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Still strong at 80
by Marlene Fritz
At nearly 80, Genny Dalke called her first StrongWomen class “wonderful.”
It’s going to do me a lot of good,” said Dalke of Boise. “I need to get my strength back so I can work outside. I have a whole yard full of roses.”
Seated to her right, 61-year-old Lynn Sauter agreed that the class was “perfect.” Sauter, recovering from a back injury, considers the five-week UI Extension program transitional to returning to the gym. “I’ve gotten a lot less toned. I was surprised that—using such light weights—I could still feel my muscles working.”
Appreciation like this is why Marsha Lockard, UI Extension educator in Owyhee County, trained with Tufts University instructors to become certified to teach “Strong Women, Stay Young,” a national exercise- and nutrition-based curriculum intended to improve the health and well-being of middle-aged and older women. Participants perform eight different strength-training exercises right at their chairs, either hoisting arm weights or strapping on ankle weights.
A no-sweat way to strength
“These are very simple, no sweat-exercises, but you work your way through them and you get stronger every time,” says Lockard.
Loss of strength, achy joints, tiredness, and weight gain tend to accompany advancing years, but Lockard says they have more to do with inactivity than aging. Strength training improves muscle mass, balance, bone density, and weight control while relieving arthritis symptoms, boosting energy, brightening mood, and helping to control glucose.
Lockard taught four sold-out workshops earlier this fall in Ada, Owyhee, and Canyon counties.
In the parking lot following her first Ada County class, participant Peggy Thiessen assured a student in the next class, “It’s not threatening. It’s not intimidating. You’ll have a good time.”
Laura Sant, Franklin County UI Extension educator, has taught a different exercise program—“Fit and Fall Proof”—five times in recent years. Almost all of her 50+-year-old participants improved their functional capacity, Sant says. “There’s a real need.”
Contact Lockard at mlockard@uidaho.edu or Sant at lsant@uidaho.edu
New processor aids chronic wasting studies
by Marlene Fritz
A new automatic immunohistochemistry processor will enable staff at the Caine Veterinary Teaching Center in Caldwell to evaluate up to 60 samples of elk brains daily for chronic wasting disease.
CWD—a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy disease affecting elk and deer in North America—has yet to be found in Idaho’s wild or farm herds. An Idaho State Department of Agriculture control program requires game farmers to submit to an approved CWD diagnostics laboratory—including the Caine Center—tissue samples from elk that die at 16-or-more months of age.
But the Caine Center’s older “microprobe” technology didn’t meet the guidelines of a new nationwide CWD certification program and was so labor-intensive that technician Mary Matlock could complete fewer than 60 tests a week. Each of Matlock’s microprobe tests—1,500 a year for CWD and 1,500 more for the sheep disease scrapie—had to be painstakingly processed, cut, and stained over a four-day period.
Idaho legislature funds $90,000 upgrade
On July 1, the Idaho Legislature provided the Caine Center with $90,000 to purchase the automatic immunohistochemistry processor and to upgrade its 30-year-old tissue processor. Dr. Marie Bulgin, Caine Center coordinator, says the new equipment could allow UI staff to process CWD samples for the Idaho Department of Fish and Game as well as for elk farmers. In addition, it will permit more efficient testing for scrapie—another TSE disease—in Bulgin’s research animals and Idaho producers’ flocks.
Equally exciting is the equipment’s potential for diagnosing other livestock diseases, such as bovine virus diarrhea, bovine coronavirus, and infectious bovine rhinotracheitis, Bulgin says. While simple blood tests can reveal the presence of disease antibodies, they don’t distinguish among antibodies produced by current disease, past disease, or vaccination. Immunohistochemistry, in contrast, confirms a disease agent’s actual presence.
Contact Bulgin at mbulgin@uidaho.edu.
UI students seek portable way to purify water for Africans
by Becker J. Gutsch
UI undergraduates are at work for the second year to refine a portable, inexpensive water biofilter for use in developing countries plagued by drought and waters whose quality puts human health at grave risk.
The filter’s prototype, already tested by UI students working with a Masai tribe in Tanzania, East Africa, won two 2006 Engineering Design Expo awards. Their business plan to promote its use won the 2006 top prize from the UI College of Business and Economics.
The 2006 team included Michelle LeBaron and Cami Johnson, biological systems engineering students who worked with Tom Hess, biological and agricultural engineering (BAE) professor, to identify bacteria and verify the filter design. From the College of Engineering were Don Elger, mechanical engineering professor, with students Nate Cropper, Sam Creason, and Jenn Miller, the student who traveled to Africa this summer to conduct tests.
That first UI team learned that crushed Moringa seeds available locally helped purify turbid water enough so the UI filter made pockets of water drinkable. While most of the team’s students have graduated and moved on, LeBaron remains at UI for graduate studies and is mentoring the 2007 team as it works on the filter’s phase two. Students include BAE’s Matt Aldrich, Mark Rogers, and Dianna Rudeck; Kaki Smith, from English; Gregory Contreras, naval science; Nick Mendenhall and Whitney Menzel, mechanical engineering.
Contact Becker J. Gutsch at gutsch@uidaho.edu.
UI closed mules reap honors
by Bill Loftus
Idaho Gem and Idaho Star, the University of Idaho’s two mule clones that went to the races in 2006, finished their seasons with three main accomplishments. They demonstrated that clones can be as healthy as naturally bred mules; they are competitive; and they helped the public connect research on animals with human health.
The racing season began in Nevada in early June followed by seven California county fairs.
Idaho Gem, the world’s first equine clone, took center stage for much of the mule racing circuit. In three of his 12 races, Idaho Gem finished first. He collected seconds four times and third once. Of 79 mules that raced in 2006, Idaho Gem ranks sixth fastest and second in his class.
Idaho Star started his season with a win, but got lost in the crowd in five of his seven races. He rallied to finish second at the Los Angeles County Fair in mid-September.
“Idaho Gem and Idaho Star still have plenty of room to improve next season as they mature,” said Don Jacklin, the Post Falls businessman who leased Idaho Gem from the UI and serves as American Mule Racing Association president. He believes the sleeper could be UI’s youngest clone, Utah Pioneer, who was saddle trained during the summer and may race next year.
Contact Bill Loftus at bloftus@uidaho.edu.
Economics of snomobiling in Valley County: 3 scenarios
by Mary Ann Reese
A bad snow year in Valley County, similar to the 2004/2005 winter, could cost Donnelly, Cascade, and McCall some 20,000 visitors and $2.2 million in sales from the snowmobiling crowd alone.
That is one finding of an economic study published this summer by UI College of Agricultural and Life Sciences (UI CALS) in The Economic Impact of Snowmobiling in Valley County (Bulletin 844).
Written by UI graduate student Ryan Larsen with Steve Hines, UI Extension educator, and Garth Taylor, associate professor in agricultural economics and rural sociology, the 8-page report also envisions two other scenarios. The opening of a new snowmobiling area comparable to West Mountain near Cascade and Donnelly could bring in (or lose, if it were closed) some 7,200 visitors per winter season, to the tune of $830,000 in sales.
A third scenario—staging a new snowmobile event such as the annual fun-run or the American SnoCross Challenge co-hosted by three Valley County clubs—would draw 800 visitors and $220,000 in sales. All sales figures factor in meals and lodging as well as direct snowmobiling costs.
For a $5 copy of this study, which also averages spending by snowmobilers per day in each of the three communities, e-mail calspubs@uidaho.edu, or download it for free from http://www.cals.uidaho.edu/edComm/pdf/BUL/BUL844.pdf.
Contact Garth Taylor at gtaylor@uidaho.edu.
UI food science students win $10,000 prize with novel twist on popular new health drink
by Bill Loftus
A novel twist for a popular green tea-based health drink won a team of University of Idaho food science students top honors and $10,000 in a national food development contest.
Brian Huber, the UI food science senior and team captain, received an expense-paid trip in October 2006 to The Prepared Foods: New Product Conference in Florida to accept the award with Stephanie Clark, a Washington State University associate professor of food science who advised the team. It is one of the food industry’s top events.
The team developed a ready-to-drink bubble tea—SymBoba—enhanced with beneficial organisms, potentially expanding the market for the sweet teas now made on demand with tapioca. The sweet, fruit-flavored bubble teas originated in Asia and are gaining converts in the U.S. “It’s become a craze on the West Coast,” Huber said.
UI wins over 11 other university teams
The team’s two versions of the drink—Pearls of Wisdom and PandaBerry— clearly impressed this year’s Danisco Knowledge Award competition judges, who picked SymBoba over entries from No. 2 Virginia Tech and No. 3 Michigan State universities and nine other finalists.
Huber of Gooding led the team of UI seniors Colin Seeley, Kristin Pecka, Kameron Pecka, and Jennifer Cholewinski.
The team produced a drink that consumers could buy from refrigerated grocery shelves. It would contain beneficial microbes or probiotics. Among the best known is the beneficial bacterium Lactobacillus acidophilus found in yogurt.
Trying to produce a ready-to-drink version added to the challenge. Tapioca breaks down too quickly, so the team developed substitute “bobas,” or tapioca-like balls of alginate to carry the beneficial microbes.
Another hurdle was to find a way to produce the drink without pasteurizing it, which would eliminate the friendly bacteria. Team members pitched in to find the right formula. “It started tasting better and better as we went along,” Huber added.
Combining UI and WSU strengths
The UI-WSU partnership reflects close ties between the schools that university leaders hope to expand into a joint food science program.
Jerry Exon, the UI food science department’s interim head, said the partnership makes a strong argument for closer ties that a joint food science
program between UI and WSU could offer and reflects the two universities’ long history of collaboration.
UI and WSU food science graduates already have to take courses from each university to earn their degrees. The two land-grant universities are eight miles apart and cross-list hundreds of classes each year open to students of either institution.
Contact Jerry Exon at jexon@uidaho.edu.
Biodiesel kudos for UI's Peterson and national parks
by Becker J. Gutsch
Who could have guessed a bottle of vegetable oil bought at a Moscow grocery store would start a fuel revolution in the National Park System?
That milestone was documented in September 2006, when Yellowstone National Park and the Montana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) teamed up to present Charles L. Peterson, UI professor emeritus of biological and agricultural engineering (BAE), a certificate of appreciation for his efforts in pioneering biodiesel research, particularly at Yellowstone National Park, as the park celebrates its tenth year using biodiesel fuel.
UI’s “Truck in the Park” research project partnered with Yellowstone and Montana DEQ in May 1994 to determine the viability of biodiesel fuels in a park setting.
Biodiesel research had begun at the UI 15 years earlier (1979), when Ray Miller, then college of ag dean, asked Peterson if he thought ordinary vegetable oil could run a diesel engine. Peterson’s first efforts with a research tractor using unaltered,“off-the-shelf” oil as fuel proved alterations were needed.
By 1994, biodiesel crushed and processed at the UI BAE labs was transported to Yellowstone to fuel a 1994 Dodge pickup with 100 percent biodiesel. BAE also conducted tests for toxicity, emissions, smoke, unpleasant odor, increased safety, and biodegradability. By 1996 biodiesel fueled the Yellowstone vehicle fleet.
Now in 50 national parks
Peterson and Jim Evanoff, Yellowstone National Park environmental specialist, became advocates for the environmentally friendly biodiesel. Now 50 of 376 parks in the national system use various biodiesel blends.
UI research into biodiesel uses is going strong today and has a promising and bright future. And to think, it started with a small bottle of oil purchased off the grocer’s shelf.
Contact Peterson at peterson@uidaho.edu or the author at gutsch@uidaho.edu.
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