SDSU bicyclists reach Las Vegas early Tuesday morning
SDSU Delta Chi fraternity brothers arrived in Las Vegas at 4:30 a.m. Tuesday, July 29 after riding their bicycles from Brookings 1,638 miles across the prairie and Rocky Mountains.
Senior Ben Wise, Lytton, Iowa, and recent graduate Troy Miller, Sioux Falls, collected pledges for the Jimmy V. Foundation and made the trip to raise money for cancer research and take it to the fraternity?s national convention July 30.
The trip from Brookings to Las Vegas took 27 days.
Delta Chi advisor Zeno Wicks met the riders at the convention.
Pledges can be made and pictures along with their blog can be seen at http://www.freewebs.com/rideforthecurejimmyv/ourblog.htm  .
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| Troy Miller, left, and Ben Wise always kept their eyes on Vegas as they biked across the country encountering numerous challenges and pleasant surprises. |
South Dakota Art Museum to hold soap-making class
The South Dakota Art Museum is holding a soap-making class Aug. 9 from noon to 4 p.m.
Participants will learn techniques to make this age-old staple of civilization during an afternoon workshop.
Leading the workshop is Norma Nusz-Chandler, a Brookings native and owner of Nut?n But Soap, a hand-made soap company she runs from home.
The workshop will take place outside the Art Museum on the patio so participants are encouraged to dress comfortably for the hands-on class.
A wide assortment of fragrances and color choices become unique and pleasing handmade soaps during the workshop.
Nusz-Chandler is also an instructor of engineering management at SDSU and started making soap as a personal challenge, discovered how fun it was and began making it for others to enjoy.
Materials are included in the workshop for a $35 registration fee for SDAM members and $42 for non-members.
To register for the workshop and for more information, call the Art Museum at 688-5423, or go to www.southdakotaartmuseum.com.
South Dakota ?Buy Fresh, Buy Local? group to meet
A meeting to start a South Dakota ?Buy Fresh, Buy Local? chapter will be held Aug. 12 in Brookings.
The South Dakota Specialty Producers Association and the South Dakota Cooperative Extension Service are sponsoring the event. It begins at 7 p.m. at the Brookings County Extension office located at the Swiftel Center.
The meeting will introduce producers and consumers to the ?Buy Fresh, Buy Local? campaign. It is a national program to increase both the awareness and purchase of locally produced food and specialty food products.
Food, food service, health care, food production, and rural economic development businesses and individuals are encouraged to attend the event.
For more information, contact Patrick Garrity, 660-1034, or garrity@iw.net.
First Jack and Marty Marken scholarship for Native Americans awarded
Alaina Jane Hanks is the first recipient of the annual $600 Marken scholarship for Native American students at SDSU. She received the award at the annual Oak Lake Writers? Society retreat July 30.
Alaina, a member of the White Earth Anishinaabe tribe, was born and raised in Minneapolis. Prior to enrolling at SDSU, Alaina attended the Four Winds School in Minneapolis, the Circle of Nations School in Wahpeton, N.D., and the Flandreau Indian School, graduating from FIS in the spring of 2007. She was part of the Success Academy jointly held between SDSU and FIS.
Alaina will be a sophomore English major and Spanish minor this fall. She hopes to attend the Kansas University Law School specializing in Indian law after completing her undergraduate degree.
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| Alaina Hanks was awarded the Jack and Marty Marken scholarship at the Oak Lake Writers? from, left, MaryJo Benton Lee, SDSU Success Academy, and Marty Marken. |
SDSU encourages students, public to think sustainably
SDSU students and faculty are helping to organize the first local conference on sustainability, Plain Green, to be held at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls Sept. 24-26.
Deadline for contributor papers for the conference is Aug. 15. Go to http://plaingreen.org/dream-in-green for details.
The conference was set in motion last fall between the Student?s Association and departments of mechanical engineering; biology and microbiology; visual arts; design, merchandising and consumer sciences; and horticulture, forestry, landscape and parks collaborating to educate South Dakota about sustainability.
Sustainability means the effort to keep an ecological balance in the environment by avoiding depletion of natural resources.
Plain Green grew out of an initial plan to host a student sustainability competition on campus. The initial idea planned for students to bring project ideas and work together to make some of them happen on campus.
The conference will use a symposium format for anyone, from students to area farmers, to present their artistic, architectural, agricultural or design concepts that promote sustainability.
Official rules and entry details can be found at the Plain Green Conference website, www.plaingreen.org.
The top three ideas in each category will receive prize money. The conference is open to the general public as well as SDSU students, faculty, and staff.
Questions may be directed to Jane Hegland Jane.Hegland@sdstate.edu.
Disease diagnostic lab performs half million tests a year
The average South Dakotan doesn?t refer to the anthrax outbreak of 2005 or the dangers of the PRRS virus in swine.
That may be thanks to the efforts of 60 employees in the Animal Disease Research and Diagnostic Laboratory (ADRDL), according to department head David Zeman.
The laboratory began in 1887 as an agricultural experiment station committed to investigating diseases in domestic animals, searching for treatments and methods of disease prevention, and researching animal hygiene and physiology.
In 1967, through state funding, the small university research lab became the state?s research and diagnostic laboratory for animal disease.
After a series of laboratory and conference room additions, the ADRDL now functions as South Dakota?s state animal health and veterinarian laboratories. The lab belongs to the National Animal Health Laboratory Network (NAHLN).
The diagnostic half of the ADRDL?s mission focuses on prevention. When a disease outbreak occurs, veterinarians statewide send tissue samples for scientists to identify and isolate problems.
The lab also serves as the official testing lab for the state Animal Industry Board, which is responsible for regulating meat-processing plants and interstate and international transportation of livestock.
ADRDL tests not only ensure that animals entering South Dakota?s herds and food supply are healthy, but also help to keep independently-owned ranches and meat services in business.
The research part of the lab focuses on prevention and includes developing vaccines and potential cures for zoological and zoonotic diseases.
The lab presently handles roughly 100 cases every day, which translates into 26,000 cases a year or 500,000 test procedures.
Although about two-thirds of the ADRDL?s workload is with food animals, it also serves small animal and pet owners, horse owners, poultry farmers, the state Game, Fish & Parks department, and Sioux Falls and Watertown zoos.
More information on the ADRDL can be found at http://vetsci.sdstate.edu.
Students spend more effort than site-seeing in Guatemala
Eighteen SDSU students returned home happy, fulfilled and fluent after spending a month in Guatemala on a service-learning trip with Maria Spitz, assistant professor of Spanish and trip coordinator .
Students left May 26 for Quetzaltenango, Guatemala?s second-largest city with a population of 300,000. They lived with host families and returned home June 26.
The first week and a half was spent in intense study of Spanish. Afterwards, students split into groups for a service portion of the trip.
Education majors on the trip volunteered to teach English in a self-starting, rural school built of corrugated iron and dirt floors that was funded and constructed by a community wanting to educate their children. Others taught at an existing girls? grammar school.
Medical field majors worked at a free clinic. They consulted alongside a volunteer physician. Students provided medical exams and taught dental hygiene to local elementary schools and daycare centers. Several students helped give vaccinations at a women?s prison and visited with a local ?comadrona? or midwife.
Geographic information science and global studies majors tended saplings and planted trees in conjunction with a reforestation project, while others volunteered with a fair trade organization and helped to market indigenous people?s wares to local and international food co-ops.
Before they left SDSU, students raised money to assist their service organizations. With the funds, students were able to purchase medicines, educational materials and assist children with necessary medical procedures.
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| SDSU history major Aaron Merchen, Spearfish, takes turn turning a jump rope at a self-starting school in Guatemala. |
Mosquito protection needed in peak time and tough areas
July through August is the peak time for transmission of West Nile Virus in South Dakota and residents may need to take extra precautions when outdoors in areas where mosquitoes are tough to control.
SDSU Pesticide Education Coordinator Jim Wilson said wearing insect repellent is always good advice for those needing to be outdoors, especially after sundown and into the evening.
Covering as much skin with loose fitting clothing and wearing insect repellent is still good, but may not be enough in heavy mosquito-infested habitat.
Generally these products have a 0.5 percent permethrin concentration and have the words ?For Clothing Only? displayed prominently on the label. Apply the product to outer clothing (shirt, pants, socks) only, at least two hours before use to allow adequate drying.
Permethrin must not be applied directly to skin, Wilson stressed. Instead treat exposed skin with an insect repellent, preferably containing DEET or picaridin.
Clothing pre-treated with permethrin is also commercially available.
For more information on insect repellents, stop at a South Dakota Extension office for a copy of SDSU Extension Fact Sheet FS920, ?Personal Mosquito Repellents.? Or download from the Internet at http://agbiopubs.sdstate.edu/articles/FS920.pdf.
Ethanol co-products provide means to deliver cancer drugs
The key to a better drug delivery method for cancer patients may be growing all across the Midwest, SDSU research suggests.
Assistant Professor Omathanu Perumal and his team in the Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences have been working with submicroscopic particles to deliver medications using corn protein, zein, found in distillers grains, a co-product of ethanol production.
Zein is different from other proteins in its ability to prevent water absorption. This quality of zein has found applications ranging from food packaging to chewing gum.
Researchers prepare zein nanoparticles for drug delivery. These nanoparticles can only be seen with an electron microscope. Scientists entrap a medication inside the nanoparticles, which Perumal describes as approximately 500 times smaller than the diameter of a strand of human hair.
The tiny-sized particles could assist new cancer therapies that treat cancer cells without affecting normal cells around them.
Drug-loaded zein nanoparticles are being delivered by injection in animal experiments, but future tests may explore oral, topical and other delivery methods.
When outside objects, including medications, get inside the body, the immune system tries to flush them out. The process affects the length of time drugs can work in the body before they?re expelled.
The nanoparticles, however, are so tiny that the body doesn?t recognize and excrete them. Researchers are exploring ways to encapsulate drugs within the nanoparticles and deliver them to the affected site.
Perumal became interested in using corn zein to form nanoparticles because it satisfied a safe, biodegradable alternative to using a synthetic ingredient and could target specific areas because of its size.
Perumal?s work has been funded by the South Dakota Corn Utilization Council.
Teachers learn how to use geospatial technology
Nine teachers and two university students participated in a recent Geospatial Technology for Educators workshop at the USGS National Center for EROS near Sioux Falls.
The workshop provided information on geospatial technologies and how they can be used to enhance curriculum in areas such as earth science, geography and physics.
Geospatial tools taught at the workshop included geographic information systems, global positioning systems and remote sensing.
Funding for the workshop was provided by federal grants from NASA through the Upper Midwest Aerospace Consortium?s Education Public Access Resource Center, the South Dakota Space Grant Consortium and from USGS through the AmericaView program.
During the workshop, teachers learned how to collect data using GPS units, where to look for various types of geospatial data, how remote sensing imagery is collected and used and how GIS software is used to integrate and analyze various types of geospatial data.
Presentations by EROS scientists and city of Sioux Falls employees showed teachers real-world examples of how geospatial technology is becoming an increasingly important part of today?s world.
Instructors included Mary O?Neill, SDSU; Bill Soeffing, USF; and Cassie Soeffing, Sioux Falls Patrick Henry Middle School.
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