Those things in our backyard range from the booming oil industry in western North Dakota to the insidious chronic flooding of Devils Lake and the surrounding area. We seek to understand not just the science that explains such things but also their impact on the people. Our backyard also includes remnants of native prairie. Our prairie environment is an integral part of our history, and it’s important today in ways we often overlook — our $4.9 billion-a-year tourism industry includes many hunters and birdwatchers whose interests depend on the health of our open lands and the prairie pothole system. Our Biology Department has a growing cadre of faculty whose work focuses on understanding our prairie ecosystem and how to keep it healthy.

In this issue we also present contemporary reflections on farm life in North Dakota through the words of a talented North Dakota poet. Even though I grew up as a town kid in Grand Forks, I had numerous relatives who were involved in farming, and these poems resonated with me as “real” when I first heard them read by their author. Seek out her poems — I think you will like them, too.

A year ago, we finished our strategic plan for research, creative, and scholarly activity at UND. That plan, titled Aiming Over the Horizon: The Great Plains and Beyond, reflects a real sense of place, with specific references to North Dakota’s landscape, geography, history, rural life, and our American Indian population. This issue of UND Discovery illuminates the many ways that the work of the University’s faculty embodies the goals laid out in that plan.

Phyllis E. Johnson
Vice President for Research and Economic Development

Linrud

Lisa Linrud has lived what she writes.

It’s what makes her verse so authentic, so uncontrived and vivid as a blue-gray suppertime sky, drunk with rain, over the rolling patchwork of Anywhere, North Dakota.  You could say it’s ingrained in her DNA.

Growing up on a farm outside Velva, N.D., Linrud, 25, admits she sometimes took the austere beauty of her rural surroundings for granted.  It wasn’t until she was a student at the University of North Dakota, a bit removed from the land and its people, that she began to reflect deeply on her rural upbringing, how it influenced her and how times change — and not always for the best.

She penned these thoughts — struggles and triumphs — as a collection of poetry, titled In Grain, while she was studying for her master’s degree in English at UND.  The work paid off immediately, earning her The Graduate School’s 2010 “Distinguished Thesis” award, one of only three given each year for outstanding achievement.

Linrud’s works were published in a book of poetry with the same name.  In Grain is printed in chapbook format and is available at finishinglinepress.com and on Amazon.com, Inc.

UND Discovery recently talked to Linrud about her new book and what influenced her poems, and to learn more about her.

UND Discovery: What is the inspiration for the poetry that appears in your book?

Lisa: I grew up on a farm in rural North Dakota,

but I didn’t have an intense interest in the workings of it until I began writing.  I needed to write a poem for a workshop I was in, so I sat down, and “Rural Route 2, Box 36” is what came out, in a much rougher version.  When I finished writing it, I was surprised.  Every poem I wrote after that held with this agricultural theme — it became what obsessed me.  I spent the next two years writing and revising poems exploring this agricultural lifestyle, the beauty in triumphs and failures, the complex nature of the relationships between the farmer and the land.

The inspiration comes from my family’s experience and the experiences of those farmers in the area where I grew up.  I would talk with my parents at the end of the day and hear about how the crops were doing, the ups and downs of spring and fall.  I would listen to them talk about their days, and sometimes they would say things that just sparked a poem.  Through writing I had the chance to explore the issues I was hearing them talk about.  It was a way for me to participate while I couldn’t be there.

UND Discovery: What feelings or emotions were you trying to convey or translate for the reader?

Lisa: America is moving toward a corporate farming monopoly, and we’re losing something very beautiful in the process.  It’s easy to say that the family farm has failed, and that’s what will be remembered; the family farm also thrived.  Farming communities face a wide array of challenges, failures and successes.  The poems explore the connection the people have with the land, the interdependent relationships between the family and the family farm.  This relationship is paralleled in the relationships between the family members themselves as they move both together and apart.

UND Discovery: Does your poetry tend to be an introspective journey done for personal reasons — maybe therapeutic — or is it something purposely done to honor the culture and memories of your heritage?  Or is it simply to entertain others?

Lisa: I think it probably began as exploration of this culture and this need to share with others what is happening here, what it means to be a farmer with a small operation in rural North Dakota.  For many, there is a popular romanticized image associated with the Midwest that overlooks the realities faced by the farming community.  With today’s agricultural transition into large corporate farms, I wanted to illustrate the beauty hidden within the challenges of the family farm before the family farm becomes obsolete.  It was also therapeutic — I don’t think it would have been possible for the writing not to change me in some way.  It was a way to be a part of the farm and my family’s work when I wasn’t physically there with them.

UND Discovery: Talk about your literary and/or poetical inspirations growing up.  Was/is there anyone that you tried/try to emulate?

Lisa: I fell in love with Jack Gilbert from the moment I read him.  He writes with a ‘minimum of decoration,’ as he called it in an interview with the Poetry Foundation.  He uses exactly the right words, which create this beautiful and sometimes devastating effect.  I found that his writing influenced mine greatly.  B.H. Fairchild was also certainly influential.  And I absolutely have to mention Edna St. Vincent Millay.  The female speaker in her poems was very powerful and sometimes gave me strength to keep writing.

UND Discovery: Are you surprised at the critical success that your poetry has received so far?

Lisa: Very much so.  It’s always nice to have someone confirm that the work you’re doing is important, that it matters.

UND Discovery: Well, this is an impressive introduction for you to the ranks of published poets.  And then there’s the thesis award you won at UND.  What did that mean to you?

Lisa: I was shocked and very honored.  Just to be nominated was an honor, and then to be chosen was so unexpected.  UND graduates many accomplished students each year, and I was overwhelmed to be recognized.

UND Discovery: Is there anyone at UND who really mentored you?

Lisa: My adviser, Heidi Czerwiec, was incredible.  She spent as much time on this project as I did, poring over drafts.  This collection wouldn’t be what it is without the class members in the poetry workshops I was a part of; much of their feedback went into revising these poems.  Those workshops are really invaluable — you just don’t have that opportunity to receive that much feedback on your work.  There were also many professors that took time out of their busy schedules to help me.  I really love that about UND.

UND Discovery: I take it, then, that UND was a nurturing environment for an aspiring writer?  Was your creative work always poetical?

Lisa: The first time I really took writing seriously was my English 120 class.  We wrote research papers but were allowed to incorporate creative elements, and I was exposed to many different styles of writing.  That really sparked my interest and I signed up for the Intro to Creative Writing class.  I thought at that time that I was a fiction writer, but my professor quickly recognized I needed to write poetry.  I, of course, thought I knew everything at that time, and so I continued to take fiction classes and write fiction to prove him wrong.  Several fiction classes later, I ran into that professor again, and he gave me a book of Jack Gilbert’s poetry.  It all changed after that.

UND Discovery: You graduated from UND with your master’s last year.  What are you doing now?

Lisa: I currently live in Grand Rapids, Minn., and am a full-time faculty member at Itasca Community College.

UND Discovery: And your future aspirations, literary or otherwise?

Lisa: I want to spend more time writing and find the next thing that obsesses me.  I am also really excited to have the opportunity to mentor students here at ICC the way the faculty at UND mentored me.

David Dodds | Staff Writer

Steve Benson: The energy infrastructure of the UND campus provides an excellent platform for testing technologies and building expertise.

Confirmation that the University of North Dakota’s Institute of Energy Studies (IES) has indeed arrived came in August when the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) awarded the program a grant to develop a technology that reduces greenhouse gas emissions from power plants.

That’s not just good news for the UND School of Engineering and Mines, which operates IES, but it’s also a significant development for North Dakota’s lignite coal industry as well as other energy generation technologies that emit carbon dioxide (CO2) — a factor in climate change.

“The industry wants to be prepared for the future because we don’t know what the regulations might be,” said Steve Benson, IES director and professor of chemical engineering.  “They don’t want to get caught without a viable technology that might cause a significant increase in the cost of electricity.  We want to help industry maintain the low cost of electricity, and that’s the challenge when looking at CO2 capture.”

Hesham El-Rewini, dean of

the School of Engineering and Mines, said the DOE grant is a measure of success.

“It assures us that we are on the right track because we’re pursuing what’s important,” he said.  “We have the right vision and we have the right core of people to get it going.  This project will definitely benefit North Dakota, but the benefits will go beyond to the region, to the nation and to the world.  North Dakota will not only benefit by applying the technology that’s developed here, but also by getting the word out that we are contributing to solving a major global problem.”

Benson said the project brings together a unique public/private team from UND, Envergex LLC and Solex Thermal Science.  Envergex of Sturbridge, Mass., is a “green” energy company that produces carbon-based sorbents for reducing emissions from coal-fired power plants.  Solex, headquartered in Calgary, Alberta, specializes in advanced heat exchange technology.

The DOE National Energy Technology Laboratory will provide nearly $3 million for the evaluation of a CO2 capture technology that uses hybrid sorbents.  Project partners that include the North Dakota Lignite Energy Council, Saskatchewan Power, ALLETE, Minnesota Power and BNI Coal will contribute more than $700,000 to the project.

“We’ve come up with a technology that can significantly reduce the amount of energy it takes to regenerate a sorbent,” said Benson.  “It’s 80 percent less than competing technologies.  This is good for all types of combustion systems because it can be retrofitted.  There are significant opportunities there for our state’s lignite industry to participate in this program.”

Benson noted that if the CO2 capture technology proves feasible, the next step would be to demonstrate it at UND’s steam plant for a small-scale study that could lead to commercialization.

“If you think about the energy infrastructure of the University, it’s like a mini-city,” he said.  “By using the steam plant, there’s no better platform on which to train students and help people understand energy-related issues and their impacts.”

IES is also addressing the problem of mercury emissions from industrial processes, an environmental issue that’s affected recreational fishing in Minnesota’s lakes.

“We’re testing technologies for mercury emissions control at taconite plants in Minnesota,” Benson said.  “We’ve come up with some novel ways of using activated carbon made from North Dakota lignite to capture mercury in those specific systems and coal-fired power plants.”

The work is sponsored by the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the taconite industry.

For El-Rewini, DOE funding for the CO2 capture project reaffirms the vision he had when he proposed creation of the IES nearly three years ago.  The institute provided a mechanism to bring together the wide range of expertise at UND to collaborate and help solve energy and environmental problems.

“You can come up with the best technology, but if you don’t study the social and behavior impacts, the public might reject it,” he explained.  “If it’s not going to be accepted in regulations and laws, then it will be useless.  If you don’t study economics and the financial or business value of the technology, then it might not be practical.  This is why we look at energy issues at UND from these perspectives.”

El-Rewini and Benson believe that with such disciplines as law, medicine, nursing, business, engineering, atmospheric science and education, UND has a unique opportunity to become a leading energy university.  In addition, the University has facilities such as the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) and the North Dakota Geological Survey’s Wilson M. Laird Core and Sample Library.

“We have the engineers; we have the scientists; we have the business people; we have the people who deal with social issues; and we have people who deal with health issues — we have it all,” Benson said.  “The institute brings these entities together to solve those energy-related problems.  UND is developing into a premier energy university to tackle these problems.  That’s really where we want to go.”

To put it simply, El-Rewini said, “When people think of UND, they should think energy.”

If all goes as planned, El-Rewini envisions a collaborative energy complex in the middle of campus that draws on the IES, the EERC, the newly instituted petroleum engineering program and the Jodsaas Center for Engineering Leadership and Entrepreneurship.  It would not only make UND a world leader in energy technology, but also provide quality education opportunities.

“I’m very excited about the future and very optimistic about what’s going to happen here,” El-Rewini said.

Patrick C. Miller | Staff Writer

Dongmei Wang, a soft-spoken scientist in UND’s Department of Geology and Geological Engineering, does her work far from the heart of the booming Bakken shale oil play in western North Dakota; still, she just might be the best friend the oil industry has.

The recent transplant from China, where she worked 22 years for Petrochina in that country’s most active oilfields, followed her son to America when he enrolled at the University of Michigan.  Wanting a new challenge and a quieter setting to call home, Wang took a job at UND as a petroleum engineering scientist, working with her boss, Will Gosnold, and his Petroleum Research, Education and Entrepreneurship Center of Excellence (PREEC), which already had been researching the relatively untapped geological formation known as the “Bakken.”

An internationally recognized petroleum engineer, Wang’s scientific experience in the Chinese oil industry only added to the burgeoning expertise and capabilities that have been amassing at UND’s School of Engineering and Mines.

Wang now finds herself on the cusp of one of the most exciting oil exploration projects in the United States.  To put it simply: UND researchers

are studying the unique geological makeup of the Bakken shale and determining feasible, efficient ways to draw more “black gold” from its cavernous pores — a feat that is now akin to squeezing blood from a turnip.

Despite the unique challenges of the Bakken, oil companies have been flocking to the region to stake their claims.  Favorable per-barrel prices and invasive “fracking” techniques, tailor-made for this kind of formation, have made it sufficiently lucrative for the oil industry to return to North Dakota in a huge way.

The activity has propelled North Dakota to third among oil-producing states, by some estimations.

And this is despite the fact companies are recovering only a tiny amount of the oil that’s in place, using existing methods.

Imagine if that extraction success was as much as 30 times greater, or more!

That’s what Wang and her colleagues do every day.

“Right now it looks promising,” she said.  “It seems like the potential is huge.”

Wang is the principal investigator in a three-year $625,000 research project that is starting to show positive signs.  The objective is to determine whether a special blend of surfactant solutions can influence the Bakken shale formation in western North Dakota enough so that oil recovery can be improved through “imbibition” — displacement of one fluid by another.

Another important factor is that the surfactant solution should not damage the formation, Wang says.

The research could be significant because, even at current low percentage recovery rates, oil companies are making billions of dollars and boosting the state’s economy along the way.

Wang estimates that every 1 percent increase in recovery could lead to an increase of 2 billion to 4 billion barrels of domestic oil production.

Dongmei Wang is exploring the potential of the “imbibition” process — displacement of one fluid by another — for boosting oil yields in North Dakota’s Bakken formation.

Cores and Models

Wang’s research is a multistep process that involves computer modeling at UND and analyses of core samples from private-sector oil giant Hess Corp. and the Wilson M. Laird Core and Sample Library on the UND campus.

Eventually, Wang will work with oil companies to reproduce the results with a large-scale model in the Bakken.

“If all goes well, we hope that we will have something ready along those lines by 2014,” Wang said.

One of the challenges so far has been the limited availability of actual Bakken shale core samples on which to conduct the research.  For this reason, the first studies have been done on “Pierre” shale samples, taken from an outcrop in northern North Dakota.

The initial Pierre shale tests using the surfactant imbibition process were encouraging, harvesting as much as 30 percent of the available oil.  That kind of success convinced UND researchers to push further with the project.

“That goes to show you the potential,” she said.  The goal now is to duplicate those results in the Bakken.

Another challenge is the limited amount of available laboratory data on Bakken shale characteristics compared to other kinds of oil-bearing shale and non-shale geological formations around the world.

The fact that UND scientists like Wang are pioneering research in this area makes it even more crucial that their findings are checked and double-checked.

Private and Public Partners

Wang knows that oil companies are placing a lot of hope in her research, and she doesn’t want to lead them down a wrong road when the scientific proof doesn’t support it.  Companies such as CorsisTech, Tiorco and Hess Corp. are participating with UND on the project.

“I have to be very careful with my research,” Wang said.  “I don’t want to be responsible for the oil industry wasting its money.”

Most of the project cost, about $500,000 worth, is being funded by the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America; the state of North Dakota, which benefits greatly from expanded oil exploration, has chipped in an additional $125,000 through the North Dakota Industrial Commission.

Wang attributes the success of her research to the PREEC team effort at UND and collaborations with top-notch researchers in other departments, such as Julie Lefever, director of the Laird Core and Sample Library. She also lauds the assistance of people such as Ray Butler, a research associate in her department who has been instrumental in dealing with the oil industry, as well as Ronald Matheney and Nels Forsman, professors of geology and geological engineering at UND.

David Dodds | Staff Writer

UND Discovery is published by the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, with assistance from the Office of University Relations, Peter Johnson, executive associate vice president. Editor: David Dodds. Contributors: Juan Pedraza, David Dodds, Patrick C. Miller, Caitlin Slator, and Denis MacLeod. Photography by Jackie Lorentz, Office of University Relations, except as noted:

White frost scene on back cover, North Dakota scene on Page 13, Mary Ann Sens portrait on Page 14, and portraits of Phyllis E. Johnson and Barry Milavetz by Chuck Kimmerle; forensic laboratory on Page 15 by Wanda Weber. Please send inquiries and comments to the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development, University of North Dakota, 264 Centennial Drive Stop 8367, Grand Forks, ND 58202-8367. The University of North Dakota is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.
research.UND.edu

Brij Singh is investigating how calcium, one of the most important biochemical regulators in the body, works at the cellular level and how malfunctions might figure into disease processes.

Brij Singh, a biomedical researcher at the University of North Dakota, recently pitched a proposal to the National Institutes of Health, the country’s largest single funder of projects that look for answers to pressing health questions.

That is not unusual.

What is unusual is that Singh scored a second multi-year NIH R01 grant, $1.73 million.  That’s no small feat in a fiscally tight and extremely competitive environment.

“The R01 grant is the original and oldest of the NIH’s funding mechanisms, and is arguably the most prestigious,” said Joshua Wynne, vice president for health affairs and dean of the School of Medicine and Health Sciences.  “With this grant, Dr. Singh will continue his studies of the control mechanisms involved in the movement of the element calcium across the cell membrane.  Calcium is essential for proper cellular function in various tissues, and derangements in its movement may be involved in many diseases such as Sjögren’s syndrome, cancer, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s disease, and others.”

“Yes, I feel very fortunate to have received this renewed R01 funding,” said Singh, who’s built a distinguished track record hunting down the precise role of calcium in various diseases and how stem cells may fit into curative strategies to combat these tragic illnesses.  “This R01 grant will allow me and my team to probe more deeply into the calcium channel roles in the development of some of these diseases.”

Singh, an associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, conducts research on calcium mechanisms in the body that can, if not working properly, lead to diseases such as cancer, Parkinson’s disease, and Sjögren’s syndrome, a salivary gland dysfunction.  He focuses on how and why calcium, one of the most important biochemical regulators in the body, works at the cellular level.  Singh was on a team of five talented young researchers recruited by UND to contribute to the School of Medicine’s biomedical research effort under a five-year, $10.4 million NIH Center of Biomedical Research Excellence grant.

Parkinson’s disease is a chronic and progressive movement disorder, meaning that symptoms continue and worsen over time, according to the Parkinson’s Foundation (see What is Parkinson's Disease).

About 1 million people in the United States have Parkinson’s.  The cause is unknown and there is no known cure.

“Parkinson’s results from the malfunction and death of neurons, the most important cells in the brain,” Singh said.  “The goal of my research is to investigate this disease mechanism and others, such as Sjögren’s or dry-mouth syndrome that are triggered by a malfunction in calcium signaling.”

“For over a decade, my research efforts and those of my lab have focused on understanding these calcium signaling mechanisms,” said Singh, who joined the UND faculty in 2003.

“As a postdoctoral fellow at the Medical College of Wisconsin and at the NIH, I studied neurodegeneration — such as the kind that occurs with Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s — using both molecular and biochemical techniques,” Singh said.  “Here at UND, I expanded my research to include the regulation of TRPC1 channels in both neuronal and non-neuronal cells and have established TRPC1 as the ion channel necessary for regulating the precise calcium entry needed for proper functioning of these cells.”

Singh’s research builds logically on his ongoing work that uses specially bred research mice as well as human neurons and human patient samples to decipher the role of calcium in several disease processes.

Singh was one of several UND biomedical researchers to receive the first North Dakota Spirit Faculty Achievement Award, funded by the UND Foundation.  That award recognizes significant contributions by faculty in teaching, research and service.

A relatively new area of inquiry for Singh and his team is the role of stem cells in the development and, eventually, the cure for ailments such as dry-mouth syndrome, which can be a direct consequence of radiation therapy for oral and related cancers.

“We’re looking deeper for possible therapies,” Singh said.  “With radiation therapy for head and neck cancers, many patients completely lose their ability to salivate, which is essential for digestion,” Singh said.  “They suffer a decreased quality of life.  We believe that we can introduce stem cells into these glands to regenerate the saliva-producing cells, but we still have a long way to go to accurately define how this would work.  One of the problems is that, as many scientists have noted, stem cells and cancer cells do about the same thing: they reproduce rapidly.  Some scientists believe that stem cells trigger some kinds of cancer.”

So the challenge is to find ways to get the stem cells to reproduce or regenerate the right kind of cells.  That’s the research that UND scientists want to ultimately achieve with this latest NIH R01 support.

“I envision that this research will take at least five years, using mouse models and a lot of work under the microscope,” Singh said.

Among the tools he and his team are using is a new kind of microscope that allows them to

observe living tissue, rather than having to prepare specimens from dead tissue.  “We get to see what’s going on in a sedated animal, in living cells,” Singh said.  “That’s much more useful to us as we can do it in real time.”

Singh’s research has acquired a new urgency because as the Baby Boom population ages, we’re seeing more Parkinson’s, cancers, and other diseases related to aging.

Bottom line, Singh said, is that he’s looking at the role of one molecule — calcium — in health and disease processes.

“Calcium is essential for life,” Singh said.  “It’s the key intercellular signaling mechanism: it tells each and every cell and the body what to do.  To perform its job, a cell has to get that calcium signal, whether it’s heart muscle cells knowing when to contract, a kidney cell knowing when to filter, or a digestive tract cell knowing when to absorb a nutrient.  Everything you do needs calcium.”

Juan Pedraza | Staff Writer

Tkach

Vasyl Tkach, associate professor of biology, and colleagues Jason Weckstein and John Bates of the Chicago Field Museum have received a $787,000 collaborative grant from the National Science Foundation “Biodiversity Survey and Inventory” program to study the biodiversity and evolution of birds and their parasites in the southern Brazilian Amazon jungles.  These areas have the highest proportion of birds that do not occur anywhere else on the planet.  At over 6.5 million square kilometers, Amazonia has 40 percent of the remaining tropical forest and is estimated to harbor a tenth of the world’s species.  Accurate inventories of species biodiversity are critical for efforts to stem the tide of extinction, understand the interdependencies in the web of life, and reconstruct the evolutionary history of diversity.

Researchers will collect specimens, observe birds, and record their songs and daily activities.  The materials collected will be processed in the United States and Brazil using modern molecular and microscopic techniques.  Tkach says a large number of new species will be discovered and described.

Elaine Metcalfe, director of TRIO Programs, has secured more than $440,000 to continue recruiting and supporting talented future college students.  The “TRIO/Talent Search” Program at UND is a federal grant that provides services to 1,000 low-income, first-generation potential college students (in targeted North Dakota and northwestern Minnesota public middle and high schools) and supports their access to higher education.  The program contains a strong research component that measures and tracks students’ high school retention, graduation rates, and eventual enrollment into college.

Jerome Delhommelle, assistant professor of chemistry, recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the foundation’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty.  Delhommelle received $425,000 over five years to study the crystallization process in semiconductor, metal and molecular systems.  He is a leading researcher in the field, with more than 60 research papers published.  He’s also the U.S. editor of the international research journal Molecular Simulation, which covers all aspects of research related to molecular modeling and simulation.

Delhommelle’s research could have broad practical implications for a number of industries, ranging from pharmaceuticals to textiles to defense.  The award also will support the education of Ph.D. students,  design of interdisciplinary courses, and development of outreach activities, including scientific workshops for high school students in rural Upper Midwest school districts.

Matthew Cavalli, associate professor of mechanical engineering, and John Hurley, senior research adviser at the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC), have collectively secured $600,000 under a U.S. Department of Energy award and a UND match to research a “joining process” called evaporative-metal bonding, developed at the EERC and invented and patented by Cavalli and Hurley.  The process facilitates joining of metal alloys at high temperatures and is applicable to gas turbines (used for both airplane engines and ground-based electricity generation) and high-temperature heat exchangers like those in coal-fired power plants.

They will also conduct corrosion testing on the joints in environments similar to those in gas turbines that burn syngas, verifying long-term viability in service.

Min Wu, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology, has received an award of nearly $325,000 from the Flight Attendant

Medical Research Institute (FAMRI) to investigate the immune function provided by lung epithelial cells, a skin-type cell on the surface of the lung, to help a special type of white-blood cells, known as macrophages, rapidly eradicate invading pathogens.  The research aims to determine how second-hand smoke makes lungs more susceptible to infections by certain bacteria.  It could help develop better treatments for people who suffer smoking-related infections or other chronic inflammatory diseases, such as asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary syndrome.  The FAMRI grant is the first awarded in North Dakota.

Nicholas Ralston and Laura Raymond of the Energy & Environmental Research Center (EERC) are working to ensure that the many health benefits of consuming fish are realized.  Their two-year project, “Fish Selenium-Health Benefit Values in Mercury Risk Management,” was awarded $490,000 by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) program to study relationships between selenium and mercury in fish.  Their research has shown that, since most varieties of ocean fish contain more selenium than mercury, they are safe and beneficial to consume.  However, fish that contain more mercury than selenium (a rarity) may be hazardous.

Ralston serves on the EPA’s science advisory panel and recently received a letter of commendation and honorable mention for a Scientific and Technological Achievement Award from EPA.  In cooperation with Prairie Public Television, Raymond was the executive producer of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration funded documentary “Fish, Mercury, and Nutrition: The Net Effects,” which summarizes work done by Ralston, Raymond and their colleagues.

Bethany Davis, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, a senior biology major and psychology/deaf studies minor.  She was honored for her presentation titled “Alpha-1A Adrenergic Receptor Stimulation Improves Mood in Mice.”  Davis’ mentor is Van Doze, pharmacology, physiology and therapeutics.

Melissa Wheeler, Diné from the Navajo Nation, a senior psychology major.  She was honored for her presentation titled “Alcohol and Other Drug Use among Northern Plains Indians.”  Her research also was the focus of an “outstanding poster” presentation, awarded by Psychologists in Indian Country at the American Psychological Association conference in Washington, D.C.  Wheeler is mentored by Jacque Gray, Center for Rural Health.

Sarita Eastman, Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate, a senior psychology major, was recognized for her presentation titled “Spirituality as a Protective Factor in American Indian Mental Health.”  Eastman’s mentor is Jacque Gray.

Also at the conference, Paula Carter, Turtle Mountain Chippewa, a UND Ph.D. graduate in counseling psychology, was presented an Allery award for “Graduate Health Researcher,” and Patty Lambert, Spirit Lake, a master’s degree student in English, received the Allery “American Indian Graduate Health Researcher of Promise” award.  Both women worked as graduate students for the National Resource Center on Native American Aging.

Two UND undergraduates were recognized recently at the Seventh Annual Undergraduate Research in Molecular Sciences meeting at Minnesota State University-Moorhead.

Erin Holdman, Kenora, Ontario, a junior medical laboratory science major, received a $400 Travel Award to present her work at the 2012 American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology meeting in April in San Diego.  Her presentation is titled “Immuno-enrichment of FAM129b from Rat Lung Tissue,” a study on melanoma and how a specific protein interacts with other proteins.  Holdman’s mentor is John Shabb, associate professor of biochemistry and molecular biology.

Joshua Maliske, Bismarck, N.D., also received a $400 Travel Award to present his work at the same meeting in San Diego.  His presentation is titled “TRPC1-STIM1-Orai1’ is the Core SOCE Complex in Proliferating Mesenchymal Stem Cells.”  His mentors are Brij Singh, Joyce Ohm and Biswaranjan Pani, all of the Department of  Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Doria Thiele, a Ph.D. student in nursing from Monmouth,Ore., was presented the 2011 Novice Researcher Award

recently by the Association of Women’s Health, Obstetric and Neonatal Nurses (AWHONN) at their annual convention.  She received a $5,000 check from the organization to further her research study, titled “Maternal vitamin D supplementation to correct deficiency in mothers and breastfed infants.”  Thiele’s research interests include lactation, the breastfeeding relationship, the role of breast milk in disease prevention and developmental origins of diseases.  Her adviser is Cindy Anderson, director of UND’s nursing Ph.D. program.

Zhang prepares to lower a Secchi Disk to measure clarity of the water. The researchers record the depth at which the disk is no longer visible.

Can an oceanographer in the middle of the North American continent find happiness studying a flooding freshwater lake in landlocked North Dakota?

According to Xiaodong Zhang, an associate professor in earth systems science and policy at the University of North Dakota, the answer is a resounding “Yes!”

“I’m at the geographical center of the continent, which is equal distance from all the major oceans and the Gulf of Mexico,” said Zhang, who has a Ph.D. in oceanography.  “It’s perfect because I can study any ocean I like.”

While Zhang continues to study oceans, these days much of his work focuses on the expansion of Devils Lake 90 miles west of Grand Forks and the seemingly intractable problems it’s created.  The lake has risen nearly 32 feet since 1993, increasing in volume by seven times and in area by nearly five times (261 square miles).  It has inundated prime farmland, forced towns to relocate, and required government to spend more than $1 billion on flood mitigation projects.

“When I looked at doing research,” Zhang said, “I found that much of the current research lacks a rigorous study of the hydrological properties of not only the lake, but also of the entire Devils Lake Basin.

How high?

Zhang (right) and Christopher Pendergast of UND’s Center for People and the Environment inspect sensors on a buoy to check for bio-fouling.

“We developed a hydrological model to study the rainfall and the runoff of the entire basin, instead of just the lake itself,” he explained.  “We combined that model with NASA data and future climate predictions to see what the future looks like for Devils Lake.  If the lake is still rising, how high will it go?”

While Devils Lake is considered a freshwater body, its water is relatively salty because it’s a terminal lake, which means that water flowing into the lake normally has no natural outlet.  Evaporation causes the salts to concentrate, which makes the lake more saline than water in the surrounding environment.

“The salinity level is quite stable and doesn’t change very much,” Zhang said.  “It’s about

four parts per thousand.  It’s significantly more saline than the Sheyenne River, which is generally around one part per thousand.  In comparison, ocean water is about 35 parts per thousand.”

The thorny question of what to do with the lake’s saline water has raised controversy locally, regionally and internationally.  The state built an outlet that drains Devils Lake water into the Sheyenne River, which flows into the Red River of the North and then into Canada.  It plans to build an even larger outlet next year.  If the lake rises another four feet to 1,458 feet above sea level, it will naturally overflow from adjacent Stump Lake into the Tolna Coulee and then into the Sheyenne River, an event geologists say has occurred twice in the past 4,000 years.

When Zhang came to UND in 2002, he wanted students in his class on hydrological cycles to understand how their lessons could be applied to everyday issues.  Devils Lake was a natural fit.

“I invited one group from Devils Lake to talk to the class about how they were affected by the flooding,” he explained.  “I also invited people who lived downstream along the Sheyenne River to talk about why they didn’t want the water discharged into their river.  It gave the students two different perspectives, which got me really interested.”

Measuring water changes

In September under a NASA-funded project to monitor the lake’s water quality, Zhang and his students deployed a buoy that continuously measures water temperature, salinity, turbidity (cloudiness or muddiness), dissolved oxygen level and chlorophyll concentration, in addition to weather information.  The buoy is in the Stump Lake portion of Devils Lake where the water quality is typically lowest.

“By monitoring water quality, we hope to have a better understanding of how it’s changing and what factors could cause that change,” he said.  “We’ll better understand how the quality of water changes in response to the weather and long-term climate changes.”

Zhang is studying these issues in collaboration with two other UND researchers on NASA-funded projects.  Andrei Kirilenko, an associate professor who works with Zhang in the Center for People and the Environment, examines the potential impact of future climate change on the lake.  Yeo Howe Lim, associate professor of civil engineering in the School of Engineering and Mines, uses calibrated hydrologic computer modeling to predict whether the lake is likely to rise, fall or remain at its current level.

Lim specializes in water resource engineering and is using a variation of a U.S. Army Corps of Engineers hydrological model to determine the probability of different scenarios occurring.  Using NASA data on Devils Lake, the computer model will be run a million times to determine which scenarios are more likely.

“If there’s a high probability of the lake going higher, then we really have to do something,” Lim said.  “But the economics of additional measures become questionable if we have to protect against a 5 percent chance event above the current water level.”

Kirilenko has also been involved in research on climate change impacts on the watershed of the Aral Sea in Central Asia – which has been shrinking since the 1960s – and considers Devils Lake as a natural extension of his work.

“From my perspective, the interesting part is: what are the future prospects for the hydrology in Devils Lake watershed in relation to the possible changes in climate?” he asked.  “Devils Lake is an extremely interesting site for study because the impacts are large, but they’re regional.  The simulations for climate change are usually done on a very coarse scale of around 200 by 200 miles.  We have a much smaller watershed, so there’s a need for downscaling.”

With the North Dakota winter approaching, Zhang had to deal with a problem that oceanographers who use research buoys don’t face: removing the buoy before the lake freezes or risk having it destroyed by ice.

“Normally, when we put a buoy in the ocean we don’t bring it back; we leave it out there,” he laughed.  “I’ve never dealt with this before.  How do I bring it back?  The buoy’s a round thing.  There’s no handle.”

It’s just another challenge for an oceanographer in North Dakota.

Video: Future Climate Change: Devil's Lake Region

Patrick C. Miller | Staff Writer

Zhang and Ph.D. student Kate Overmoe-Kenninger collect a water sample. Lake water is pressured through a filter pad to collect solid particles and algae.

Melissa Gjellstad reinvigorates UND’s Norwegian program.

Melissa Gjellstad didn’t come to UND to simply teach students to conjugate verbs in Norwegian and retell stories why their Scandinavian ancestors settled here more than a century ago.

There’s so much more to discover about the language, the land and its people, she explains, with a bound-and-determined look in her eye.

Since Gjellstad’s arrival in the fall of 2008, the University of North Dakota Norwegian program has not been the same.  With passion and vigor, the assistant professor and program coordinator works to open and expand students’ views of Norwegians and their culture.

She’s also opening eyes to the Norway of today and how it influences global society, culture and politics through her accumulating research on gender issues.

A complex land

Gjellstad understands there is a common misconception that Norway is a land of only blue-eyed, blond-haired, homogeneous people.

“I’m trying very hard to inform that perception and update it 150 years,” she explains.  “I’m doing my best to complicate the picture.”

She says Norway is much more diverse than many realize.  Immigrants to Norway hail from many parts of the world; most are from Poland, Sweden, Pakistan, Iraq, and Somalia.

It’s the diversity in the people and careers that Gjellstad uses to inspire students to learn more.

“(Learning about their) heritage is the way I get them in the door, and then I hook them with the rest,” she said.

When recruiting students for her program, she always starts off by asking, “What’s your love?”  Whatever the response might be, her constant reply is: “They do that in Norway too!”  She goes on to explain that every degree program can be augmented by a Nordic perspective.  Seeing and learning about another country is beneficial to everyone, no matter what your heritage.  She encourages all students to study another language and experience studying abroad.

Gjellstad grew up near Velva, N.D.  After graduating from Concordia College with degrees in biology and Scandinavian studies, she received her master’s and Ph.D. in Scandinavian language and literature from the University of Washington.

Gjellstad’s impressive amount of research contributes significantly to her curriculum.  She uses both literature and multimedia sources, such as films or comics, to illustrate her findings.  She pays special attention to literary criticism that has a Scandinavian focus.

These tools, concepts and her theories are often incorporated into her classroom to discuss points about modern Norway and Scandinavia.

A trendsetter

In particular, Gjellstad has studied the representation of mothers and fathers as caregivers in 1990s Scandinavian literature as compared to the generation prior.  The 1990s timeframe is significant because it followed the implementation of sweeping, liberal paternal leave policies in many Scandinavian countries.

For instance, parents of newborns were allowed 44 weeks of leave from their job at 100 percent pay or 54 weeks at 80 percent.  In the case of adoptions, the benefit period totals 41 weeks at full salary or 51 weeks at 80 percent.

Gjellstad investigates how these social changes influence Scandinavian literature, or whether the literature is ahead of the curve in precipitating social change.  And it’s not unprecedented that social trends with geneses in Scandinavia spread to other parts of the world.

“Gender politics have been a big export for these countries,” Gjellstad said.  “They have been on the forefront compared to the rest of the world in the sense that parenting or caregiving should be equally valued work.”

Trained in comparative literature, Gjellstad injects her research into many of her courses such as “Gender and Family in Nordic Cultures” and “Gender Studies in Norway,” which is taught in Norwegian.  Gjellstad stated, “Even in [my] ‘Vikings and Sagas’ course, I require students to be attentive to gender issues.”

In only a few short years, Gjellstad’s in-depth research, enthusiasm and love for the Norwegian culture have made a huge impact on UND’s Norwegian program.

Since Gjellstad took the helm of the Norwegian program, the number of students majoring and minoring in the language has doubled.  The number of UND students studying abroad has also increased.

Program innovations

Earlier this year, Gjellstad expanded the reach of her unique program by offering first-year Norwegian online for the first time.  UND is one of the few schools in the Upper Midwest that offers studies in Norwegian.

“By moving it online, it will attract people who do not live in the area or are unable to attend the daily language class,” Gjellstad said.

Gjellstad was awarded the UND Foundation Award for Individual Excellence in Teaching during the University’s 2011 Founders Day celebration.

She also has earned an international reputation for teaching approaches and research.  Last year, Gjellstad was elected to serve on the international advisory board of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies, which promotes the study of Scandinavian languages, literature, history, culture, and society in North America.

Olaf Berwald, chair of the UND Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures, lauded Gjellstad for her unbounded energy and mentorship in and out of the classroom.

“In her Norwegian language, culture, and literature courses, as well as in her interdisciplinary first-year experience course, Dr. Gjellstad inspires intellectual synergy, enthusiasm and scholarly curiosity in her students,” he said.

Caitlin Slator and David Dodds | Writers