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1. Poplar Genome Research Coauthored by SFRES Faculty Makes the Cover of Science |
Wood from a common tree may one day play a major role in filling American gas tanks, according to scientists whose research on the fast-growing poplar tree is featured on the cover of Friday’s (Sept. 15) edition of the journal Science.
The article, coauthored in part by three faculty members in the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science, highlights the analysis of the first complete DNA sequence of a tree, the black cottonwood or Populus trichocarpa. It lays groundwork for the potential development of trees that could serve as the ideal “feedstock” for a new generation of biofuels such as cellulosic ethanol.
The research is the result of a four-year effort, led by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Joint Genome Institute and Oak Ridge National Laboratory, uniting the efforts of 34 institutions from around the world, including Michigan Tech. The lead author is ORNL and DOE JGI researcher Gerald A. Tuskan.
The effort has been a mountaintop experience for the Michigan Tech team. “We’ve been doing this kind of research at Michigan Tech for 20 years, and we’ve made a number of groundbreaking discoveries,” said Professor Chung-Jui Tsai, director of the Biotechnology Research Center and one of the three Michigan Tech coauthors of the Science article, along with Assistant Professor Victor Busov and Associate Professor Chandrashekhar Joshi. “But this is a real milestone for the entire forest research community.”
The research opens the door to solving some of the earth’s most pressing ecological problems. “By understanding the tree genome, we could plant trees that lower greenhouse gases,” said Joshi.
As evidence of global warming mounts, scientists are studying trees as an alternative energy source. Like fossil fuels, they release the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide when they burn. However, unlike oil and gas, they absorb it from the atmosphere as they grow, essentially mopping up after themselves, through a process known as carbon sequestration.
“This opens up opportunities for environmentalists and biotechnologists to work together,” Busov said. “Eventually, we might be able to use that knowledge to reduce greenhouse gases and improve soil fertility, as well as provide an enhanced source of biofuels.”
Poplar’s extraordinarily rapid growth and its relatively compact genome size of 480 million nucleotide units, 40 times smaller than the genome of pine, are among the many features that led researchers to target poplar as a model crop for biofuels production.
“Under optimal conditions, poplars can add a dozen feet of growth each year and reach maturity in as few as four years, permitting selective breeding for large-scale sustainable plantation forestry,” said Sam Foster of the U.S. Forest Service. “This rapid growth coupled with conversion of the lignocellulosic portion of the plant to ethanol has the potential to provide a renewable energy resource along with a reduction of greenhouse gases.”
The research team identified 93 genes associated with the production of cellulose, hemicellulose and lignin, the building blocks of plant cell walls. The biopolymers cellulose and hemicellulose constitute the most abundant organic materials on earth, which by enzymatic action can be broken down into sugars that in turn can be fermented into alcohol and distilled to yield fuel-quality ethanol and other liquid fuels.
Poplar is the most complex genome to be sequenced and assembled by a single public sequencing facility and only the third plant to date to have its genome completely sequenced and published. The first, back in 2000, was the tiny weed Arabidopsis thaliana an important model for plant genetics. Rice was the second, two years ago.
Populus trichocarpa is one of the tallest broadleaf hardwood trees in the western U.S., native to the Pacific coast from San Diego to Alaska. The sequenced DNA was isolated from a specimen collected along the banks of the Nisqually River in Washington state.
Among the major discoveries yielded from the poplar project is the identification of over 45,000 protein-coding genes, more than any other organism sequenced to date, approximately twice as many as present in the human genome (which has a genome six times larger than the poplar’s).
The poplar project supports a broader DOE drive to accelerate research into biofuels production under the Bush Administration’s Advanced Energy Initiative. Scientists envision a future where vast poplar farms in regions such as the Upper Midwest, the Pacific Northwest and portions of the southeastern U.S. could provide a steady supply of tree biomass rich in cellulose that can be transformed by specialized biorefineries into fuels like ethanol. Other regions of the country might specialize in different “energy crops” suited to their particular climate and soil conditions, including such plants as switchgrass and willow. In addition, a large quantity of biofuels might be produced from agricultural and forestry waste.
Now that the genes have been identified, the consortium of scientists is now working on the next phase of the project: deciphering the role played by each gene.
“There are secrets to life embedded in this genome that we don’t know anything about,” Busov said. For instance, trees live longer and grow larger than any other living thing, and the mechanisms controling that are encoded in their DNA.
“Our next step is to create knowledge from this information,” said Joshi. “And the final step will be to use that knowledge with wisdom, to benefit every organism on earth.” |
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2. United Way Chili Challenge Thursday |
The Copper Country United Way Chili Challenge will be held 5-7 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 14, in the Memorial Union Ballroom.
Eight restaurants will participate, and 15 local organizations that United Way supports will have informational booths.
Admission is $2 for this kickoff to the annual United Way campaign. |
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3. More Women Attending Michigan Tech |
The number of women enrolling at Michigan Tech for the first time is up by about a third, according to preliminary numbers.
As of Thursday, Sept. 14, 25 percent of new students are female, compared to 19 percent last year. Overall female enrollment at the university has increased from 23 percent to 24 percent, from a total of 1,523 to 1,575.
"We believe this is due to a shift in our marketing," said John Lehman, assistant vice president of enrollment services. "In its brochures, ads and informational publications, the university has made a conscious effort to feature women.
"We are offering more degree programs that tend to appeal to women, but the percentage of Michigan Tech women majoring in fields such as engineering is also on the rise," he said. "Our hope is that this new marketing focus is helping more young women broaden their horizons and consider engineering as a career."
Total enrollment is up by 36 over the last year, from 6,508 to 6,544. The number of graduate students is up from 897 to 915. Undergraduate enrollment has risen from 5,611 to 5,629.
The number of American minority students has risen slightly, from 383 to 392, which reflects the university's efforts to enhance the diversity of the campus, Lehman said. |
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4. Reminder: Parade of Nations, "Crossing Cultural Bridges," Saturday |
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The Parade of Nations begins at 11 a.m. this Saturday, Sept. 16, at the Hancock Middle School. It will proceed across the bridge to the Dee Stadium where foods, crafts, music and entertainment will be presented from the more than 90 countries represented at Tech. |
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5. Reminder: Los Inkas Sunday |
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Follow up your Parade of Nations experience with a live performance by Los Inkas this Sunday, Sept. 17, at 7 p.m. in the McArdle Theater. Los Inkas are Saraguro indigenous people from southern Ecuador working to keep the ancient spiritual and ethnic identity of their people alive. Tickets are $5 and are available at the Parade of Nations or at the door. |
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6. Internet Humor at the Rozsa Monday |
By Valerie Pegg, director, Rozsa Center
Sit back and enjoy an evening with Internet personality Rich "Lowtax" Kyanka on Monday, Sept. 18, at 7:30 p.m. in the Rozsa Center.
When asked what he would suggest for a lecture title, Kyanka offered "The Internet: What Do I Roll to Kill It?" which may or may not have much to do with what he will actually speak about. He promises to "explore many fascinating subjects and topics which cannot possibly be listed, mostly because the speech hasn't been written yet." Student Entertainment Board members, Kyanka's hosts for the visit, conclude that it doesn't really matter what he talks about, as it will undoubtedly be entertaining and possibly thought provoking.
Kyanka is the owner and operator of the comedy web site Something Awful. The site includes digitally edited pictures, instant messaging pranks, humorous negative reviews and links to disgusting, confusing, humorous, disturbing and stupid items in the media. It also hosts the Something Awful forum, which has over 68,000 members and is growing rapidly. If you are unfamiliar with the site, check out the "Awful Link of the Day," "This Week in Nerd Rage" or the sequel to "The Modern Dilemma of the Hot Dog," and you'll get an idea of the satirical, quirky, off-the-wall humor for which Kyanka is famous. The humor is suited to all ages, as long as you are between 17 and 25. SEB extends a warm invitation to Michigan Tech's faculty and staff to attend.
Kyanka has modestly informed SEB that he has used the Internet and various forms of electrical devices such as eggbeaters for well over six months, and has grown to be an expert in the field of talking about things he doesn't really understand.
He also reports that scholars from across the globe unanimously agree that the thoroughly documented and respected field research Kyanka has gathered regarding the fundamental infrastructure of the Internet clearly doesn't exist in any form whatsoever, but this has not stopped them from failing to praise his lack of work presented in breathtaking 3D at Michigan Tech.
The presentation "will probably involve a lot of yelling," Kyanka warns, and he has been warned in turn by the Rozsa staff that there is a decibel limit enforced at the Rozsa Center. He also offers "free pony rides and car washes to the first 100 attendees." It should be noted that as SEB members could not find a pony and aren't willing to wash cars, they take no responsibility for this, so anyone interested must talk to Kyanka.
Kyanka is now also the owner of Awful Video, a movie publishing company, and two clothing lines, one that mocks sports fanaticism and team loyalty and another that features drawings of "cute" animals wielding heavy weapons.
P.S. You can thank SEB for inviting Kyanka to speak at the Rozsa.
His visit is funded by an allocation from the Undergraduate Student Government to the SEB from the Student Activity Fee. |
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7. "Can Dogs See Ghosts?" Seminar Monday |
Robert Liu of the University of Hawaii will give a talk, "Can Dogs See Ghosts? (The Chemistry of Vision)," on Monday, Sept. 18, at 7 p.m. in Chem Sci 101.
During his boyhood in Shanghai, China, Liu often heard the statement, "Dogs can see ghosts!" Now, after more than three decades of research in Vitamin A and visual pigments, he asked himself whether there is scientific basis for that statement. To answer this question, Liu will first review the important developments in the chemistry of vision in recent decades, with emphasis on the work carried out at the University of Hawaii.
Topics to be covered include stereospecificity of the binding site of rhodopsin, the probing of specific protein-substrate interactions (in rhodopsin) through F-NMR spectroscopy, the specific mode of photoreaction that triggers the visual process and the unusually high photosensitivity of rhodopsin.
With these as background information, Riu shall then address the question "Can Dogs See Ghosts?"
This seminar is sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Section of the American Chemical Society and is open to the public. |
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8. Teaching at Tech: Curriculum Alignment v. Constructive Alignment |
by William Kennedy, director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Faculty Development
Measuring student learning at prescribed intervals and then periodically applying the results of those assessments to generate improved instructional variations is a seductively simple and appealing notion. The current higher education assessment movement, which flowed out of the K-12 accountability movement, also fueled the present fervor in standardized testing, with its broadest application being assessing the success of the ironically titled No Child Left Behind plan in K-12 public education.
"You can't change what you can't measure," educational jingoists proclaim. Cadres of K-12 teachers, spurred on by threats of institutional reprisals for failing to document improvement in assessment measures, cobbled together long and exhaustive lists of stuff that all of their students should have learned by certain grade levels. They call this process curriculum alignment. These lists were then turned over to professional test makers to devise devilishly challenging multiple-guess questions to see how many cookie crunchers can cut the mustard when the big test occurs. Now many states, in an effort to encourage students to succeed in passing these crucial tests, have stooped to offering sizable cash bounties to those who demonstrate proficiency in supposedly critical subject areas like math and science. Other states pay teachers and administrators substantial bonuses based on the aggregate test-taking prowess and performance of their charges.
What has resulted from these sorts of assessment efforts is an ever more pernicious form of creeping vocational myopia that results in increasingly overt efforts by pragmatic line educators to "teach to the test." Some of my teacher ed students are quite shocked when I tell them that some schools provide teachers with minute-by-minute scripted lesson plans to ensure that they are properly addressing "the standards" in a timely and effective manner.
In my view, what the modern assessment protocols demonstrate most clearly is the profound and crippling debasement of the potential of our educational programs to encourage the sort of deep and durable transformative learning and thinking that enables individual human beings to become fully functioning, productive and creative citizens, contributing members of an increasingly frenetic and complex world community.
Is it surprising, then, given the lay of the political landscape, that business leaders have taken full advantage of this period of debased educational ideals to further their own view that schools, even colleges and universities, are first and foremost to be seen as vocational preparation centers primarily funded and maintained to produce an endless cadre of business and industry functionaries ready, willing and able to fuel some imagined economy of the 21st century? Don't like math, Johnny? Tough nuggies! Learn to like it or you better get used to saying, "You want that supersized, Mister?"
Educational scholar John Biggs offers an alternative version of educational reform that might just help us to avoid the increasingly superficial and reductionist tendencies implicit in our current approach to education. He calls this approach constructive alignment.*
Constructive alignment asks educators to begin their reform work not by making lists, or testing and fiddling with what we already know is broken, but by carefully and thoughtfully reexamining and then clearly articulating the rich array of actual outcomes associated with each of our educational programs. Biggs says that we must seek to go beyond the facts and protocols that we want our students to know and ask ourselves the deeper questions. For example, we must ask, "What should our graduates be able to do with these ideas that they will encounter in college?" Is being able to repeat them enough?
Given the frightening uncertainty of the future, we must ask how well our graduates will be able to adapt to unprecedented change. We must ask ourselves what sorts of ethical and professional parameters we want for our students to consider and bring into their lives both as employees and as citizens. In short, Biggs asks us to go beyond counting how many facts and problem-solving protocols our students can reproduce on the assessment instrument and consider, once more, this broader and richer sense of the entire enterprise.
If we don't take a hand in crafting our future and stemming the present tide, others will gladly continue to do that for us.
* Teaching for Quality Learning at University, Society for Research into Higher Education, Open University Press, Philadelphia, 2003 |
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9. Job Postings |
The following job descriptions are available in the Human Resources Office. For more information, call 487-2280, email jobs@mtu.edu or go to http://www.admin.mtu.edu/hro/postings
9/15/06 - 9/21/06
Office Assistant 4
Housing and Residential Life
UAW internal and external posting
Senior Operator/Dispatcher N6
Public Safety
Varied shifts--may include weekends and holidays
UAW internal posting only
Michigan Technological University is an equal opportunity educational institution/equal opportunity employer. |
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10. New Funding |
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Casey J. Huckins received $28,559 for the fourth year of a potential six-year project from the Huron Mountain Wildlife Foundation for "Long-Term Research on Salmon Trout Coasters: Coho Competition Phase." |
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11. In the News |
Professor Rolf Peterson (SFRES) was quoted in a recent AP article on the dangers of wolves becoming desensitized to the presence of humans in the Isle Royale National Park. Peterson warns that although wolf attacks are rare, they may escalate as natural prey populations decline and wolves begin to recognize humans as a viable food source.
This article was published in the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times and numerous internet new sites, including Yahoo.
The full article can be viewed at http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060911/ap_on_sc/fearless_wolves . |
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12. New Staff |
Stefanie Block joins the Department of Fine Arts staff as an office assistant 4. She was previously an engineering intern aide for the City of Muskegon Engineering Department. Block holds a BS in Civil Engineering from Michigan Tech. She lives in Houghton.
Reginald Emanuel Saxton joins the staff of Facilities Operations as an office assistant 3. He is married to Latoya Saxton and is from Montgomery, Ala. |
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13. Microfilm Reader/Printer Free from Student Records and Registration |
The Office of Student Records and Registration has a 3M microfilm reader/printer to give away. It is in need of some repair. If you are interested, contact Debbie at 487-1616 or dforsell@mtu.edu.
As always, property can only be transferred between departments, it cannot be given or sold to individuals.
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14. Chairs Free from SBE |
The School of Business and Economics has the following chairs to give away:
* two wooden chairs
* one orange padded chair
* one burgundy padded chair
If you are interested, contact Phyllis Williamson at pcwillia@mtu.edu or 487-2668.
As always, university property may only be transferred between departments. It may not be given or sold to individuals |
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