Radio-Ready Soundbites

SDSU RESEARCH NEWS

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

 

 

SDSU research examines fermented soy in fish diets

 

BROOKINGS, S.D. - Making rainbow trout into vegetarians isn't in the plans, but a South Dakota State University fisheries science researcher is hoping to get his fish to eat more soy.

Professor Michael Brown in SDSU's Department of Wildlife and Fisheries Science says it's not only good for farmers, but good for ocean species of fish that are harvested to provide the fish meal used in aquaculture diets. Brown has traditionally used from 5 to 20 percent conventional soybean meal in fish diets as a protein base.

Brown, "The stuff that we're getting ready to conduct our experiments on now is a   fermented soybean product. So it's a soymeal that's post-processed. We want to determine if that product is greatly improved that is, can we incorporate higher levels of it in the feed and still maintain satisfactory performance."(TRT 27 sec) MP3

"Most species do tolerate soybean meal. One of the problems that we do have with the traditional soybean meal is that it contain protease inhibitors, which detract from utilization of amino acids. We've kind of got to get around that hurdle in order to increase uptake and utilization of soybean meal. We're thinking that this is one way, looking at soybean meal post-processing that's going on now - just as an example, some of the fermented type products - to see if we can get around some of these issues."(TRT 43 sec) MP3

"There are 10 essential amino acids that fishes require. Of those lysine, methianine, cystine are some of the primaries. Looking at the profiles of some of these new products, they have pretty good levels of those essential amino acids. It will be interesting to see how bioavailable those are in these new feeds." (TRT 22 sec) MP3

"It's pretty exciting from two standpoints. Obviously it's value-added - the more we can incorporate these plant products into fish feeds, there's a market. But beyond that, if we can have an impact on marine fisheries and the problems that exist there that are driving those stocks down the primary fishmeals that are available on the market  right now for production of fishfeeds or dairy feeds or anything else are menhaden,  anchovy, herring and sardines. So these are the primary fishes that are used in production of fishmeal for aquaculture or agricultural diets." (TRT 50 sec) MP3

"These are traditional ocean fisheries. Some of them are on the verge of collapse. We need to have the foresight to try to divert that problem and to try to provide some value-added opportunities. It should make sense to everyone. We've got a problem here, here's a potential solution. In particular with respect to things like DDGs, the vast portion of that is going into livestock feeds. Well, fish under commercial conditions are just another form of livestock. They're just not out there in the feedlot, they're in a tank You just have to set up the conditions that are appropriate for the culture of that organism, whether it be a cow or a fish." (TRT 48 sec) MP3

 

Contact: Michael Brown, (605) 688-5599  

Author: Lance Nixon, (605) 696-7869

SDSU RESEARCH NEWS

SOUTH DAKOTA STATE UNIVERSITY

SDSU research: Previously undocumented volcano contributed to cold decade

BROOKINGS, S.D. - South Dakota State University researchers and their colleagues elsewhere in America and in France have found evidence of a previously undocumented large volcanic eruption that occurred exactly 200 years ago, in 1809.

The discovery helps explain the record cold decade from 1810-1819.

SDSU professor Jihong Cole-Dai (pronounced: JEE-HONG COAL-DIE) said he and his colleagues made the finding by analyzing chemicals in ice samples from snow-capped Antarctica and Greenland in the Arctic. The year-by-year accumulation of snow in the polar ice sheets records what is going on in the atmosphere.

Cole-Dai: "We analyze ice core samples from both polar regions, from Antarctica and from Greenland in the Arctic. And we found that there's a lot of volcanic sulfuric acid in the snow layers of 1809, 1810, and part of 1811. That usually indicates there was a large volcanic eruption at that time. And because we found it at both poles at the same time, the conclusion would be that there was this big eruption that happened somewhere around the Equator in the tropics of the Earth."  (TRT: 51 sec) MP3

Cole-Dai: "Usually when a big volcano like that goes off, it puts all these chemicals into the atmosphere which form sort of a veil that reflects sunlight, so that cools the Earth. But another requirement for that volcano to actually change the climate is that the volcanic gas has to go all the way up into the stratosphere. If it was in the lower levels of the atmosphere, or in the troposphere, the chemicals would not stay very long, they would be washed out of the atmosphere very quickly. If they don't stay very long, they don't have much of an impact on climate."  (TRT: 44 sec) MP3

Cole-Dai: "And so to figure out what kind of volcanic eruption this was, we look at the isotopic composition of the sulfuric acid that came from that volcanic eruption. We found this special signature that tells us that that volcanic gas must have gone into the stratosphere. It is what we call a ‘stratospheric eruption.' The timing of that would have had to have been in the year 1809, which is exactly 200 years ago."  (TRT: 35 sec) MP3

Cole-Dai: "That helps explain what other people have observed in climate records, that the entire decade of 1810 to 1819 was very cold. With all the records that we have, the written records that we have, that decade is by far the coldest over the past 500 years, possibly even more. People were puzzled about this earlier because it is very well known that there was a big volcanic eruption in the year of 1815. We know exactly what volcano that was and how big it was. That was the Tambora eruption in what used to be called the East Indies, or Indonesia, these days.  That was a large eruption, it was very well studied. It was very well documented. It killed a lot of people, both because of the eruption and the tsunami that came from that eruption. Something like 90,000 to 100,000 people died from that eruption. What puzzled people was that eruption happened in the middle of that decade, so it could not have caused the cold in the early part of the decade."  (TRT:  1:35 sec) MP3

Cole-Dai: "Now with our finding it starts to make sense. This other eruption that happened in 1809 probably cooled the world in the early part of that decade, whereas Tambora came in the middle part of the decade. Those two eruptions made that decade the coldest in the last 500 years. Tambora also is responsible for that very well known year they call ‘the year without summer.' That summer of 1816 was very cold in the eastern United States. It's on record that there was snow in the middle of July in New England for that year. That's because the volcanic eruption the year before put all those chemicals in the atmosphere that stayed there for a couple years and that contributed to the cold of the next two to three years."  (TRT:  1:02 sec) MP3

Contact:  Jihong Cole-Dai, (605) 688-4744
Author: Lance Nixon, (605) 696-7869

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, over seven percent of adults and over nine percent of children in America have asthma. This time on On Call Medical Radio, medical editor Doctor Rick Holm talks with Doctor Thomas Luzier from Aberdeen Asthma & Allergy about asthma. (TRT 3 min) mp3

 

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Contact: Tami Watson, (605)-688-5620

On this episode of On Call Medical Radio: Here's medical editor Doctor Rick Holm with Doctor Matt Bien from the Avera Brookings Medical Clinic with some information about treating coughs. (TRT 3 min) mp3

 

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Contact: Tami Watson, (605)-688-5620

 

 

This week on On Call Medical Radio, medical editor Doctor Rick Holm talks with Doctor Phillip Hoffsten from the Avera Medical Associates Clinic in Pierre about the benefits and risks of testosterone therapy for men. (TRT 3 min) MP3

 

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Contact: Tami Watson, (605)-688-5620  

Did you know that some causes of dementia are reversible?  Medical editor Doctor Rick Holm and his guest Doctor Jerome Freeman from Sanford Clinic Neurology talk about this as they discuss memory loss and dementia in this episode of On Call Medical Radio. (TRT 3 min) MP3

For more information about On Call medical radio contact:

Contact: Tami Watson, (605)-688-5620