MAES News Archive
January 1, 2006
- Does a Lack of Support at Work Reduce Breast-feeding? MAES Researchers Receive $500,000 USDA Grant to Find Out
- MAES Scientist Helps Develop Tool to Measure Economic Impact of Arts and Culture
- Genomics Used to Help Developing Countries
- Equine Health, Nutrition Focus of New Online Program
- MAES Scientist Honored by Vegetable Council
- University-Community Research Collaborations Issues Call for Proposals
- NAL Web Site Redesigned
Does a Lack of Support at Work Reduce Breast-feeding? MAES Researchers Receive $500,000 USDA Grant to Find Out
Research has shown that breast milk offers infants more health benefits than formula and may help protect children against obesity. Most mothers in the United States start by breast-feeding, yet only one-third of infants are breast-fed for 6 months. MAES researchers suspect that a lack of support in the workplace environment may contribute to this dramatic drop-off and have received a $500,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Research Initiative to study the situation.
"The aim of this research is to understand the workplace climate as it relates to the support of breast-feeding," said Beth Olson, MAES food science and human nutrition scientist, who is the lead researcher on the project. "Our hypothesis is that employees who are new mothers do not perceive the workplace environment as supportive to this practice. They do not think that women can work and breast-feed their babies, so they stop breast-feeding when they go back to work.”
As part of the project, Olson and her colleagues will identify the components of breast-feeding support policies and practices at companies, as well as record the opinions on the policies of employees who are new mothers and the attitudes of managers toward breast-feeding support at work. Finally, the researchers will examine the relationship between company policies, employee perceptions and manager attitudes toward breast-feeding support.
"This research is significant because our results will be used to design better workplace breast-feeding support programs," Olson said. "These better programs, in turn, will lead to increased breast-feeding rates, healthier infants with lower health care costs, and happier and more productive working moms. The whole state really benefits."
Other researchers participating in the "Workplace Climate for Breast-feeding Support: Perception of New Mother Employees and the Role of Company Policies and Manager Attitudes" project are: Ingrid Fulmer, MSU assistant professor of management; Dennis Gilliland, MSU professor of statistics and probability; and Ed Wolfe, associate professor of education research and evaluation at Virginia Tech University.
MAES Scientist Helps Develop Tool to Measure Economic Impact of Arts and Culture
As part of an effort to create a more accurate measure of the money, jobs and taxes brought to the state by arts and culture, MAES community, agriculture and recreation resources scientist Ed Mahoney is helping to develop a Web site to calculate these contributions.
The Cultural Economic Development Online Tool (CEDOT) site will provide a way to measure the economic impact of arts and culture in a way that has not been seen before, according to its developers.
"Other states have tried, but no one has envisioned a comprehensive system like this," said Mahoney, who serves as project leader.
The site will help any cultural organization figure out how much money it generates in sales, how many jobs it creates, and how many tax dollars it brings to the city, state and nation. It may be especially helpful for smaller institutions that may not have big budgets to study their economic impact.
The Web site, expected to debut by the summer, will break down how local and overnight guests spend money, whether on restaurants, motels or an organization's gift shop. The site is a collaborative effort of professors and graduate students at Michigan State University, Wayne State University and Lawrence Technological University, with help from the Michigan Humanities Council and $35,000 in start-up funding from the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries.
To keep institutions accountable for attendance figures, the department plans to survey 5,000 households across the state and nation every 2 years on their cultural habits.
The site also will contain case studies that look at intangibles offered by cultural institutions, such as the amount of community pride generated or leadership and educational opportunities provided.
The site also will feature research from panels of artists, gallery owners, educators and libraries that will help the state gauge the needs of various people and organizations whose livelihoods depend on culture.
The new plan, "Cultural Economic Development Strategy for Michigan," was announced by Bill Anderson, director of the Michigan Department of History, Arts and Libraries, at the Art of Cool Conference in Lansing in December. The conference was sponsored by the Michigan Council for Arts and Cultural Affairs.
Genomics Used to Help Developing Countries
A collaboration involving MAES researchers is using genomics to increase the nutritional value of rice to help address malnutrition in developing countries.
Reliance on rice as a primary source of food causes malnutrition throughout much of the developing world because rice is a poor source of several essential micronutrients. As part of an $11.3 million project supported by the Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative, MAES scientists are collaborating to increase levels of provitamin A, vitamin E and other micronutrients in rice.
“The rice genome was recently sequenced and found to encode genes necessary to synthesize essential vitamins,” said Dean Della Penna, MAES biochemistry and molecular biology researcher.
Della Penna has identified and studied key genes involved in the synthesis of vitamin E in a plant called Arabidopsis thaliana. This plant, a small relative of mustard, is commonly used in plant research. Michigan State University is a leader in Arabidopsis genomic research.
“The rice genome is 95 percent similar to that of Arabidopsis, so the knowledge we have obtained in Arabidopsis can be directly transferred to work in rice,” Della Penna said.
Della Penna and his colleagues will continue fundamental work in identifying key genes for micronutrients in plants. The project’s principal investigator, Peter Beyer, at the University of Freiburg in Germany, will be working to apply all of the fundamental knowledge from research by the collaborators.
The project is an international collaboration among MSU, Baylor University and the University of Freiburg as well as the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the International Rice Research Center in the Philippines, the National Rice Research Center of the Philippines and the Cuu Long Delta Rice Research Institute in Vietnam.
The five-year project seeks to enhance beta-carotene (provitamin A), vitamin E, iron and zinc in rice. The more nutritious rice can then be easily introduced into developing countries.
Equine Health, Nutrition Focus of New Online Program
Horse enthusiasts may soon be able to learn the latest on equine health and nutrition without ever having to leave their homes.
With funding from the Animal Industry Initiative (AII), Michigan’s animal agriculture initiative at Michigan State University (MSU), researchers and Extension educators are developing an online course to teach horse owners about current equine nutrition and health issues. Topics to be covered in the program include equine nutritional requirements, nutrients, diseases and feeding management strategies.
“Survey results consistently indicate that the two most important topics horse owners want to learn more about are nutrition and health,” said Christine Skelly, MSU associate professor of animal science. “Survey participants also indicated that they would like to be able to study from their homes or offices because of time constraints.”
Skelly said that opportunities for offering traditional face-to-face education programs are slowly declining. Extension educators are busier than ever, and budget constraints make it more difficult to justify traveling throughout the state to teach programs to a small number of participants. People who would once readily attend a course are also limited by schedule conflicts.
“Amateur horse owners and other people interested in this type of information are typically juggling families and careers in addition to leisure horse activities,” she said. “People who may have time constraints or who don’t want to travel long distances to take a course will have an opportunity to take part in MSU equine programs on their home computers.”
Plans are to introduce the MSU online equine course to the public in fall 2006. Participants who complete the program will receive a certificate of completion.
The Revitalization of Animal Agriculture in Michigan Initiative, commonly referred to as the Animal Industry Initiative (AII), is Michigan’s animal agriculture research, teaching and Extension initiative at MSU. The AII is supported in part by the Michigan Agricultural Experiment Station.
MAES Scientist Honored by Vegetable Council
Darryl Warncke, MAES crop and soil sciences researcher, received the Master Farmer Associate Award from the Michigan Vegetable Council at the group's annual meeting during the Great Lakes Fruit, Vegetable and Farm Market Expo in Grand Rapids in December.
Warncke was honored for his more than 30 years of research on efficient utilization of essential plant nutrients based on soil and plant analysis and for his expertise in soil fertility and plant nutritional requirements of vegetable crops grown on both organic and mineral soils. He was instrumental in the development of the saturated media extract method used by most commercial labs for analyzing artificial greenhouse growth media. Warncke has served as supervisor of the MSU Soil Testing and Plant Analysis Lab since 1974 and as research coordinator of the MAES Muck Soils Research Farm field research station since 1976. He is also the faculty liaison to the Michigan Onion Committee.
The Master Farm Associate Award recognizes a person who is not directly involved in vegetable production but who has had a significant impact on the well-being of the vegetable industry in Michigan.
University-Community Research Collaborations Issues Call for Proposals
About $500,000 in research grants will be available to MSU researchers and their community partners as part of the 2005-06 Innovations in University-Community Research Collaborations grant program. The program supports MSU faculty members' collaborative research on children, youth, family and community issues. The program will fund research through three MSU programs: the Community Vitality Program, the Families and Communities Together Coalition (FACT) and University Outreach and Engagement/MSU Extension.
MAES researchers and Extension staff members are eligible to apply for funding. All projects must be collaborative efforts and must include:
- MSU faculty members from more than one department or unit.
- Off-campus MSU Extension staff member(s) or representatives of community organizations (community partners). University Outreach and Engagement and MSU Extension grants require an MSU Extension partner.
Topics for the 2005-06 awards:
Community Vitality Program grants totaling $250,000 (up to $50,000 each) will fund research on community issues in the following areas:
- Environmental health and well-being.
- Economic development.
- Poverty, inequality and social justice.
- Community and neighborhood involvement.
FACT Coalition grants totaling $200,000 (up to $50,000 each) will be given for research on children, youth and family issues in the following areas:
- Family and community vitality.
- Families, communities and schools.
- Family and community health.
University Outreach and Engagement/MSU Extension grants totaling $50,000 (up to $25,000 each) will support research on community vitality in these areas:
- Community and economic development.
- Positive outcomes for children, youth and families.
- Family and community security.
- Enhancing sustainable and profitable agriculture.
- Technology and human development.
In addition to the grant award, the department of a principal investigator on a University Outreach and Engagement/MSU Extension grant will receive a 10 percent allocation to help offset any costs related to oversight of the grant.
For more information, click on the links below for the complete Innovations in University-Community Research Collaborations request for proposals, supporting documents, information on previous FACT grant projects and a searchable database of potential research partners.
Proposal
Cover Form
Budget Justification
Form
Biographical
Sketch Form
Proposal Checklist
Previous FACT
Grant Project Descriptions
Searchable Research
Partners Database
The National Agricultural Library (NAL) has launched its redesigned Web site as a gateway connecting users with the services of NAL and the billions of pages of agricultural information within NAL collections and information resources.
NAL is part of the Agricultural Research Service, the U.S. Department of Agriculture's chief scientific research agency.
Designed with customer preferences in mind, the new NAL site brings faster access to the rich array of agriculture-related information available through NAL.
Visitors to the front page of the redesigned site can browse information on popular agricultural topics, from animals and livestock to rural community development, supported by the NAL site's new navigation.
The site offers several Web pages with information focused on the needs of specific audiences, including kids and teens, librarians and USDA employees.
