January 23, 2014

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UNIVERSITY PRESS A THIRTEEN-TIME ASSOCIATED PRESS MANAGING EDITORS AWARD WINNER

The Newspaper of Lamar University and Lamar Institute of Technology Thursday, January 23, 2014

Vol. 90, No. 13

Undergraduate Research office announces grant winners

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Lucky Rabbit

TASI TO PRESENT ALUMNA’S WORK

SIERRA KONDOS UP STAFF WRITER

KRISTEN STUCK UP STAFF WRITER

The office of Undergraduate Research recently announced the winners of the grant proposal contest for students. “(The office’s) goal is not just about offering grants, but to encourage students to get involved in undergraduate research,” Kumar Pial Das, director of undergraduate research, said. “We encourage students to talk to mentors or come to my office to talk to me. “The students with unique and promising proposals that will evolve into something significant in scientific research got awarded.” The students will present their findings at the Lamar Undergraduate Research Expo, April 7. The deadline for student submissions to present papers at the Expo is March 21. Accepted students will join the contest winners at the event. “This is open to all students, but they have to reach certain qualifications,” Das said. “The student must be an undergraduate, be enrolled in 12 plus hours in Spring 2014, have minimum 3.0 GPA and must have one mentor.” The contest winners include: Chelsea Boling of Beaumont, a mathematics/computer science major, whose research is titled, “Semantic Similarity of Documents Using Latent Semantic Analysis.” Michael Bourne of Port Neches, a civil engineering major, whose research is titled, “A low Cost, Next-Generation Pavement Damage Detection Technique.” Kathleen Broussard of Beaumont, a marketing major, who research is titled, “Loud and Unclear: An Empirical Vocal Analysis of Forming of Risks Versus Rewards in Television Ads.” Timothy Brown of Vidor, a biochemistry major, whose research is titled “Nickel-Catalyzed Suzuki Cross-Coupling Reactions of Aryl Mesylates with Arylbronoic Acids.” Progga Chirontoni of Beaumont, a chemical engineering major, whose research is titled, “Electrochemical Measurement of Toxic Metal Contaminants in the Waters of the G.T.A.” Katherine Deaton of Lumberton, a chemical engineering major, whose research is titled, “Electrochemical Sensor for the Detection of Lead in Drinking Water.” Rachel Graham of Beaumont, an education major, whose research is titled, “Effects of Using iPad Technology on Reading Fluency of Elementary Students.” Connor Hoch of Beaumont, a biology/premed major, whose research is titled, “A Mutagenic Functional Analysis of the Transcription Factor RapA, a SWI/SNF Family Protein.” Lindsey Sorrell of Lumberton, a speech and hearing sciences major, whose research is titled, “Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Rate of Speech, Vowel Production, and Intelligibility.” The program, that began seven months ago, aims to encourage undergraduate students from all academic areas to participate in scholarly work mentored by at least one LU faculty member, Das said.

UP Kristen Stuck

“Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.” There’s an old British superstition which states that a person should say or repeat the word “rabbit” or “rabbits” or say the phrase “white rabbits,” or some combination of these elements, out loud upon waking on the first day of the month, because doing so will ensure good luck for the duration of the month. It’s also the name of an upcoming show at The Art Studio, Inc. by recent Lamar graduate student and Mauriceville native, Elizabeth Fontenot. “It all started when I was working on my graduate thesis,” she said. “Just developing ideas, trying to narrow down what exactly I wanted to write about. I kind of had to make a few decisions, as far as formatting and formal elements. There were some ideas that I played with that I just wanted to explore a little bit more, something a little less constricting, I think.” Fontenot uses woodcarving, or wood cuts, as a simple, direct and cheap technique for printmaking. “I have a wood panel — usually it’s a birch plywood so you can get a nice wood grain, and I like to let the wood grain show through because I think it brings out a softness to what you’re printing — and so I’ll draw my image on the block of wood and then carve away all the areas I want to stay white,” she said. “You’re kind of working in reverse. It’s a subtractive method, so once you carve out those areas, you can’t really go back and fix them. And once you carve out all your white areas you have a roller — they look kind of like rolling pins, but they’re covered in rubber — and you have a strip of ink. You roll up your roller and get it all covered in ink and then you apply that to your woodblock, so you get a reverse image when you print it.”

Elizabeth Fontenot, Lamar alumna, works in her studio space at The Art Studio, Inc. in preparation for her upcoming show, “Rabbit, Rabbit, Rabbit.”

See RABBIT, page 2

See RESEARCH, page 2

LU AMBASSADOR APPLICATIONS AVAILABLE Application packets for 20142015 Lamar University Ambassadors are available through March 6, in the Office of Alumni Affairs located in the John Gray Center, Building B, Suite 102, on the Lamar University campus. Sixteen openings will be available for new Ambassadors for the fall semester. Lamar University Ambassadors represent the LU student body at official university events and work to promote uni-

versity pride among students, prospective students, alumni and friends of Lamar. “Ambassadors are a select group of students who serve Lamar University by assisting in building goodwill among alumni and community supporters at various public functions and representing the student body to visiting dignitaries,” Linda LeBlanc, director of alumni affairs, said. “They have a high level

of involvement on campus and are well informed about the university and what it has to offer students, alumni and the community.” Prospective ambassadors must be a full-time officially registered Lamar University student who has completed one full semester at Lamar and will be classified as a sophomore or junior in the fall of 2014, maintain a minimum cumulative grade-point average of 3.0, submit an official

application including a letter of interest, transcript, faculty recommendation and resume, and have approval from his/her college dean. Additional information about the Ambassadors program is available on the LU Ambassadors website at http://advancement. lamar.edu/ambassadors or by contacting the Office of Alumni Affairs at 409-880-8921 or Alumni@Lamar.edu.

LU research team purifies drinking water with food waste

Shyam Shukla, analytical and environmental chemistry professor, holds a tea bag containing dried banana peel powder that is dipped in drinking water to absorb metal Courtesy photo impurities.

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Using orange and banana peels and several other waste materials, Shyam Shukla, who has taught at Lamar University for 28 years as an analytical and environmental chemistry professor, has unearthed a method to utilize several types of wastes in purifying contaminated drinking water, with the help of his research team. His research team includes Kenneth Dorris, a Lamar professor who teaches physical chemistry, Alka Shukla, a chemistry professor at Houston Community College, as well as Andrew Gomes, a Lamar research associate professor, who has recently joined the team. Originally from Lucknow, India, Shukla witnessed firsthand the lack of quality drinking water available in poverty-stricken areas. “I examined where they got the water from, and the consequences of drinking the poor quality water,” Shukla said. “Children are our future and by children drinking this water, our future is being destroyed.” At the 246th National Meeting & Exposition of the American Chemical Society in Indianapolis, the world’s largest scientific society, Shukla and his research team’s most recent

findings on using banana-peel powder to remove lead and other potentially toxic metals from water, were recognized. “The recognition by the ACS is very encouraging that we have done something worthwhile,” Shukla said. “The greatest reward is saving lives potentially, and spreading this useful knowledge to others.” Shukla with the help of a research team, including professors as well as graduate and undergraduate students, established a method they refer to as the “L-3 Solution” — low cost, low tech, and locally available. For the past 23 years, Shukla and his research team have tested materials to employ as toxic metal ion filters, removing metals like lead, which has been demonstrated to cause kidney disease and lower the IQ of young children, and chromium, which can impair liver function and affect human reproduction. “Through various forms of human activity, such as electronic waste, pesticides, pharmaceutical waste, and even the lead found in gasoline, toxic metals and organics infiltrate the water supply,” Shukla said. “The toxic metals then get adsorbed to the water. These toxic

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metals, that are incredibly harmful at small levels, enter the human body, but they almost never leave. They continue to cause lasting damage, and are particularly harmful to children, who have a lower tolerance level.” In the beginning stages of research, Shukla and the research team tested materials such as sawdust and crab shell; however, these materials were not useful in removing metal ions from water. About 10 years ago, Shukla discovered the key to sequestering toxic metals: using biowastes such as orange and banana peels. “Foods such as oranges and bananas are abundant in other areas and therefore accessible to those that suffer from poor quality water,” Shukla said. Considered one of the most heavily consumed fruits in the world, bananas and oranges have the potential to create a major agro-waste problem when peels are disposed in the trash. However, studies have shown that banana peels, as well as orange peels, contain pectin polysaccharides that act as adsorbents, meanSee WATER, page 2

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January 23, 2014 by University Press - Issuu