Here’s a fun twist: A group of researchers at Cornell and the University of Hawaii are doing some interesting research that is a little out of this world but may have implications here in Iowa and throughout the rest of the country. The Hawaii Space Exploration Analogue & Simulation (HI-SEAS) is a 120-day Mars exploration analogue mission to take place in early 2013 on the Big Island of Hawaii. What this will be is a simulated space mission on Mars, and six researchers will simulate life in a Mars-spacecraft environment. Can you imagine four months living, cooking and eating in a 50-square-meter habitat?

Why are they studying this?

Astronauts have a wide selection of prepackaged meals available to eat during missions.  But quoting the researchers, “Humans eating a restricted diet over a period of months ultimately experience “menu fatigue,” also known as food monotony.”

Hmmm, sounds a little bit like some American homes, eating the same pre-packaged food week in – week out.

The researchers continue: “The major disadvantage of cooking on a space mission is the cost of resources required for food preparation and cleanup: equipment, power, water, and crew labor…Little is known about the break-even point in crew size, at which cooking would become more labor-efficient than eating instant foods out of individual packages.”

Wow, hello! This is the same issue we see in many American homes: the choice between cooking and eating “instant” food.

Researchers also know that over time, nasal passages can become blocked during prolonged space flight, and the loss of the sense of smell directly influences taste. In addition to their own research initiatives, these volunteer researchers are going to compare prepackaged space food with food cooked in the mock-up environment from shelf-stable ingredients for taste and convenience.

I am looking forward to seeing the outcome of this study. The researchers are looking to develop recipes and cooking strategies for future space travelers. This is one of those projects where the scientific exploration of space travel can have direct influence on hungry children at home. The potential for new ways for families to use shelf-stable ingredients in their homes could come to the rescue of both families who struggle with obesity and families who live in food deserts – those parts of the U.S. where fresh food is not easily accessible.

Alisdair “Rod” Philp, Ph.D., a DMU assistant professor of biochemistry and nutrition, was inspired to help students create the group because of student anxiety over genetics questions on medical licensing examinations. He is an elected affiliated scientist of the ACMG, which enabled the student interest group’s affiliation. Philp says the rapid advancement in genetic knowledge and research, along with DMU students’ interest in both, affirmed the idea for such an organization.

“The human genome project took years, around 20 world-class institutions and 2.7 billion dollars,” he says about the effort, completed in 2003, to identify all the thousands of genes in human DNA. “It revolutionized my job. Nowadays, you can sequence the coding part of the genome with one machine and one person in an off-the-shelf test for around $4,500 in 90 days.

“We are on the cusp of a paradigm shift in how genetics impacts clinicians, from family practice to the specialist surgeon,” he adds. “That’s why we need to cater for students who are interested in this area. We have the opportunity to give our students, from any of our programs, a strong advantage in a competitive field.”

As genetics knowledge expands, health care providers will be expected to translate it to their patients.

The parents of a child who’s losing his eyesight due to a genetic disorder, for example, may be better prepared with accurate prognosis for him as well as the risk for any future children based on correlations of genotypes and phenotypes. Members of a family plagued by diseases such as diabetes may be able to have better crafted medications as scientists discover the subtle genetic changes that influence individual patients’ responses to drugs.

In addition, diseases that were always considered too complicated for genetic analysis, such as coronary artery disease, are rapidly being deciphered. Recent advances in the U.S. and Europe have seen successful gene replacement therapies, based on the accurate identification of the causative gene. And as more companies bypass the physician and diagnosis – “an alarming prospect,” Philp says – with services that genotype individuals’ DNA, health care providers will be asked to analyze and translate their patients’ results.

“Medical genetics is a rapidly expanding field and will likely be integrated into nearly every branch of medicine pursued by DMU students,” says DMU osteopathic medical student Arman Cicic, president of the genetics student interest group (SIG). “By providing comprehensive and up-to-date genetics education, the SIG hopes to keep our students at the forefront of contemporary medicine and maintain DMU’s mission to produce highly competent health professionals.”

The mission of DMU’s SIG, says vice president and student Scott Miller, is to “provide students and staff, along with local physicians and residents, with comprehensive medical genetics education to better serve and advocate for the health of our community.” In addition to providing a forum for students to research topics in medical genetics and present their findings, the group will seek to foster networking among health care providers and researchers at other universities, hospitals and more.

The group also plans to survey DMU alumni in family practice and who are physician assistants in central Iowa to learn the most common genetic diseases they encounter in their practices, what they wished they had learned in genetics and what DMU should teach students about genetics today. That information may lead to enriched curriculum and will allow the SIG to design additional courses and continuing education for those practicing in the field.

“This is a student-driven effort to demystify genetics for students, physicians, residents and others,” Philp says. “The field changes so quickly that many practicing physicians can get left behind by uninformative technical terms. Often it appears that the new advances are very complicated, but the beauty of genetics is that it’s like Legos. It fits together one way; you just need to have someone show you the how the trick works.”

The group is also in the process of arranging a genetics grand rounds that draws together oncologists, pediatricians, surgeons, family practice physicians, genetic counselors, nurses and other interested professionals from local health care institutions, a win-win for those participants as well as DMU students and faculty.

“For a basic scientist, I believe it is essential for us to maintain close contact with the health care professional,” Philp says. “If we do not, we run the risk that what we teach students will be out-of-date and irrelevant. Furthermore, these rounds, I hope, will present the opportunity for practitioners in Des Moines to take a seat at a truly interprofessional forum.”

Today, Nov. 8, is celebrated as X-ray Discovery Day in salute of this life-changing, life-saving technology.

In her book Wilhelm Roentgen and the Discovery of X-Rays, Kimberly Garcia recounts that Roentgen, then 50 years old, was experimenting with electricity when he discovered the existence of this “invisible light.” He repeated his experiments numerous times in the coming weeks, isolating himself and sometimes sleeping on a cot in his lab. He had his wife, Bertha, place her hand on a photographic plate for 15 minutes while x-rays passed through it. The resulting picture, which alarmed Frau Roentgen, became famous.

Not knowing what exactly the rays were that he was producing in his lab, Roentgen referred to them as x-rays. He published his findings in the Proceedings of the Physical Medical Society of Wurzburg on December 28, 1895. While the scientist was highly annoyed at how the resulting fame disrupted his lab work, Kaiser Wilhelm II decorated him with the Order of the Crown the following January. In 1901, Roentgen became the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for physics.

His discovery is credited as being one of the greatest advances in the history of medicine. X-rays have found countless uses over the years, from examining the human body to checking the safe manufacture of hundreds of products to screening bags and luggage at airports. Dental records obtained by x-rays can be used as evidence in court proceedings and as a means of determining identification. When he first discovered x-rays, Roentgen had no idea how they would be used to improve our lives.

Radiologic technologists shed a lot of light in health care.

The week-long celebration notes the important role medical imaging and radiation therapy professionals play in patient care and health care safety. Educated in anatomy, patient positioning, examination techniques, equipment protocols, radiation safety and basic patient care, radiologic technologists perform diagnostic imaging examinations and administer radiation therapy treatments. To become registered, they must complete a formal education program and pass a national certification examination; they must earn continuing education credits to remain registered.

The DMU Clinic’s top-quality radiology services include diagnostic x-rays, bone density testing and whole body composition analysis. All DMU radiologic technologists are certified and trained in their area of expertise.

Given the importance of imaging exams in health care, R.T.s are key members of medical teams. Hats off to all the individuals working in this profession!

How would you feel if bananas went bye-bye - forever?

Author Dan Koeppel takes readers on a rapid romp through the expansive history and shaky future of this seedless, sexless fruit in his 2008 book, Banana: The Fate of the Fruit That Changed the World. In addition to tales about Eden, the yellow fruit’s migration and growing popularity through the years, Koeppel warns that the banana’s unique reproductive system — each fruit is a genetic duplicate of the next — makes it especially susceptible to epidemics.

“What’s happening [now] with bananas is that they are being struck by a fungus called Panama disease that is incurable and that pretty much wipes out banana plantations within a matter of years,” Koeppel says. That fungus, he adds, has made its way from Asia to Australia and is predicted to afflict banana fields in Latin America and South America within the next decade.

“Every single banana scientist I spoke to — and that was quite a few — says it’s not an ‘if,’ it’s a ‘when,’” Koeppel told NPR. “It only takes a single clump of contaminated dirt, literally, to get this thing rampaging across entire continents.”

Would the disappearance of the banana affect you? How important is it that scientists zap the fungus before it’s too late?

Having the D.O. program at DMU also impacts all our other programs in approach, overlap and understanding and that gives our grads an edge. Wouldn’t you want to know your health care practitioner understood other disciplines and had a whole body outlook on your health?

Lab-grown burger: sounds weird, but it may be just what the planet needs.

The Telegraph adds that laboratory-grown chicken and lamb won’t be far behind, and that fish fillets already have been grown in a New York lab using cells taken from goldfish muscle tissue. (A 2009 attempt to “grow” pork in the lab was less successful; the gray, calamari-like substance, scientists said, “was not particularly appetizing”).

We all have heard about food developments that achieved market-driven goals while robbing our foods of flavor and nutrition (think the Delicious apple). Food writer Barry Estabrook digs into the tragedy of the tomato in his new book, Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit. Estabrook explores how efforts to make the red fruits tough enough to ship also ensure they’re pretty much tasteless. Further, mass tomato production, particularly in Florida, involve massive amounts of chemicals and sometimes results in exploitation of low-ranking farm workers. (Note to file: Buy tomatoes at this Saturday’s Downtown Farmers Market or other markets in the area.)

Vitro meat, on the other hand, might be an example of good freak food. Those Dutch scientists will soon seek taste-testers for their results. Want ketchup with that test-tube burger?

At DMU, our faculty believe research is vital, and students are vital to research. A demonstration of that belief is DMU’s mentored student research program, which gives student researchers the opportunity to share highlights of their findings. They will present their research today in DMU’s Olsen Medical Education Center (better known as the MEC) in an event that’s free and open to the public. It begins with registration at 9:30 a.m., followed by welcome comments at 10 a.m. by microbiology and immunology Professor Jeffrey Gray, Ph.D., DMU’s interim vice president for research, and physiology and pharmacology Assistant Professor Kim Tran, M.D., Ph.D.

Providing the keynote address today at 10:15 a.m. will be Garland Marshall, Ph.D., professor of biochemistry and molecular biophysics at Washington University’s School of Medicine. He’ll discuss therapeutic approaches for AIDS.

The best reason to attend today’s program is to absorb the intellectual energy DMU students radiate and their investigative enthusiasm for the topics they’ve explored. You can enjoy oral and poster presentations in the MEC and in Ryan Hall, rooms 179, 181, 280 and 281. You’ll be amazed by what our students have discovered!