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Show DAILY UTAH CHRONICLE Thursday, December 6, 2012 3 Prof: Guinea fowl spreading disease Anne Plummer STAFF WRITER The release of an exotic bird in Turkey could lead to major negative effects and might spread diseases rather than trap them, said a Turkish biologist and professor. In 2002, a disease called Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever appeared in Turkey through livestock and animals carrying ticks. Since then, the Turkish government has attempted to reduce the fever by releasing native pheasants and chukars throughout the country to eat ticks spreading the disease. According to caDan DekercioDlu, a professor of biology, the Turkish government released the foreign guinea fowl in 2011 to eat the ticks instead of native pheasants because previous research had revealed some guinea fowl can reduce tick populations. But DekercioDlu sees many downsides to releasing a foreign bird into the country. DekercioDlu also said he was told a Turkish government worker only saw on the internet guinea fowl can reduce tick populations, and did not actually read any sci- EPA continued from Page 1 The group focuses on the gathering of firewood and the air quality the open flames produce. A family will typically burn 20 trees a year, in addition to spending countless hours gathering wood to facilitate cooking and home heating. The World Health Organization reports that this contributes to more than 1.5 million carbon monoxide-related deaths a year. "There are four types of stoves that we're looking at," Lighty said. "The idea is to make a system of stoves out of materials indigenous to the region that can filter the smoke outside." Jeff Huber, a senior in civil ; .• •.• • • •• • • • • • -„ . • • o • , • —• • ••• •• • -• • . •• • ik„.. .117 • • -• • •• • • • • No •-• ••• • •.; • to • 4 •• • 0:• • • • ••• • ' •• W• •••• • '••. •••••• '•••'" •* # 40 • • S. '• • • • • • • *, • • '.! 0 •• 4, • • • • 41 .• •i :• • k 44, • -•• • • •• • • .6;1. " • • • i•t • .46 •• • • • • ..• • ...I., . .9,-. - • ;•• • •* .• (4 • • • • • • 4.. • • .6 • • . • •'.".• I •• • • • • • " •• v , • - :- • • ir 47.- • s* • • • • a.• • ' s e • • •••• w•• • • • •' •• • • • It • i• • • • o, ,4 • A.' • • • • ,, •••, A Turkish biologist at the U questions his country's use of the guinea fowl to control ticks that spread Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever, contending instead that the birds might be spreading the disease. entific research on the issue. He said other studies show guinea fowl hold ticks within their feathers and can act as nurseries for young ticks. Thus, guinea fowl do not act as ecological traps for adult ticks and can actually spread the fever rather than stop it. DekercioDlu said one study in 1993 looked at 525 guinea fowl's stomachs and only found four ticks overall. In 2006, another study in South Africa showed that a guinea fowl's feathers might carry over 300 ticks. DekercioDlu feels the Turkish government should create an experiment comparing the native pheasant and chukar birds with the guinea fowl to see their effects on reducing the tick population. Whether or not guinea fowl eat the fever-causing ticks more than the native birds, introducing an exotic species into a country is among the top three threats to biodiversity conservation on the planet, DekercioDlu said. "Because they don't belong to engineering, is one of the students who will fly to Nepal in two weeks with the money from the EPA grant, and is responsible for bringing the idea to the EPA's attention. "We're looking at the social aspects of these people by reducing the amount of time families have to spend collecting wood, and providing information as to why it's good for them to follow environmentally friendly practices," Huber said. Huber said the trip will be a preliminary assessment of CO2 levels in homes, as well as the style of stove that can be best used to ensure sustainability and air quality. He said the area will benefit in multiple ways from a cheap and clean-burning household stove. "We even have an organization, Mountain Fund Projects, who will give out micro-credit loans to families there who might be interested in setting up a business making these stoves, so there's a big economic factor here as well," he said. The other group will focus its attention on pollution-prevention techniques of olive oil processing plants on the West Bank of Israel, where waste is typically disposed into waterways. Using a system of sand filtration, composting and chemical treatment, the group hopes to educate olive mill workers on sustainability practices that will lower costs by recycling waste. This will also contribute to overall environmental health in an area traditionally associated their new ecosystems, they can have major negative effects," DekercioDlu said. "Especially because the new ecosystems may lack the parasites and predators to control the populations of introduced species." DekercioDlu believes that neither native nor foreign birds are the most effective solution in reducing the Crimean-Congo fever, because all birds can carry ticks. He believes the most effective way to reduce tick population in Turkey is to have better public awareness, hospital treatment and earlier detection of the virus. The Turkish American Utah Association at the U was not aware of the guinea fowls in Turkey. Still, DekercioDlu said students should be aware of the risks of introducing exotic species because it is an ecological, economical and public health problem in the United States. "Often, exotic species eradication is done with taxpayer dollars," DekercioDlu said. "Every citizen needs to know about their impact and the possibility of unintended consequences of introducing exotic species." a.plummer@ chronicle.utah.edu with poor waste disposal standards. Andy Hong, a professor of civil engineering and faculty mentor for the project, specified part of the project is heavily reliant on a partnership with the West Bank and Mediterranean universities. Both groups will be eligible to win $90,000 in the second round of EPA P3 grants, which Huber said will be used to return to the West Bank and Nepal to put their newfound information into practice. The P3 program gives the $15,000 award to 45 student groups across the nation that work for practical sustainability procedures. dj.summers@ chronicle.utah.edu SCIENCE continued from Page 1 O 1V S • • • • DIfFAIr111 1 111 BLIND Nick DIRTY! FEATURING LIVE MUSIC AT THE GALLIVAN CENTER mu PILOT WATERHOUSE DO1EN NO-NATION ORCHESTRA. NIGHT SWEATS, DAVID WILLIAMS... AND A FAMILY FESTIVAL AT THE GATEWAY GLOW IN THE DARK INSTALLATIONS. CRAFTS, BALLOONS, FACE PAINTING AND MORE! $15 10 VENUES 7t 3-DAY PASS Buy TICKETS at Harmons, The Gateway Concierge and EVESLC.COM GALLIVAN CENTER \ THE GATEWAY \ DISCOVERY GATEWAY \ CLARK PLANETARIUM \ TEMPLE SQUARE UMOCA \ OFF-BROADWAY THEATRE \ BROADWAY CINEMA \ THE LEONARDO EVESLC•c o m ■ 1:11312113 @omcast Intermtntain. .RiqInto 1.800.11111INOW WM. Intermountain 747; AMERICAN (”=6.%- CITY CREEK CITYMMMU CENTER x; `11.... ' a-- Ing TAM see the stars twinkling, and that twinkling is very pretty. But it's very bad for science and observation," Seth said. Seth and his team are looking to Andromeda and star clusters, which are hundreds of millions of stars created at the same time that move together to help them discover the history of the galaxy. Because Earth is near the center of the Milky Way, studying our own galaxy poses issues, Seth said. "There [are] clouds and dust between us and the center of the [Milky Way] and it prevents us from seeing the center of our galaxy," he said. The other issue with studying the Milky Way is having to measure the distances between each individual star. "That star could be bright because it's nearby or could be bright because it's really, really far away and just really bright. And it's not easy to measure distances at all," Seth said. Because Andromeda is the closest galaxy, it's far enough away that essentially all the stars are the same distance away. If something is bright, that is because it's a bright star, not because of the distance. Using infrared, ultraviolet and light wavelength filters, Hubble is able to take pictures that enable researchers to determine the age of the stars that make up Andromeda. They have been able to determine that young stars follow along the spiral arms of the galaxy while older, heavier stars "sink" to the middle. The Andromeda Galaxy is made up of hundreds of billions of stars and researchers only observe the brightest ones, which are all brighter than our sun, Seth said. "Images are so dense with stars near the center of Andromeda that we're limited by not how big the stars are, but by how close they are packed together," he said. By plotting brightness and color of stars, researchers are able to determine their age. The data is entered into computer simulations and models and they are directly able to determine the history of the galaxy, Seth said. "Because they were all born at the same time, it gives us a chance to measure their ages very precisely," Seth said. U researchers receive new data from the Hubble Space Telescope every six months and use it to complete a gridded map of the Andromeda Galaxy, which has helped identify star clusters. But clusters can be difficult to find. "You'd think this is something that could be automated, but it hasn't worked that way," he said. Taylor Block, a junior in biology, hasn't taken physics or astronomy yet, but enjoyed Seth's talk anyway. "It was ridiculously interesting," she said. "Physics can be intimidating but this really made it less intimidating for me." Seth's research, called the Andromeda Project, started collecting data from the Hubble Telescope in 2010 and will finish during the summer of 2014. m.clark@chronicle.utah.edu RESEARCH AT THE U U prof. examines biological ties, relationships Carolyn Webber STAFF WRITER If men can't trust that their wife's kids are theirs, they might shift their interest to their sister's kids, according to research done by anthropologists at the U. However, the reason behind this attention transfer might be different than previously thought. A recent study performed by Alan Rogers, a professor in the Department of Anthropology, discovered a genetic correlation to the mother's-brother phenomenon. Rogers focuses on popALAN ROGERS ulation genetics, so he isn't an expert in fidelity, but he knows it happens in Africa and South America quite often. Cultural anthropologists have found men in these societies invest in their nieces and nephews more than in their wife's kids, because they are not sure they are biologically related. The males want their genes to be passed on, and they have more in common biologically with their sister's children. Despite an abundance of research in psychological anthropology in the 197os and 198os, the field has been stagnant for several years until Rogers re-examined this case after he noticed some miscalculations and false assumptions. The probability that a man's children are actually biologically his was far too low for genetics to be the cause. With Rogers' findings, this is no longer the case. One of the assumptions Rogers deconstructed was that women do not vary in promiscuity — they are all likely to have various boyfriends. "Variation really matters in this context. The more variable women are, the more closely on average men are related to their sister's kids," he said. Rogers noticed other generalizations as well. "The other assumption that people have classically made is that every woman has an infinite number of boyfriends," Rogers said. "Those two assumptions are what get you to the implausible values that people came up with in the 1970s." Rogers said researchers were only looking at one number in the past, which involved the probability that the children a man's wife bears are biologically his. "Your wife's kids may not be yours, but you and your sister for sure had the same mother, so there is this path of biological relatedness that goes from you to your mother to your sister to her kids and there's no ambiguity in any links in those chains," Rogers said. The missing factor being examined is the probability that people in these societies and their siblings had the same biological father. Data has been collected for this, but no one has ever found the number. Rogers said the people working on this research decades ago weren't geneticists, and that the numbers they settled with simply made things easier for them. He came across these numerical mistakes when working out the math after assigning this to a class some years ago. Rogers found genetic evolution might have more of a role in this phenomenon than previously believed, and his work was published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B along with other papers involving similar research. "[The papers] both relax unrealistic assumptions ... [and] end up implying that it's a whole lot more plausible that selection may have favored men that invest in their sister's kids." Rogers believes genetic studies in anthropology are becoming a popular way of explaining why humans behave the way they do. "There is a lot of human behavior that genetic evolution does seem to make sense of in a way that nothing else does," he said. "I think we're going to have genetic evolutionary explanations for various aspects of human behavior forever." Rogers has also noticed the U seems to emphasize this scientific perspective of anthropology more than other institutions. "This is a real center for [genetic evolutionary education] in the world," he said. c.webber@ chronicle.utah.edu |
