Scholarship & Creative Work

Microbial team turns corn stalks and leaves into better biofuel

A fungus and E. coli bacteria have joined forces to turn tough, waste plant material into isobutanol, a biofuel that matches gasoline's properties better than ethanol.

U-M research team members said the principle also could be used to produce other valuable chemicals such as plastics.

"We're hoping that biofuels made in such an efficient way can eventually replace current petroleum-based fuels," said Xiaoxia "Nina" Lin, assistant professor of chemical engineering and leader of the research.

Gallon for gallon, isobutanol gives off 82 percent of the heat energy gasoline provides when burned, compared to ethanol's 67 percent. Ethanol also has a tendency to absorb water, corroding pipelines and damaging engines, but isobutanol doesn't mix easily with water. While ethanol serves as a mixer in the gasoline infrastructure today, many researchers argue that isobutanol could be a replacement.

Equally important, this system makes isobutanol from inedible plant materials, so fuel production won't drive up food costs. Lin's team used corn stalks and leaves, but their ecosystem should also be able to process other agricultural byproducts and forestry waste.

While much previous research has focused on trying to create a "superbug" that could tackle the whole job of processing waste plant materials into biofuels, Lin and her colleagues argue that a team of microbial specialists can do better.

The Lin group put both microbe species into a bioreactor and served up corn stalks and leaves. Colleagues at Michigan State University had pre-treated the roughage to make it easier to digest.

"If you've ever had puffed rice cereal, it's somewhat analogous," said Jeremy Minty, first author of the paper to be published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and a recent doctoral graduate in Lin's lab.

The harmonious coexistence of the fungi and bacteria, with stable populations, was a key success of the experiment.

Local leaders split over Gov. Snyder's job performance, state's direction

Just more than half, or 51 percent, of Michigan's local government leaders say Republican Gov. Rick Snyder is doing a good or excellent job, while 45 percent say his performance is just fair or poor, according to a U-M survey.

Meanwhile, 54 percent believe the state is headed in the right direction, continuing an upward three-year trend, according to the poll by the Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy.

The poll, part of the Michigan Public Policy Survey series at the Ford School's Center for Local, State, and Urban Policy (CLOSUP), reports that political party affiliation had a big impact on those results.

While two-thirds of Republican local officials think Snyder is doing a good or excellent job, just 43 percent of Independent officials and 19 percent of Democratic officials feel the same way.

And while 69 percent of Republican local leaders say that Michigan is headed in the right direction, fewer Independent officials (43 percent) and Democratic officials (26 percent) agree.

Regardless of their partisan identification, local leaders weren't quite as fond of the job the Michigan Legislature has done in the past year with just 26 percent overall rating its work as either good or excellent and 69 percent rating it as just fair or poor. Those figures are in line with their assessments in 2012.

Michigan's state government dealt with a host of controversial issues in the past year that impact local jurisdictions, including Right to Work legislation, a partial repeal of the state's personal property tax, the appointment of several city and school district emergency managers and the debate over Medicare expansion.

"When we asked local leaders why they gave a thumbs up or thumbs down to state policymakers' job performance, we received more than 3,000 explanations, covering a wide range of issues from economic and tax policy to social policy," said Tom Ivacko, program manager for CLOSUP. "Our local government leaders are closely watching policymakers and policy developments in Lansing."

Irrigation in arid regions can increase malaria risk for a decade

New irrigation systems in arid regions benefit farmers but can increase the local malaria risk for more than a decade - which is longer than previously believed - despite intensive and costly use of insecticides, new U-M-led study in northwest India concludes.

The study's findings demonstrate the need to include a strong, binding commitment to finance and implement long-term public health and safety programs when building large-scale irrigation projects, according to the researchers.

"In these dry, fragile ecosystems, where increase in water availability from rainfall is the limiting factor for malaria transmission, irrigation infrastructure can drastically alter mosquito population abundance to levels above the threshold needed to maintain malaria transmission," said lead author and U-M graduate student Andres Baeza, who works in the laboratory of Mercedes Pascual in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology.

"Our results highlight the need for considering health impacts in the long-term planning, assessment and mitigation of projects related to water resources," Baeza said.

The researchers studied changes in land use and malaria risk around a large irrigation project under construction in a semi-arid area in the northeast part of the Indian state of Gujarat. Water from the project is eventually expected to cover more than 47 million acres and will benefit about a million farmers.

Historical evidence shows that after irrigation is introduced into arid locations, the increased malaria risk eventually subsides and that this food-versus-disease dilemma is a temporary stage on the road to greater prosperity.

The new study demonstrates that this transition phase from high risk to low disease prevalence can last more than a decade. The study is the first to combine satellite imagery of vegetation cover with public health records of malaria cases over a large region to track changes that occur as a mega-irrigation project progresses.

The findings are published online Aug. 12 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Two left feet? Study looks to demystify why we lose our balance

It's always in front of a million people and feels like eternity. You're strolling along when suddenly you've stumbled - the brain realizes you're falling, but your muscles aren't doing anything to stop it.

For a young person, a fall is usually just embarrassing. However, for the elderly, falling can be life threatening. Among the elderly who break a hip, 80 percent die within a year.

U-M researchers believe that the critical window of time between when the brain senses a fall and the muscles respond may help explain why so many older people suffer these serious falls. A better understanding of what happens in the brain and muscles during this lag could go a long way toward prevention.

To that end, researchers at the School of Kinesiology developed a novel way of looking at the electrical response in the brain before and during a fall by using an electroencephalogram.

Findings showed that many areas of the brain sense and respond to a fall, but that happens well before the muscles react. Lead researcher Daniel Ferris likened the study method to recording an orchestra with many microphones and then teasing out the sounds of specific instruments. In the study, researchers measured electrical activity in different regions of the brain.

"We're using an EEG in a way others don't, to look at what's going on inside the brain," said Ferris, a professor in kinesiology. "We were able to determine what parts of the brain first identify when you are losing your balance during walking."

The researchers were surprised that so many different parts of the brain activate during a fall, and they didn't expect the brain to recognize a loss of balance as early as it does.

The study was published online in the Journal of Neurophysiology.

Most teens have easy access to their prescription drugs

Three in four teens who were prescribed medication during the last six months had unsupervised access to them at home, likely increasing the risk of overdose, substance abuse and drug diversion, a new U-M study indicates.

The study sought to determine teens' access to their own medications, specifically pain, stimulant, anti-anxiety and sedative drugs that are federally controlled. Among those who said the storage of their prescribed medications was supervised, more than half described accessible locations, such as a cabinet or drawer in the kitchen or bathroom, or on a countertop.

Researchers said the findings were alarming given that the respondents were in the eighth and ninth grades with a mean age of 14.1 years.

"The lack of parental supervision and proper storage of medicines prescribed to adolescents may facilitate (their) nonmedical use of these medications, putting them at risk for poisoning or overdose," said the study's lead author Paula Ross-Durow, a research investigator at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender.

Without proper storage or supervision, teens might be more likely to give or sell them to others, the researchers said.

The researchers said some parents and guardians may not believe that their children would engage in nonmedical use and, therefore, do not take steps to secure prescription medications.

"It is critical that clinicians educate parents and patients about the importance of proper storage and disposal of medications, particularly those with abuse potential," Ross-Durow said.

In addition to Ross-Durow, the study's authors are Sean Esteban McCabe, research associate professor at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender, and Carol Boyd, the Deborah J. Oakley Collegiate Professor of Nursing and co-director of the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy Center for Women and Girls.

The findings appear in the August issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Source: Umich