The Return of the Black-Footed Ferret

The Return of the Black-Footed Ferret

By: Taylor Dunn

Using preserved cells from a long-dead animal, scientists have managed to successfully clone the rare Black-Footed Ferret in February, which could pave the way for more animal conservation in the future.

The black-footed ferret is a native North American animal and the only native ferret. This milestone is huge as it's the first native endangered species to have been cloned in the United States. 

Meagan Sandhaas, a zoology major with an emphasis on endangered species, said it was exciting to see science making big strides in animal conservation, especially in saving the ones from extinction.

The black-footed ferret, like many endangered animals, once had vast numbers over the west side of America, but as prairie dogs were eliminated by farmers and ranchers, the black-footed ferrets dwindled as their primary prey was being snuffed out. Thought to be extinct by 1970, a ranch dog led scientists to a colony of the rare ferrets in Wyoming.

Those ferrets found were taken in by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service in Colorado where they underwent a breeding program that found the ferrets reintroduced to eight states in the American West. The success in the program paved the way for cloning the ferret, and the success of the cloned ferret can pave the way for more large-scale animal conservation efforts. 

The cloning process began with taking eggs from a domestic ferret of a related species, in a way to avoid putting the rest of the endangered female black-footed ferrets at risk. Once the eggs were matured, scientists removed the nucleus and genetic material and combined it with the cells of Willa, a long-deceased black-footed ferret from the 1980s. This method of combining cells from a deceased subject and a close relative of the subject has been used in the past with the cloning of the sheep Dolly, the first mammal cloned from an adult cell.

Born in Colorado, the cloned ferret, Elizabeth Ann is healthy so far, continually being monitored by the Ferret Conservation Center. Once she is old and healthy enough, she'll be released back into the wild to hopefully breed more of the rare species.

"Like other cloned animals reintroduced into the wild, {Elizabeth Ann} would be first reintroduced to an outdoor enclosure like the area she would be released to, in order to monitor her progress and make sure she'll be able to hunt and develop the skills necessary to survive on her own. Although she is a clone, she isn't much different than her predecessors," said Phil Ryder, a scientific officer who works with a pet service focused on cloning. 

As this was not the first time an animal has been successfully cloned, it also won't be the last, especially from a long-dead subject. The extinct subject that was used for the black-footed ferret came from a place called the Frozen Zoo, where scientists and animal conservationists keep frozen embryos, DNA, and stem cells for future projects. 

Today, all of the remaining black-footed ferrets are all siblings or first cousins. Now, with the introduction of Elizabeth Ann, this could infuse the future colonies with more genetic diversity and can help these animals reproduce more easily and even become more resilient to diseases.

Intersectionality’s Impact on Marginalized Identities

By: Aniya Hatten 

     Discrimination is something that people experience daily in the United States and it becomes more difficult to navigate when an individual associates with more than one marginalized identity. This notion is known as intersectionality. When different social categories such as race, gender, class, religion or sexuality intersect they have the potential to oppress an individual, causing serious health concerns for the future. 

“When we look at the health outcomes and health behaviors of marginalized communities…” said Jessica Styles, a Ph.D. candidate in the Psychology Program at the University of Georgia. “There is no coincidence that black and brown communities are the ones that are leading in heart disease, strokes and hypertension.”

People of color usually experience more microaggressions around their race because it is more visible during daily interactions rather than one's sexual orientation or gender. So when another identity that is viewed as inferior to society is added to this individual their chances increase to experience more discrimination, especially if they are gender nonconforming. 

“There’s some data that suggest that for LGBT people of color, particularly trans people of color, they stand at the intersection of multiple sources of potential discrimination,” said  Elizabeth Rahilly, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. “And sometimes there is this tug-of-war about which community they feel safer with or indebted to. Is it the black community, is it the LGBT community, to what do I owe my family, what do I owe the movement?” 

These identity crises usually lead to loads of stress, even feelings of regret, and this has been dated back to the civil rights movement era. Rahilly says during this period, it was very important for African Americans to present a hetero normative family face to combat racism-- so that left LGBT people of color feeling like traders if they came out. These standards and expectations of the gender binary still affect modern-day society and have impacted marginalized communities negatively.

“No matter what we consider in the U.S., we have to consider race. We have to consider the end fact of slavery and I think it's harder to be trans in the south for anyone,” said Baker Rogers, Ph.D., Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. “In trans women of color, we see the highest rates of discrimination and oppression. For trans men, they have to try and fit into this masculine binary stereotype to really receive acknowledgment.” 

Oftentimes in marginalized communities, there is a lack of access to appropriate resources and there are many barriers to overcome to achieve reliable, trustworthy healthcare. According to Styles, these factors can contribute to mental health concerns like anxiety, depression, self-esteem, substance abuse, isolation and social rejection. An individual’s socioeconomic status plays a large role in the extent to which one is able to combat discrimination and deal with the mental repercussions of it.   

“My work is primarily on parents who raise transgender children and one thing I did notice is that most people in my studies are white, middle to upper-class parents who are college-educated,” said Rahilly. “I don’t think that is a coincidence. The parents I interviewed were meeting with superintendents, rewriting school policies, threatening to sue over bathrooms… they were forces to be reckoned with to protect their kids. But you have to be of a certain socioeconomic status and privilege to do that.” 

The fact of the matter is that marginalized groups are not presented with the same opportunities and resources to aid them in their suffering of discrimination. The fact that they suffer from discrimination is bad enough but studies have proven that when their mental health is not being taken care of, it creates stress and a sense of wear and tear on the body from experiencing discrimination over multiple years. It is important to find healthy coping strategies suitable for you that help you cope in an adaptive way and try to find a support system group to help ease the stress.  

Ask-A-Scientist: Dr. Craig Aumack

 https://youtu.be/kHWPva_oSq4 

Henderson Library vs Covid-19

By: Jacob Johnson

In the past year the world has changed a lot due to the pandemic, most of which has been negative changes but there are some good things too, like the technological advancements that have made working and learning remotely, easier. 

In-person meetings have now almost completely been replaced with virtual meetings, giving workers the ability to meet and work from almost anywhere, but this technology has also helped students learn outside of the traditional classroom setting and made it possible for families to safely connect with each other. 

Henderson Library on Georgia Southern's campus was faced with a difficult task a year ago. To create a safe environment for students and faculty to work and study in, but with restrictions in place during the beginning of the pandemic, only a few people were allowed in the library at a time. 

This created the need for the library to implement a system to get their resources into the hands of those who need it. 

Henderson libraries resources go far beyond physical books, in fact they have a large amount of laptops, chromebooks and headphones for students to check out and use, but this became difficult when the university shut down. 

“Students who take advantage of our services, like checking out laptops were negatively impacted when classes went online,” said Jessica Garner, head of interlibrary loans and a task force aimed at making it possible for the library to reopen to students. “Those students without access to a computer were at a disadvantage when we had to shut down.” 

The library created a system that allowed students to request a laptop and have it mailed to their address if they were not near campus, which would give them the technology needed in order to transition to their new online class schedule and help keep the number of students in the library to a minimum. 

Out of 117 laptops that the library has for students to check out, only 22 of them were still available after the initial shutdown of campus and other departments on campus got involved, offering over 600 laptops for students to be able to check out and use, according to an article written by Garner and Logue. 

“We continue to run low on the amount of laptops we have left for students to check out and I have continuously asked for more funding so that we can buy more laptops for students,” said Natilie Logue, assistant head of inter-library loan at Georgia Southern. 

Once the library reopened, only a limited number of students could enter at a time, which created the need for an appointment system. 

Georgia Southern’s access services department worked with the IT department to create an app that allowed students to make an appointment to come to the library or reserve a time to check out equipment, this was eventually merged inside of the LibApps that were already being used to reserve study rooms. 

“I do not have a personal computer at home, so the library being open is extremely important to me,” said Jose Rodriquez, a junior at Georgia Southern. 

The library also used technology to transfer documents that were previously paper forms, into online documents, in order to limit the exposure between workers and students. 

Now that the library is open, other policies have been put in place to ensure proper social distancing, one of which was moving the library's 200 desktop computers so that they are far enough apart to keep students from being too close to each other. 

Additionally, the library has encouraged faculty to have their course materials available in virtual format, which helps keep students and faculty from having to go to the library to get the materials they need. 

In the last year technology has advanced in many ways and when the pandemic first started, one of the main concerns, besides a vaccine, was how educational institutions would be able to effectively teach their students. 

A lot of work went into creating or improving certain technology in order to create a safe and effective learning environment, which the new and improved technology will likely be integrated into education for the foreseeable future.

Ask a Scientist: Dr. Stephen Greiman

By: Tyler Miller

https://youtu.be/JJQ56rz2Pt8

Ask-A-Scientist: Dr. Rami Haddad

Ask-A-Scientist: Dr. John Carroll

By: Jeffrey Riley

Robot Dog

By: Roxanne Cortner

Georgia Southern University’s robotics lab developed an advanced robot to interact with people. 

In the robotics lab, a robotic dog has been created to interact with people who have disabilities. The target of this project is for people with disabilities, specifically children with autism, to be able to interact with something “real” even though they may not like physical touch or interaction. 

“It is difficult for them to interact with people and living things, but easy for them to interact with toys,” Dr. Rios, an associate engineering professor, said. 

Dr. Fernando Rios got his Ph.D in electrical engineering and helped develop the robotic dog to apply his research in artificial intelligence. One of the principles of this research is robotics. With artificial intelligence and robotics, Rios wants to mimic the way the human brain works. Rios described this process as being more complicated than mimicking the brain of an animal and needing a bigger computer to code the information in a human brain to put into a human robot. 

A lot of coding takes place to develop a robot and get it to respond to verbal and nonverbal commands. 

To develop the dog robot, instructions are programmed into a series of Arduino boards. Commands and responses are coded and then put into a program. This is then connected to the robotic system. The system is then programmed with sensory mechanics to take in movements.

The robotic dog has cameras and five different sensors. These cameras make it possible for the dog to see the commander and respond appropriately. The autonomous sensors allow for the dog to function on its own. Along with autonomous sensors and Arduino boards, microcontrollers allow for the robot dog to be controlled without a remote or another person physically controlling the robot. 

Essentially, the robot is acquiring it’s actions and responses through its programming, and anyone who knows the language that it was programmed with can interact with it by changing or altering its actions through its coding.

The combination of these applications allows the robotic dog to mimic the actions and emotions of a real dog. The robot dog can find a bone, move his ears, wag his tail and recognize objects. 

“It’s combining mechanical engineering with electrical engineering and applying them to make something happen,” Nicholas Walsh, an engineering student, said. 

Dr. Rios says we are still not at the level to mimic humans, but we are getting there. Movies show that advancements in technology are allowing for the development of robots close to human-like, but it has not fully been developed yet. 

Students in the engineering department have created humanoids, or human-like robots, that are able to kick a ball and move, but due to costs, the robot was not human-like to the potential they would like it to be.

Students have also developed other non-human-like robots that use autonomous sensors that allow people to mow their lawn without being on a lawnmower. This bot has been programmed to respond to commands from an app on a phone. The controller can put the design or outline of the lawn into an app and the bot will follow the instructions. 

More advanced drones are also being developed within Georgia Southern’s robotics lab. Currently, these drones are able to follow commands by a remote control, but researchers are hoping they will one day be autonomous as well. Some researchers have already begun this advancement with hand signals to a camera that the drone responds to. 

Dr. Rios talked about drones and how they have become advanced enough to fly on their own or go into a burning building, find the fire and put them out. This is a more advanced version of the drones and robots that go into natural disasters with cameras to find survivors. 

With more research, humanoids could become a thing of the future if researchers continue to advance drones and robot animals.

Robot Dog Demonstration Video

IS LAUNCH ANGLE THE BEST METRIC?

By: Chase Martaus

The evolution of technology and science has made its way into the game of baseball. The way a baseball game is presented to its fan on television is more specific and complex.

Television networks are not just broadcasting baseball games. They are adding metrics and science to their broadcast.

 As soon as a ball comes off the bat, viewers know how far the ball was hit, at what speed the ball comes off the bat, and the direction down to the degree the ball went, which is now referred to as launch angle.

Every ball that is hit has a launch angle; a result-based system that measures in degrees exactly which direction the ball leaves the bat.

The angle is 10 degrees or lower for a ground ball, a line drive is 10 to 25 degrees, a fly ball is 25 to 50 degrees off the bat, and a popup is a higher than 50-degree angle.

This phenomenon was formally introduced to baseball fans in 2015, when Josh Donaldson, who put together an MVP season the year prior while playing third base for the Toronto Blue Jays, introduced it while appearing on the MLB Network for a segment on hitting.

“If a coach tells you to get on top of the baseball, tell him no,” said Donaldson. “In the big leagues, these things that they call ground balls are outs. They pay you for home runs.”

Not everyone agreed with Donaldson’s statement. Dr. Daniel Czech is a former pitcher in the Milwaukee Brewers organization who coaches high school and travel baseball. He expressed his concern for the young athletes who watched Donaldson.

“Broadcasters use this word and they do not really know what they mean or express the validity or liabilities of it,” said Czech. “Then, those words become the lexicon of baseball.”

Prior to Donaldson’s segment in 2016, the average launch angle in baseball was 9.96. In 2020, the average launch angle in Major League Baseball was measured at 11.9 degrees, which is a substantial increase.

According to metrics from ESPN, Joey Gallo of the Texas Rangers had the highest launch angle in 2020 with a 26.8 degree angle. The next closest hitter was 3.6 degrees lower than Gallo.

It did not lead to more home runs from Gallo. He hit just 11 home runs in the 60 game season in 2020. He also hit a career low .181, and had the fourth most strikeouts in all of baseball with 79.

Gallo’s numbers appeared to be an outlier though, as the number of home runs across baseball have gone up as the degree of the swing increased. Over the course of a 162 game season, the total number of home runs hit in the MLB was 4,909 in 2015; however, in 2019, the number shot up to 6, 776 home runs.

Launch angle is not only used in the major leagues. It has made its way to all levels of baseball including the college ranks, high school and travel ball.

Kermit Smith is the head baseball coach at Appalachian State. He and his staff use it to decide which prospects to pursue in recruiting.

“We have a new evolution of metrics that we are using to recruit that were not available to us 30 years ago,” said Smith.

With hitters taking bigger swings, it forces pitchers to make adjustments to the way that they pitch. Zach Sanders, a pitcher at Tusculum College in Tennessee, says that pitchers look for a hitter’s launch angle when preparing to face them.

“We are not just looking for tendencies from a hitter anymore,” said Sanders. We are looking to see whether or not there is an uppercut in their swing, and the location in which we pitch is determined by the degree of their swing.”

It remains to be seen how long this phenomenon remains in the game of baseball. There are proposed changes in the MLB to change the baseball in a way that will reduce home runs.

 

 

 

Photodynamic Therapy

Nia Dorsey

A professor at Georgia Southern is studying the comparison of photolysis capabilities between protonated and unprotonated tetraphenyl porphyrin solutions. Jim LoBue is a physical chemistry professor at Georgia southern. He earned his Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton College in 1978 and his Ph.D. from Wesleyan University in 1986. His graduate work involved the study of van der Waals molecules using microwave spectroscopy in a molecular beam under the direction of Dr. Stewart Novick. 

Dr. LoBue is involved in two very different projects in this area of research. His students at Georgia Southern investigate the photochemical properties of tetra-substituted porphyrins. These molecules have properties that make them candidates for a type of cancer therapy called photodynamic therapy. This work involves using various spectrometers available in the Chemistry Department, principally the ISS-K2 Phase Modulated Spectrofluorometer.

In Lobues laboratory, they have many molecules that are derived from something called Porphyrin. They use molecules with a core unit that looks like a structure similar to the outer of a spider web. “It is a chemical formula, showing you the pattern that the atoms choose to connect.” Chemists have a shorthand because they don’t have to draw everything out. After all, they have so much detail that you cant see everything. So what they do is draw different line segments in the web that represent chemical bonds and wherever there is a vertex. There are spaces with no symbols representing an element; you are to imagine a carbon put there. A basic ring would have 20 carbons around it. In the center, there would be nitrogen atoms. And another grouping of atoms which again is a shorthand. 

They have a whole series of “webs” that are different based on what the PH is. So they have between 25 and 30 other molecules that are different based on a choice of whatever you wanted to put on the outer segments. The molecule is noticeably very symmetrical. The center is called a Porphyrin unit, and it appears a lot in biochemistry. The hemoglobin molecule has four units and what they are supposed to have in the middle is an iron atom, and the iron atom carries oxygen. So the hemoglobin when fully oxygenated as four oxygen molecules in every hemoglobin molecule. In your lungs, the hemoglobin grabs these very favorably oxygen molecules and carries them into the bloodstream wherever your tissues need them, which is all over your body.

A student of his, Megan Dempsy, aided in explaining his research, “Photodynamic cancer therapy (PDT) is an effective way to treat external cancers. Due to their ring structure and double bond character, porphyrin molecules work well as photosensitizers in PDT. Tetraphenyl porphyrins have four phenyl groups attached to the central ring.” 

Dempsey introduced me to the methods they used to reach results. Stock samples of porphyrin solutions were created and diluted to 5μM. 180μM DPA was added to the answers to make them 2.5μM Porphyrin and 90μM DPA. The solutions attempted titration with varying levels of HCl. The level was determined with previous research done in porphyrin titration. Microliter aliquots of HCl were added to the diluted Porphyrin, and DPA solutions and UV-Visible light spectra were taken. Unprotonated solutions undergo photolysis with 514nm laser light, but protonated solutions undergo photolysis with 635nm laser light. UV-Vis spectra were taken every 15 minutes for 90 minutes total. The spectra were analyzed in excel for DPA depletion.

This study found that it was inconclusive if the protonated Porphyrin worked as well as the unprotonated Porphyrin in photodynamic cancer therapy (PDT). The work towards a usable porphyrin is essential because the laser light for protonated porphyrins is longer. This longer laser light can penetrate tissues more deeply and make PDT more effective for the patient.