Lindsay Deel calls the Chesapeake Bay region home, a home she’s working to protect from ecological collapse. Deel, who grew up in Hampton, Va., is using her work as a graduate research assistant in the Department of Geology and Geography at West Virginia University to safeguard the bay’s ecology.

Photo Courtesy: Wikipedia Commons, Jim Pickerell. Dead Mehaden float along the tide line just north of the Chesapeake Bay Bridge

She recently received funding to continue her research on monitoring disturbances such as nitrogen that can leak into the water system near her beloved home.

Through the Environmental Protection Agency STAR Fellowship, Deel received $42,000 to pursue her dissertation research on instabilities in the water. According to previous research, excess nutrient pollution was identified as the major force contributing to the declining health of the Chesapeake Bay. Deel is developing satellite imagery-based forest disturbance metrics to improve predictions of nutrients, mainly nitrogen, and sediment loads to the Chesapeake Bay.

“I view the EPA STAR fellowship as a way to move my career further in the direction of developing emerging technologies and methods for addressing environmental issues and to contribute to the critically important problem of nutrient pollution in the Chesapeake Bay,” Deel said.

Streams in the Chesapeake Bay Watershed eventually drain into the bay, carrying excessive nitrogen, which leads to the creation of large algal blooms. When the algae die, they sink to the bottom of the bay and decompose, consuming oxygen.

This loss of oxygen is fatal to the inhabitants of the bay, including blue crab, striped bass and herring, and creates ‘dead zones’ where little or no life can be sustained.

Several species of algae and bacteria are toxic to humans and animals, creating public health concerns, particularly in coastal regions. The Chesapeake Bay Watershed is home to more than 17 million people.

With her recent grant, Deel is working closely with the Chesapeake Bay Program Office to improve predictions of nitrogen, phosphorus, and sediment export from forested watersheds that have disturbance levels.

The Environmental Protection Agency recognizes this problem of excessive nutrients in the bay as a top priority to be solved.

Deel’s research looks at forested areas for the origin of nitrogen. The majority of nitrogen from forests comes from plants, soils and nitrogen deposits from the atmosphere that runs off into the streams. Ultimately, her goal is to reduce nutrient pollution to the bay to make the water more safe and usable by screening the nitrogen in the water using satellite imagery.

“In forested areas, greater amounts of nitrogen enter water bodies after disturbances like clear-cut forest harvests (logging), wind storms, and insect defoliations,” Deel said.

“Disturbances can be either natural or anthropogenic (human-caused). While we can’t always prevent natural disturbances, we can create management plans that address the impacts of both types of disturbances. My project will add understanding to the different impacts of different disturbance types so we can create more effective management plans for both natural and anthropogenic disturbances in forests.”

A second part of her dissertation research focuses on communicating science between scientists, policymakers and the public. As a news writer at Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, Deel believes it is important to communicate with a variety of audiences to be able to enact change and bring awareness to the environmental issues facing society.

Deel received her bachelor’s degree in geography science from James Madison University in 2006 and her master’s in geography from WVU in 2010. She currently works as an EPA STAR Fellow at WVU. Deel is in her second year as a doctoral student.

For more information, contact Brenden McNeil, at 304-293-0384 or bemcneil@mail.wvu.edu

-WVU-

gd/12/10/12

CONTACT: Rebecca Herod, Director of Marketing and Communication
304-293-9264, Rebecca.Herod@mail.wvu.edu

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – Worldwide, more than 1.2 million traffic fatalities occur yearly, and the lives of pedestrians account for a third of those lost. In the United States, pedestrians make up 12 percent of deaths from traffic collisions. According to a newly published study, male pedestrians struck by vehicles are more than twice as likely to die as their female counterparts.

Motao Zhu, M.D., Ph.D., an assistant professor at the West Virginia University School of Public Health and Injury Control Research Center, led a group of researchers in the analysis of U.S. travel and traffic data from the years 2008 and 2009. Though other studies have shown higher numbers of pedestrian fatalities among men, none had taken other associated factors into consideration.

Photo Courtesy: sxc.hu

“Our analysis differed from previous studies as it was the first to examine three main relative contributors to pedestrian death,” Dr. Zhu said. “We looked at the amount of daily walking exposure each gender reported, the male and female risk of being involved in a collision while walking and the fatality rates per collision case. No existing research had been this thorough.”

The collected data excluded children under the age of five.

According to the U.S. National Household Travel Survey, males and females walked roughly the same distances each day. A sample of police-reported crash data from the same period showed males to be at a slightly greater risk of being involved in a vehicle-pedestrian collision.

Another set of data revealed a far more notable difference: of those pedestrians who were involved in a collision with a vehicle, males were far more likely to die as a result. When all three factors were analyzed collectively, the higher fatality rate led the researchers to conclude that male walkers were 2.3 times as likely to die as the result of a vehicular collision.

Continued research will examine factors that contribute to the marked difference in death rates. Zhu explained that the scientific community already has a good idea why fatalities are far more common among male pedestrians.

“Of course, we already know that a vehicle’s speed affects the severity of a person’s injuries. Alcohol involvement can also play a large role, and not just with drivers. While most people know not to drive while drunk, it’s not safe to walk the streets while impaired, either,” Zhu said.

“Next, we will look at other factors that make males more likely to suffer fatal collisions. Are they taking more risks, such as crossing or walking along highways or other higher speed roads? There are many other factors to consider.”

Zhu noted that lowered speed limits have been associated with decreased pedestrian deaths in some high-risk pedestrian areas. Infrastructural improvements, such as sidewalks, can also play a positive role, as can improved and increased use of public transportation.

The study appears on the website of “Injury Prevention,” an international peer-reviewed journal. The research was supported by grants from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (R21CE001820 and R49CE001170) and the U.S. National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, part of the National Institutes of Health (R01AA18313).

The article, titled, “Why more male pedestrians die in vehicle-pedestrian collisions than female pedestrians: a decompositional analysis,” is now available at http://injuryprevention.bmj.com/.

—WVU—

12-247

For more information:

Leigh Limerick, Communications Specialist, 304-293-7087

limerickl@wvuhealthcare.com

lal: 12-05-12

Our stories live on in the rocks of West Virginia’s parks and forests, as one West Virginia University researcher is discovering.

To unveil more of our state’s past, Jenny Boulware, a lecturer with the WVU Department of History, is setting out to explore and understand the state’s history through the crags and peaks at North Bend State Park.

Photo Courtesy: Tim Kiser, Wikipedia Commons. The North Bend Rail Trail east of Cairo, West Virginia

Funded by Campus Compact/Campus Community LINK, Boulware’s project includes meetings with archaeologists and state park personnel while conducting site visits at North Bend. Boulware will focus a graduate course on interpreting rock formation and land use patterns using local and state archives.

“I’m relatively new to West Virginia and would like to learn more about the state through these collaborative projects,” Boulware said. “The LINK approach to community development and assistance is appealing to both me and my students.”

Boulware is investigating North Bend State Park rock structures from a theoretical perspective, focusing on the legal aspect of cultural resource protection. She will also help to create informational materials that can be used by community members and state park personnel seeking to protect this site and its resources. The class’ initial site visit to the park is scheduled for Friday, Feb. 22.

Because it is hands-on, site assessment provides cultural value for the students.

Boulware will study land-use patterns to determine the purpose of different rock formations found in the park. These unusual rock formations could be attributed to weather, hunting, farming, Native American usage, or erosion.

After the initial site visit, students will conduct archival research to better understand the use and purpose of the rock structures in our state. Then Boulware’s students will create a preservation/management plan for the North Bend State Park rock formations.

“Coordination is key to a successful, quality program as well as a more purposeful ‘beyond the classroom’ format,” Boulware said. “Meeting community needs while exposing students to real-world issues provides a way in which both parties can develop and enhance their collaboration skills.”

To broaden the scope of her research, Boulware is conducting a comparative study with Stonewall Jackson Park near Weston. Both Stonewall Jackson and North Bend parks have similar rock structures that convey historical stories. Not only will studying the structures of North Bend benefit the historical understanding of Richie County, but also West Virginia history as a whole.

“Designing courses in which my graduate students work in and for a town or community agency is intensely challenging, but immensely rewarding,” Boulware said.

“Students begin to understand the complex issues of working in the public realm. Ideally, I seek service learning projects that include professional ethics, consensus building, collaboration and volunteerism as well as projects that strengthen relations with business and political leaders at the local and state level.”

Boulware’s students for the course include history majors Eliza Newland from Hamilton, Ga.; Christine Humphry from Beckley; Abigail Cioffi of Charleston; Alee Robbins from Morgantown; Terrill Henthorne, a native of Wetzel; as well as Jessica Duda from Westover, a public administration major working towards a Culture Resource Management Certificate.

Boulware received her bachelor’s from Coastal Carolina University in 1998 and her master’s from the University of South Carolina in 2000. Prior to becoming associate coordinator of WVU’s Cultural Resource Management Program, she served as Executive Director of Main Street Laurens, a non-profit economic development organization in Upstate South Carolina. During her time there she created, coordinated, guided and completed numerous community projects, including a TV series.

For more information, contact Jenny Boulware at 304-293-9331 or Jenny.Boulware@mail.wvu.edu

*-WVU- *

gd/01/03/13

CONTACT: Rebecca Herod, Director of Marketing and Communication
304-293-9264, Rebecca.Herod@mail.wvu.edu

Yong Yang, an assistant chemical engineering professor at West Virginia University’s Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, is creating a system that mimics the human brain’s cell function to help unlock the clues to curing Alzheimer’s disease.

It’s all about being able to replicate the soft tissues of the human brain, and how things form and drugs behave, without actually using a human brain.

It’s an in vitro system – an artificial environment occurring outside a living organism – funded by a $175,000 grant from the National Science Foundation. But more than a working model, it is a bridge to a more precise way of studying the formation of amyloid plaques, which trigger Alzheimer’s and other diseases of the brain.

Scientists traditionally have studied human brain cells in culture dishes, such as plastic Petri dishes and tested treatments on animals. But a system similar to human function is necessary to help analyze plaque and, eventually, discover which drugs best combat the disease, Yang said.

“We know about the formation of amyloid plaque in the brain by studying animal models,” Yang said. “For humans, we’re still not clear how it happens and we cannot perform tests directly on humans. We need something similar to the human body with which we can do some of the drug testing. That’s a key.”

Still in its conceptual stage, the model will incorporate an elastic material that is much softer than that found in a culture dish, comparable to the material of a contact lens. It will contain micro scale channels, each 50 microns in depth, or roughly 50 percent of the width of a human hair, that will simulate the flow of fluids in the human body. The channels are designed to induce a variety of behaviors in cells being studied, such as different speeds of flow. The design of a variety of nanoscale features will enable scientists to study different cell behavior within a single model.

“We’re engineering a platform that has similar cues to what we have found in the human brain,” Yang said. “We may be able to show how the amyloid plaque forms outside the human body so we can test drugs and facilitate the drug testing in humans through clinical trials.”

Although millions of cells and therapies will need to be tested to form conclusive evidence of success, an in vitro system is the first important step to finding a cure.

“In the brain, the environment where cells reside is very soft and cellular behavior is totally different (than in a culture dish), which is very rigid. How can we use the results based on the Petri dish to humans? There’s a huge gap,” Yang said. “Eventually we can eliminate these plaques and maybe we can cure the patient with Alzheimer’s or other neuro degenerative diseases.”

Allison Bruce and Xiaoyan Yu, chemical engineering graduate students, will be assisting Yang in this research, along with researchers at WVU’s Robert C. Byrd Health Sciences Center.

Yang has been involved in biomedical research since 1999 and is helping his department establish an expanded program of similar research. The goal is to “train students to use engineering principles and biological training to contribute to health care research,” he said.

This project will help other researchers and medical professional understand how cells interact in their environment, and can also be extended for stem cell and cancer cell research in the future.

Fewer than 10 proposals out of 100 receive NSF funding, he said.

“We’re building this model at a low cost,” Yang said. “It’s affordable and easy to use—that’s how we as engineers can contribute to human health care. The NSF can see the potential for health care.”

-WVU-

ds/12/19/12

CONTACT: Mary C. Dillon; Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources
304.293.4086; mary.dillon@mail.wvu.edu

Contact: Sandy Baldwin, charles.baldwin@mail.wvu.edu 304 293 9703

After a childhood steeped in creative literature – much of it science fiction – and a talent for composing his own poetry and prose, Sandy Baldwin grew up and took a job writing technical manuals for a software company where he witnessed with fascination the rapid evolution of the Internet, the rise of personal computing, online computer gaming, social media and hundreds of technology and software advances that accelerated story-telling avenues for creative minds.

His experience, traditional interests, creative inclinations and observations led him to reexamine his career and ask: “Why not put it all together?”

Today, Dr. Sandy Baldwin is an associate professor of English and director of the Center for Literary Computing at WVU and he is set to begin 2013 with a pair of ambitious new projects that will span continents and elevate WVU’s growing international reputation as a focal point for new media studies.

New media has been defined as cultural products that use computer technology to reach audiences: think web sites like YouTube and Facebook, on-line video games, computer multimedia, Blu-ray disks and similar innovations. Baldwin notes that new media has increased communication among people on a global basis and enabled millions to express themselves through on-line gaming, blogs, websites, pictures, and other user-generated media.

One particular new media product dominates the field and is the topic of one of Baldwin’s upcoming research efforts: on-line massive multi-player video gaming. It’s an activity that attracts players all over the world to gaming sites where they create role-playing characters and interact in animated scenarios by the hour. Baldwin said the games have a staggering presence in the everyday lives of millions of people all over the planet and could provide cultural insights and behavioral data of use to an evolving world.
“Students in other countries may not all watch the same movies or listen to the same music, but they are playing the same video games,” Baldwin said “That provides an important window for researchers interested in learning more about how the games and the decisions players make reflect a sense of who we are and how we relate to other cultures.”

Baldwin is the principal investigator on a new project funded through a $76,000 grant from the British Council – the United Kingdom’s version of America’s National Endowment for the Humanities. Working with teams of Ph.D students at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi India and Bangor University in Wales, Baldwin’s project aims to examine the phenomenon of on-line massive multi-player video games and how they serve to reflect and define global cultures.

The project, according to Baldwin, will take a close look at the way people across the world play the on-line games in a data-collection process that will bring graduate students from India and UK to Morgantown and provide the opportunity for WVU Ph.D. students to visit those countries as well. In between the research visits and public forums that will be held in each partner location, the research teams will meet and work frequently on-line.

The project’s results could have implications for people in scores of countries. Baldwin noted that China is home to the most on-line game players in the world with the U.S. close behind. That means at any one time in an on-line computer game, Americans and Chinese players are creatively interacting in a space where cultures, habits and traditions are mixed and mingled in outcome-driven scenarios that are a relatively new influence in international relations.

Pedagogy is the science and art of education that aims to understand the process and development of human skills acquisition. Baldwin said the project is an ideal pedagogical exercise that has the additional attraction of providing WVU Ph.D. students with the opportunity to gain global insight through travel and on-line interaction.

When the research is finished, the results will not only appear in international scholarly journals, they will also serve as the core for a set of education tools that the project will make available on the Internet to curriculum developers who will advance the banner of new media education in colleges and universities around the world.

The British Council project complements an earlier project based at the University of Bergen, Norway, and includes WVU, Temple University and the University of Minnesota, Duluth.

In that project, Baldwin will collaborate with Scott Rettberg, associate professor of digital culture and the principal investigator on a three-year research project. The project will enable student and faculty exchanges, and pilot a joint course by all the partners on the topic of collaborative creativity in new media.

WVU’s Center for Literary Computing, under Baldwin’s direction, is internationally recognized for research and programming involving creative new media. He credits the leadership of the English Department and the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences for its support and devotion to global initiatives and innovative education for his center’s success.

Baldwin is well known in the field. He serves on the board of directors of the MIT-based Electronic Literature Organization an organization established to promote and facilitate the writing, publishing and reading of electronic literature that has helped writers and publishers bring literary works to a global readership and provided an infrastructure for constant interaction.

He is executive editor of Electronic Book Review, one of the longest-running peer reviewed web journals of cultural and art, and also editor of the book series “Computing Literature.” Both the journal and book series are hosted at WVU and developed in collaboration with students. Baldwin’s experiments with text, sound, image, and collaborative performance are widely published in many media, and performed all over the world at conferences, reading series, radio shows, and rock concerts. “

Twenty-five years ago, text messages, on-line gaming, e-readers, smart phones, YouTube and Facebook were words and phrases that had no meaning. Today, they define communication and culture. Baldwin said that he believes the future will continue to deliver great changes in the way people of the world learn, communicate and interact. He wants WVU to continue to be a focal point for capturing a thorough understanding of the implications of the changes as they unfold.

-WVU-
By Gerrill Griffith

Contact: Dave Saville, WVRI, Dave.Saville@mail.wvu.edu, 304-293-7066

By dipping four sample bottles into the icy waters where the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers meet to form the Ohio River, a delegation of scientists commemorated the expansion of QUEST – an award winning water quality monitoring and reporting program that tracks the health of the river waters that serve the needs of millions of Americans.

QUEST stands for Quality Useful Environmental Study Teams and is a program of the West Virginia Water Research Institute (WVWRI) at West Virginia University. It is funded by Pittsburgh’s Colcom Foundation.

WVU’s WV Water Research Institute welcomed new partners to its successful river monitoring program who will take regular water samples from the Upper Ohio River, and Allegheny River Basins. Pictured, left to right, are Dr. John Stolz of Duquesne University, Dr. Benjamin Stout of Wheeling Jesuit University and Dr. Bruce Dickson of the Iron Furnace Chapter of Trout Unlimited.

WVWRI began the monitoring program on the Monongahela River in 2009 after concerns arose over a high concentration of total dissolved solids in the river that exceeded federal standards for drinking water. The effort led to strategies developed in conjunction with energy producing companies that have since helped to alleviate the problem. The program is currently being expanded to include the Allegheny and upper Ohio River Basins.

While in the field, technicians record field data and collect water samples that undergo a rigorous chemical analysis at a state certified laboratory. In addition to WVWRI’s research, local watershed organizations participate in the monitoring program by collecting field data from various locations in the headwater streams of the River’s tributaries. The resulting data is disseminated to the public on a public web site so the millions of persons who rely on the rivers for their drinking water and other uses can get the results.

QUEST’s success resulted in national recognition when it was awarded a Regional IMPACT Award by the National Institutes for Water Resources. A $700,000 grant from Colcom to WVWRI quickly followed which enabled the program to expand to cover the two additional rivers.

This week, those three new partners joined WVU officials and Colcom representatives at Point State Park to commemorate the formal expansion of the project by taking the first official water samples from the additional rivers; presentation of commemorative checks for their new work; and celebrate a new name for the overall project –3 Rivers QUEST.

Project partners who will execute the water monitoring in the expanded territories were chosen in a competitive process.

Wheeling Jesuit University, represented by Dr. Benjamin Stout, was selected to monitor the water quality of the upper Ohio River areas from Pittsburgh, PA, downstream to near Parkersburg, WV.

Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, represented by Dr. John Stolz, Dr. Brady Porter, Dr. Elisabeth Dakine, and Dr. Stanley Kabala will monitor the lower Allegheny River and its key tributaries.

The Iron Furnace Chapter of Pennsylvania Trout Unlimited, represented by Dr. Bruce Dickson, will monitor the upper portions of the Allegheny River and its tributaries. All three organizations were awarded $100,000 checks to move the program forward.

WVRI officials said the QUEST program is successful because it provides the public, industry, agencies and organizations with an easy to understand visualization of the health of the watershed systems over a period of time on an accessible website where water quality changes can be monitored and problem situations timely addressed.

“The Mon River QUEST program has already yielded an unprecedented amount of water quality information for a large river system such as the Monongahela River Basin,” said WVWRI Director Dr. Paul Ziemkiewicz. “I’m not aware of any other large river system in the country that has this level of detailed, publicly accessible monitoring information. It has already allowed us to work with stakeholders to improve water quality on the Monongahela River and identify areas that need attention. Expanding the program to include the Allegheny and upper Ohio Rivers will build on a successful model and make this a truly regional tool for managing water quality.”

For more information about the QUEST program, visit: http://3riversquest.org/

The West Virginia Water Research Institute based at West Virginia University has been in existence since 1967 and serves as a statewide vehicle for performing research related to water issues. WVWRI is the premier water research center in West Virginia and, within selected fields, an international leader. Under Federal legislation, the United States Geological Survey (USGS) supports a Water Research Institute in each U.S. state and territory. -WVU

gg 12/6

100 year old steam locomotive goes back to work to help brook trout

More than a century ago in the high mountains of West Virginia, noisy monstrous smoke-belching railroad engines hauled men and machines up and down steep grades, around hairpin turns and over creaky rails as part of massive logging operations that helped build a nation and create a thriving state economy.

But the work also disturbed and sometimes destroyed streams and land features that provided a fruitful environment for some of the most beautiful and sought after brook trout in North America – fish that once attracted sportsmen like Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and Henry Ford to the Mountain State for high-profile fishing expeditions.

More than 100 years later, what is left of those trains haul tourists instead of loggers, the trout that once teemed in the pure water streams have dwindled, and the fishermen have fewer places to fish.

Under the leadership of West Virginia Department of Natural Resources Director Frank Jezioro, a team of West Virginia University and DNR experts recently rode to the rescue of one particular stream, the trout, and ultimately the fishing economy of the state. Their unlikely partner in that process was one of the exact same locomotives that once chugged and rattled up the mountainsides in pursuit of profit and empire.

Shay Number 5 at Cass Scenic Railroad took on a tough assignment helping WVU and DNR officials restore brook trout habitat in Randolph County.

Shay Number 5 photos courtesy of Cass Scenic Railroad State Park.

WVU Research Scientist Paul Kinder of the University’s Natural Resources Analysis Center, DNR Fish and Wildlife Planner Steve Brown and their partners have been working together for several years on efforts to return once pristine mountain streams in West Virginia to conditions that will encourage the return of the colorful and prized brook trout.

With grant funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration made possible by then-Congressman Alan Mollohan, and grants from the Eastern Brook Trout Joint Venture, a consortium of eastern state agencies, Kinder and Brown have been undoing the damage done by logging and trains – damage that makes it difficult to impossible for the attractive fish to move up and down the waterways to spawn and grow at levels that ensure a hearty future.

“Too many streams were altered by dredging, installation of railroad culverts and bridges and logging itself,” Brown explained. “When you alter those streams and take away the tree cover that helps control temperature, you make it very difficult for the trout to live in them year-round.”

Shavers Fork in Randolph and Pocahontas Counties flows at an elevation of 3,800 feet – which should guarantee cool water temperatures that are just the way brook trout like it. But brook trout must depend upon tributaries for refuge in the warmer months and as spawning sites – if they can get there. Oats Run is one of those tributaries. Kinder, Brown and their colleagues waded the streams, analyzed data and came up with a restoration plan along with the Canaan Valley Institute to restore access for brook trout to Oats Run and other tributaries.

“Part of the restoration at Oats Run involves putting in 40-foot sections of molded pipe with baffles and dams built into it at eight foot intervals,” WVU’s Kinder explained. “Those baffles create resting spots or fish ladders that accommodate migration.”

Those 40-foot sections of pipe weigh more than one ton and fit together in sections to form fish-friendly culverts for the restored watershed area.

The closest vestige of civilization to Oats Run is a town called Spruce, WV and it is reachable only by logging train or on foot. The town, once a booming community that had a hotel, houses and a pulp mill, is gone. Abandoned when the pulp mill closed and nearby logging ceased, all that remains of the town are weed-choked foundations and scattered debris.

The problem at hand for Kinder and Brown: how to transport the hulking sections of new “trout highways” to such a remote and forbidding location. The answer has been working the mountains a few miles away first with logs and now with tourists for more than a century.

They were called Shay engines and they were invented near the close of the 19th Century to do what many considered impossible – climb steep grades of between six and 11 percent, negotiate tight curves, power over frail tracks and pull the heaviest of loads all at the same time. The engines were a common sight in the West Virginia logging industry when more than 3,000 miles of logging railroad line once connected woods with mills. Today, there are only 11 miles left – the rails of the Cass Scenic Railroad State Park in Pocahontas County – just a few clicks away and down a connecting track from the pending stream restoration work of WVU and DNR.

One of the many coal-fired engines that once helped log the nearby mountainsides near Cass was Shay Number 5 manufactured in the early 1900s by the Lima Locomotive Works in Lima, Ohio according to the specifications of Ephraim Shay (1839–1916), a schoolteacher, clerk in a Civil War hospital, civil servant, logger, merchant, railway owner, and inventor. She became known as the “Monarch of the Mountains” and weighs 80 tons just by herself. Add coal, 3,500 gallons of water and oil and Shay Number 5 presses 100 tons down on the mountainside tracks.

When Kinder and Brown had the brainstorm of putting Shay Number 5 back to work hauling men and equipment up the mountain, they approached Cass Scenic Railroad State Park Superintendent Rob Sovine who loved the idea.

“Some of the railroad guys who baby old Number 5 and keep her strong are descendants of some of the original engineers on the line,” Sovine said. “They take care of that old engine like it was a ‘68 Camaro. This project took them and Number 5 back in time to a real railroad job. When we talked to them about this job there was a gleam in their eyes.”

Number 5 is the second oldest Shay engine still in operation. During the first week of October, the healthy old engine will probably become the oldest Shay on an industrial-scale assignment.

Why was the old engine given the tough new assignment? Why wrestle tons of customized pipe into the ground in a remote mountain location so fish can swim? Why put streams back to where they were 100 years ago? Kinder and Brown’s answers are part aesthetic, part patriotic and part economic.

“The Association of Fish and Wildlife Agencies, the Fish and Wildlife Service and even the US Bureau of Census have determined that the hunting and fishing industry in West Virginia is a $1 billion proposition,” Brown said. “Imagine what it would mean to bring back these streams to the levels where they can sustain trout like they did 100 years ago when fishermen like Edison, Ford and Firestone went there. It can be a real shot for the industry to have more available to sportsmen.”

According to the University of Michigan Museum Of Zoology, brook trout is a very highly sought after game fish and can be caught with artificial flies, spin casting, or with live bait. The pursuit of brook trout brings a sharp increase in related recreational activities to communities such as camping, , gear sales, guide services and transportation systems, all of which provide positive economic opportunities.

Brown added that the brook trout is the state fish of West Virginia and is “drop dead gorgeous.”
Brook trout coloration is very distinct and is described as “spectacular” by many experts. The back is dark olive-green to dark brown, sometimes almost black, the sides are lighter and become silvery white ventrally. In addition to pale spots on the side there are smaller more discrete red spots with bluish halos. The fins of the brook trout are also distinct with heavy black wavy lines on the dorsal fin and with white edges on the pectoral fins followed by black and then reddish coloration.
The designation of West Virginia’s official state fish began with a survey, conducted in 1954 and 1955, by the West Virginia Department of Natural Resources. The survey sought preferences from West Virginia students, teachers, and sportsmen for an animal and a fish that would best represent the state. In that survey, the brook trout was most preferred.
Kinder added that this particular project is offering the unusual opportunity to make progress in efforts to restore the entire watershed.

“People dream of working on improving conditions on an entire watershed scale,” Kinder said. “Conditions in these streams have cried out for attention for years. It’s the right thing to do especially for a University in service to its state. WVU is playing the intellectual role in this project to bring solutions to make improvements that make things better.”

According to Trout Unlimited, brook trout survive in only the coldest and cleanest water. Brook trout serve as indicators of the health of the watersheds they inhabit. Strong wild brook trout populations demonstrate that stream or river ecosystem is healthy and that water quality is excellent. A decline in brook trout populations can serve as an early warning that the health of an entire aquatic system is at risk.

Brown and Kinder say they believe restoring the Shavers Fork watershed can help return the waters of Randolph and Pocahontas Counties to the days before acid rain meddled with the chemical balance of the brook trout’s home and the iron engines of progress destroyed their transportation systems.

One of the goals for the WVU strategic plan is to enhance the quality of life of the people of West Virginia. Kinder said projects like the stream restoration follow that vision.

Incorporating the use of one of the state’s most recognizable industrial icons was an unexpected dimension of the work that will be sure to excite railroad fans as well as sportsmen.

CONTACT: Judy Moore: Judy.Moore@mail.wvu.edu 304-293-7882 or 304-669-4870

The National Alternative Fuels Training Consortium based at West Virginia University has been recognized with a prestigious national award for creating an innovative education package that provides electric vehicle safety training to America’s first responders.

The organization won its second National Excellence in Training Award in the past five years from the Automotive Training Manager's Council, this time for its Electric Drive Vehicle First Responder Safety Training. The package consists of a suite of products including smart phone apps and on-line courses in addition to in-the-field durable reference materials and traditional classroom training.

The NAFTC received its award in a formal presentation at the ATMC’s annual reception during the AAPEX and SEMA shows in Las Vegas in October.  Previous winners include industry recognized names such as Ford, Delphi, Bridgestone, Volvo and AC Delco. This marks the second time the NAFTC was selected for a National Excellence in Training Award. In 2007, it won for its Overview of Biodiesel course.

The ATMC is an organization founded by automotive training professionals for the exchange of training ideas and strategies.

The NAFTC's Electric Drive Vehicle First Responder Safety Training educates first responders on the proper procedures to safely approach, assess, stabilize, and disable electric drive vehicles that have been involved in accidents. Training is available through a traditional eight-hour, in-classroom course, and on-line as an eight-hour course hosted through the NAFTC's Learning Management System.  Additional information including access to a free QRG phone app can be found at http://afvsafetytraining.com/.

NAFTC Executive Director Al Ebron explained that, “Advanced electric drive vehicles are safe, but they are different from traditional automobiles. We want to make sure our first responders can handle accidents with electric drive vehicles safely and without hesitation.”

The course's companion Quick Reference Guide (QRG) is a durable flipbook for emergency personnel to use in the field. The QRG is also available as a free iPhone/Android app. Hundreds of first responders have been trained using the course materials since they were released in early 2012. Many more have already signed up to receive the training.

A panel of ATMC training manager professionals selected the NAFTC work for recognition from among programs across the nation that were submitted for consideration.  The award was based upon the program’s ability to meet training objectives in a highly effective and innovative manner.

The National Excellence in Training Award is given annually to outstanding or innovative training programs to emphasize the importance of training for the transportation industry. The award is open to any individual or corporation that provides training in the industry.

In addition to the NAFTC, this year’s recipients include Federal Mogul Technical Education Center; NAPA AUTOTECH; and The Natural Gas Vehicle Institute.

Ebron said it is a distinct honor for the program to join the ranks of other two-time winners of the award including NAPA, AC Delco, Federal Mogul and Jiffy Lube. Also, the fact that the NAFTC was selected by industry peers makes the award even more special.

“The NAFTC is dedicated to educating and informing the public about alternative fuel vehicles,” Ebron said. “Part of our mission includes providing education on these new technologies to our first responders.”

The NAFTC team has had a busy fall. The award comes on the heels of a series of national events known as National Alternative Fuel Vehicle Day Odyssey. More Americans than ever before participated in this year’s events – a single-day outreach initiative of growing fame that introduces its audiences in diverse locations to new alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicle options. 

This October, approximately 160 Odyssey events were held across the country and internationally in Gothenburg, Sweden and Paris, France. Odyssey educates the public on the importance of alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles. The total attendees number for 2012 Odyssey events across the U.S. is projected to top 250,000. Hundreds of thousands more received Odyssey information via the news media in hundreds of markets.

The NAFTC was founded in 1992 and manages education and outreach programs and activities, develops curricula, and conducts training on subject matter related to alternative fuel and advanced technology vehicles. The NAFTC works with universities, community colleges and high schools around the country to develop training programs for dissemination at the local level. The organization consists of approximately 50 National and Associate Training Centers that utilize its curricula and training materials.

Taking a “better safe than sorry” approach, WVU professors are involved in a new research project to extract vital information related to drug reactions from social media chatter.

By creating computer algorithms, which can detect key patterns or relationships within online chatter on social media, the researchers can catalog the complaints about a drug and monitor them until they reach a high enough level to require regulatory attention.

The idea is for drug manufacturers, federal regulatory agencies, health care professionals and the public to be aware of such potential problems for a given drug, and perhaps take a deeper look at the drug,” said Donald Adjeroh (left), professor of computer science in the Benjamin M. Statler College of Engineering and Mineral Resources, who is working with a team of researchers studying the problem.

Normally, patients report negative reactions to their physicians, who then report them to the Federal Drug Administration and pharmaceutical companies. But are all the reactions being reported and is the FDA receiving the information quickly enough?

In a preliminary study involving 20 drugs already on the market, the researchers were able to detect potential adverse drug reactions 80 percent of the time. Adjeroh said they detected these drug reactions significantly earlier than the FDA-issued warnings. In more than 50 percent of the cases where adverse reactions were detected, the detection was more than three years before the FDA warning.

The National Science Foundation recently awarded the team of researchers from West Virginia University and the University of Virginia a $130,000 grant to launch a larger project, which will identify key patterns and relevant information through a coding system, capable of deciphering drug-related information from randomly posted comments.

“There are unusual side effects with reported incidence of less than one in 1,000, but they may lead to life-threatening conditions,” said Wanhong Zheng, psychiatrist and clinical assistant professor at the WVU School of Medicine, who is also involved in the project.

“There is no doubt that some side effects may be over- or misreported, mainly due to different confounding factors,” said Zheng. “A patient may report diarrhea as a side effect of a new medication but actually they started having this symptom after eating a bad salad. I believe the pieces can always be put together if enough information is provided and good computational methods are used.”

But how do you decipher which reported side effects are caused by the medication and which are caused by external, unrelated events? How about intentionally misleading postings? According to Adjeroh, “We have used control cases to check how often the method reported signals when none was expected. Ultimately, the system aggregates various pieces of information from online sources to generate hypotheses about potential adverse drug reactions. These are expected to be further studied by interested parties, such as regulatory agencies, or the drug manufacturers.”

Adjeroh noted that at this time, their work does not focus on the actual cause of the adverse event and the researchers do not necessarily look for intentionally misleading comments online. “However, Ahmed Abbasi, our collaborator and project co-leader at University of Virginia, has developed a method for fraudulent website detection, which will be leveraged in this project,” he added.

Marie Abate, professor in the WVU School of Pharmacy and director of the statewide West Virginia Center for Drug and Health Information, will monitor current medical literature for newly published reports of adverse drug reactions during the development phase of this project to determine the extent to which similar reports may appear on the internet.

“The nature of human-computer interaction has significantly changed over the past few years,” added Arun Ross, associate professor and assistant director for the Center for Identification Technology Research at WVU, who is also a member of the research team. “This work is a combination of crowdsourcing, human-based computation and automated parsing of social media. The near ubiquity of social media applications offers a compelling reason for advancing the research agenda suggested in our project.”

Richard Beal and William Mensah, two of Adjeroh’s graduate students, are also involved in the project. Adjeroh and his partners hope this research will lead to the population of a large database from which the medical community and pharmaceutical companies can tap into. The database will provide more information in a timelier manner so that in the case that investigations of the drugs are necessary, all parties involved have a much larger dataset to work with.

According to Adjeroh, the Federal Drug Administration and some large pharmaceutical companies are already indicating interest in the research.

-WVU-

dar/11/15/12

CONTACT: Mary C. Dillon
304.293.4086; mary.dillon@mail.wvu.edu

CONTACT: Rebecca Herod, Director of Marketing and Communication, 304-293-7406, ext. 5251

MORGANTOWN, W.Va.– Mice and rats may come to mind when we think of lab experiments, but a new grant to West Virginia University’s Department of Biology is using frogs to make medical breakthroughs possible. While these frogs won’t make fairy tales come true, they may help find a cure for one of the most common birth defects in the world, cleft lip and palate. The international children’s charity Operation Smile, an organization dedicated to repairing childhood facial deformities, reports that the birth defect occurs in approximately one in 500-700 births.

Shuo Wei has recently been awarded a grant of $222,000 from the National Institute of Health to study the genetic make-up of frogs. This initial venture is part of a larger research project to determine which genes are responsible for the cleft lip or palate, in hopes of ultimately finding new methods to prevent or treat the birth defect.

Shuo Wei PhD, Cleft Palate Photo: Copyright © 2012, A.D.A.M., Inc.

“Neural crest cells are stem cells that give rise to facial structures in vertebrates,” Wei explained. “So if you have any defects in the neural crest cell development, you may end up with some severe birth defects.”

Wei and his team have generated transgenic frogs that display fluorescence—or the emission of light—specifically in the neural crest. That way researchers can trace the development of these cells in real time and determine their gene expression patterns.

Frogs are the perfect model because not only are they vertebrates who have neural crest cells similar to those found in humans, but their embryos develop outside the uterus. 

“The problem with using mammals is that the embryos only develop in the uterus so there’s no way you can monitor them without doing ultrasounds,” Wei explained. “These are already difficult techniques to do, but embryos in a uterus are even more difficult to manipulate. We can manipulate and monitor the frog embryos by in vitro fertilization and they’re totally independent of the mothers.”

Wei joined the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences last year. He is impressed with the research support he has received from WVU.

“The huge expansion that is going on is rare to see anywhere else. The University is upgrading to a very high research institution,” Wei said. “We have a lot of research support and that is very attractive to many scientists, especially young scientists.”

Wei is working with Assistant Professor of Statistics Mark Culp, who will help by analyzing the gene expression data, as well as two doctoral candidates in the Department of Biology, Xiang Li and Shashwati Bhattacharya.

For more information, contact Shuo Wei, at 304-293-2106 or Shuo.Wei@mail.wvu.edu

-WVU-

ap/10/11/12