Purdue Science Tips
June 1995
Purdue soybean contest fuels student creativity
The Purdue University contest that gave the world soybean crayons last year has now
sparked an earth-friendly, soy-based fire-starter. The "Fire Bean" took first place
in Purdue's second annual Innovative Uses for Soybeans contest, earning its student
inventors $5,000 in prize money. The Fire Bean is composed of all-natural ingredients
that burn more cleanly and should appeal more to consumers than similar paraffin
or petroleum-based products already on the market, according to inventors Amy Khal,
a junior agricultural engineering student from Iowa City, Iowa, and Brian Beales, a junior
in mechanical engineering from Mendota Heights, Minn. The contest is sponsored by
the Purdue Department of Agronomy and the Indiana Soybean Development Council. Khal
said the Fire Bean, which resembles a granola bar, is made entirely from compressed sawdust
and hydrogenated soybean oil, and could be used as a fire-starter or manufactured
as a fabricated fire log for fireplaces and campfires. She and Beales estimate it
would cost 83 cents to manufacture one Fire Bean compared to $1 for a similar fire-starter
already on the market. CONTACT: Bernard Tao, faculty adviser, associate professor
of agricultural engineering, (765) 494-1183; Internet, tao@ecn.purdue.edu
Pump technology offers promise in treating spinal cord injuries
Purdue researchers have found that by surgically placing a small pump under the skin
and near the spinal cord of healthy dogs, they can deliver -- with no adverse effects
-- high doses of a drug that "excites" nerve endings. Professor Richard Borgens, director of the Center for Paralysis Research, says the results hold potential for the
same system to be used in paralyzed people with few or none of the side effects associated
with oral or intravenous delivery of the drug. The drug, called 4-AP for short, was delivered directly to the spinal-cord injury. Although delivered in high concentrations,
the concentration of the drug in the blood became very low, reducing the potential
for adverse side effects, Borgens says. His group now is implanting the pump -- about the size of a hockey puck -- in dogs with naturally occurring spinal injuries. The
veterinary trial will test whether delivering the drug directly to the injured spinal
cord will help dogs with long-term injuries recover some neurological function such
as muscular control and sensation. The drug works by allowing nerve impulses to cross
regions of the damaged spinal cord. Such impulses ordinarily are blocked after a
severe spinal cord injury. The results of the study on healthy dogs were published
in the Journal of Neurotrauma. CONTACT: Borgens, professor of developmental anatomy, (765)
494-7600.
Purdue Libraries make web link to federal documents
The first World Wide Web connection to the Government Printing Office's main computer,
giving access to federal data bases, is now available through Purdue University.
That means users can look up information in the Federal Register, Congressional Record,
History of Bills, U.S. Code and other government data bases. Carl E. Snow, network
access librarian with Purdue Libraries, which made the link possible, says the link
means easier and simpler access to the Federal Register and other government records
for specific information. The Federal Register, which on paper can average more than 200
pages daily, contains such information as proposed federal regulations, pending legislation,
and requests for funding from government agencies. The Congressional Record, published daily while Congress is in session, is the principal log of debate in the
U.S. House of Representatives and Senate. The U.S. Code is a listing of all the laws
in effect in the United States as of a certain date. Ten people at a time will be
able to log into the Government Printing Office data bases through Purdue by typing in the
following address: https://thorplus.lib.purdue.edu/gpo/ CONTACT: Snow, (765) 494-2764;
Internet, carl@smart.lib.purdue.edu
Purdue News Service: (765) 494-2096; e-mail, purduenews@purdue.edu
NOTE TO JOURNALISTS: This list of story ideas is available via e-mail. To receive
it, send a message that says "send punews 9505f48" to almanac@ecn.purdue.edu. Purdue
News Service also maintains a searchable data base of faculty experts and posts news
releases on a web server at https://www.purdue.edu/uns and a gopher server at newsgopher.uns.purdue.edu.
The web site also offers downloadable photographs.
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