Research Highlights

Navigating the grocery store aisle is challenging for many consumers. Food manufacturers and distributors cover their boxed, canned, and bottled foods with labels like “whole grain” and “low-calorie” to suggest that their food has certain health benefits. The UConn Extension New Technologies in Agricultural Extension (NTAE) team, funded by USDA NIFA (EPSCoR), developed an interactive learning activity (or game), Unpeeled: The Case Studies of Maya McCluen. The purpose of this game is to increase our audiences’ understanding of food marketing labels.

Changes in the northern Alaskan Arctic Ocean have reached a point at which a previously rare phenomenon – widespread blooms of toxic algae – could become more commonplace, potentially threatening a wide range of marine wildlife and the people who rely on local marine resources for food. The NSF study by scientists at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution and other institutions looked at samples from seafloor sediments and surface waters collected during 2018 and 2019 in the region extending from the northern Bering Sea to the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas north of Alaska.

Two SC EPSCoR researchers have received NSF CAREER Awards. Clemson University faculty Drs. Angela Alexander-Bryant and Jessica Larsen were both South Carolina NSF RII Track-1 award, Materials Assembly and Design Excellence in South Carolina (MADE in SC), hires during the first year of the project.

S3OK OK NSF EPSCoR Social Dynamics Team Conducts Policy Landscape Mapping. Dr. Kristin Olofsson, Assistant Professor of Political Science at Oklahoma State University, and a team of researchers and students collaborated to map policy landscapes of each of the four Focus Areas of the S3OK project. In policy landscape mapping, the team identifies who is involved in the issue, who is affected by the issue, related goals within the focus area, and the narratives told by those individuals about the issue.

Dr. Timothy Brenton, University of Maine Framington professor of biology, and team of student research assistants have discovered a new gene in fish that may have an impact on understanding several diseases found in humans, including diabetes, schizophrenia and autism spectrum disorder.

The three-year research project recently published in the international journal Scientific Reports is funded by several grants totaling over $75K from the NIH through Maine INBRE and the MDI Biological Laboratory.

Alaska INBRE is pleased to share the Alaska Coronavirus Variants Dashboard generated as a collaboration with the Alaska SARS-CoV2 Sequencing Consortium. The public can easily explore variants by economic region of Alaska, in vaccine breakthroughs, and over time.

Coronavirus variants have the potential to spread more rapidly, cause more severe disease, evade diagnostic detection, or reduce vaccine efficacy. With emergency use authorization (EUA) of monoclonal antibody treatments, which are targeted towards particular variants, this data can help guide what treatment to give patients by helping determine what variant patients are most likely infected with. Timely and accurate surveillance of SARS-CoV-2 variants is key to informing public health policy and thus efforts to control the pandemic in Alaska.

Earlier this summer, 18 high-school aged Alaskan girls piled into kayaks and packrafts and emerged with both new ecological knowledge and a lot more confidence in themselves.

That’s the idea behind “Girls on Water” and “Girls in the Forest,” two Alaska NSF EPSCoR-sponsored experiential learning programs that overcame COVID hurdles to hold successful wilderness expeditions in 2021. In July, nine 16- and 17-year-old girl-identified youths from across the state took part in “Girls on Water,” a week-plus scientific kayak expedition in Kachemak Bay. Then in August, nine “Girls in the Forest” spent more than a week packrafting the Chena River and learning about fire science along the way.

A gentle hum can be heard from a lab in the depths of the University of South Carolina's life sciences building. Take a peek inside, and you'll find something unusual. Thousands of tubes of the spit belonging to the university's students, faculty, staff and Columbia residents.

Almost a year ago, the school's colon cancer lab changed course from its usual area of study and started analyzing how it could help as COVID-19 ravaged the world, killing hundreds of thousands across the country and shutting down campuses.

USC professors had a breakthrough when they started studying saliva there, said biomedical sciences professor Phillip Buckhaults.

The lab is testing about 2,000 samples a day and returning samples within 24 hours, and its reach is beyond the Midlands. Quick-turnaround testing allows people to identify themselves as COVID-19-positive earlier and isolate themselves, reducing the spread of the virus and saving lives.

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During a time where quality COVID-19 testing and reputable scientific information is in high demand, the Nevada State Public Health Laboratory (NSPHL), part of the University of Nevada, Reno School of Medicine, continues to step up. The lab was the first public health lab in Nevada to run COVID-19 diagnostics tests, and has become a major testing center throughout the pandemic. The NSPHL participates in several research projects and offers guidance to regional and state officials. All the while, the lab’s efforts often involve collaboration with University faculty and students, regional partners and federal organizations.

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Organic farming sometimes has a bad reputation for producing legumes with lower nutritional quality. But some Clemson University researchers believe field peas and lentils can be grown organically and still have improved nutrient quality.

Thavarajah, the lead investigator for the project and a Clemson associate professor of pulse quality and organic nutritional breeding, said this research is needed because consumer demand for organically grown plant-based protein is increasing.

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