the empire became less dependent on grass and used other energy sources instead: the developed a navy, raised rice products and pursed energy resources that were less grass and horse power based.

“That’s where we learn from the history of past civilizations,” Hessl said. “Just as they diversified and switched energy sources in response to changing water quality and other environmental changes, we are seeing changes in our own civilization too. Right now we use fossil fuels but we will eventually have to find something else and adapt. Exploring how the Mongols adapted might shed light on current challenges.”
In an article about her work that appeared in the March 21, 2012 edition of Scientific American, Hessl stressed that she and her colleagues are not claiming that climate was the main factor in the rise and fall of the Mongols.

“Genghis Khan was really the key to uniting many tribes together and spurred them to expand in a way that’s never been repeated,” she told Scientific American writer Charles Choi. “We just argue that it takes energy to create an empire, just as it does today and rains may have helped provide the grass that powered their horses. After Genghis Khan died, the empire became somewhat factionalized with most historians arguing that it became too large to effectively administrate. We’re saying maybe climate change may have made managing the empire difficult also.”

Hessl isn’t finished yet. It’s back to the Orkhon Valley of Mongolia again next summer with an expanded team and a refocused mission. National Geographic has awarded her another $20,000 grant as principal investigator to expand on the discoveries. Recognizing the uniqueness of the work, its global significance, and its connection to the institution’s strategic goals of global engagement, exchanges of knowledge, and acceleration of quality research, West Virginia University Faculty Senate has also made a financial commitment of $12,000 to support the work and enable a return visit to Mongol territory.

Hessl said that in addition to her graduate student John Burkhart of Morgantown WV, the team will expand to include researchers from other U.S. universities who can use Hessl’s tree ring climate data to estimate how many animals and resources the Mongols could have secured from the landscape. Hessl said historian Nicola Di Cosmo of the Institute for Advanced Study will join the effort to uncover written references to climate that coincide with the tree ring data.

Hessl said Avery Cook-Shinneman at the University of Washington will join the team to collect tubes of sediment from lake bottoms in the region.

“Their samples can show the history of the region in sediment,” she said while sitting at a microscope in the Montane Forest Dynamics Lab, the neatly organized research facility she operates in WVU’s Brooks Hall. “They will look for something called Sporormiella which are spores that thrived in livestock dung. The presence of Sporormiella in the samples can give an idea of how much livestock the Mongols may have been able to accumulate in the time periods we are looking at.”

The addition of an historian to the team makes sense. Hessl’s field of study has many implications for understanding the past. Matching the pattern in trees whose age is known to the pattern in wood found at an archaeological site can establish the age at which the wood was cut and thus the approximate date of the site. By comparing living trees with old logs and finding overlapping ring patterns, scientists have established chronological records for some species that go back as far as 9,000 years.

Research in Hessl’s Montane Forest Dynamics Lab focuses on the interaction between ecosystem processes, climate variability and human activities in forested systems.

Hessl and her graduate students have studied the influence of climate and land use history on fire regimes in the Appalachian Mountains, the Pacific Northwest and have developed millennial-length climate reconstructions for the Mid-Atlantic Region using the tree rings of ancient eastern red cedar collected in West Virginia. Her lab has also explored the relative impacts of climate variability and harvest strategies on carbon sequestration. In collaboration with the National Park Service the lab is exploring plant diversity on the cliffs of the Mountain State’s New River Gorge.

“Earth’s citizens are faced with a host of environmental problems,” Hessl told National Geographic. “By looking at how the Earth has changed in the past and how peoples have responded to those changes, we can better find our way today.”

Hessl’s “career happy place” may not be as large as the Mongol empire, but it is expanding all the time thanks to nationally recognized research results, the commitment of WVU to global engagement, and a society that recognizes the need to look to the past to prepare for the future.

-WVU-

Gerrill Griffith
4/3/12