Amy Loeffler

About Amy Loeffler

Amy is a science writer in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. She started writing about food systems in the fourth grade when she penned a short but mouthwatering description of a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich. She still enjoys a good BLT, heavy on the mayo.

Posts by Amy Loeffler:

The secret life of Virginia Tech electronic pubs, and no we don’t mean a virtual space to grab a pint

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Former Virginia Tech President Charles Steger’s dissertation is 339 pages long. But it doesn’t take up an inch of shelf space at Virginia Tech’s Newman Library. That’s because it is available online at VTechWork’s Electronic Theses and Dissertations collection.

Virginia Tech was the first university on Earth to mandate that graduate students use an ETD system. Currently, the system is a package designed to obtain electronic approvals from committee members and the graduate school and deposit the thesis or dissertation at the library for electronic access and storage. Since its launch, the ETD publishing procedures at Virginia Tech have been flexible and allow students to designate varying levels of access to their thesis or dissertation. People all over the world can query the database at VTechWorks and download the thesis or dissertation for viewing on their personal computer.

Professor Gail McMillan at Virginia Tech’s Libraries, Professor of Computer Science Ed Fox, and former Associate Provost for Graduate Studies John Eaton collaborated to launch this innovation. The ETD initiative began in the 90s with discussions across the library, departments and graduate school and with external collaborators at other universities. After two years of testing, on April 5, 1996, Jinxia Sun became the first student to deposit a dissertation in the system titled Characterization of Organosilicone Surfactants and Their Effects on Sulfonylurea Herbicide Activity. Sun is now a Virginia Tech alumna and a research manager at Croda in Delaware where she heads up teams to develop agricultural applications of surfactants . Since becoming mandatory on January 1, 1997, over 27,160 ETDs have been added to the collection. This number includes some bound theses and dissertations that the library pulled off the shelf, scanned and uploaded to VTechWorks’ ETD collection.

The ETD initiative was the “most important and effective” change that made research more open said Fox. Virginia Tech’s motivation to move from bound theses and dissertations to online versions was rooted in our mission as a land-grant university to share the knowledge created by our scholars with the public.
The ETD initiative has had four notable benefits:

1. worldwide accessibility.

2. space savings at the library.

3. faster access.

4. enhanced content.

Unlike a printed document sitting on a shelf, the ETD database archives diverse file types. Since Virginia Tech formally launched the ETD initiative in 1997, hundreds of universities all over the world have followed suit.

The ETD initiative is about more than just storage, though. It teaches graduate students about the responsible conduct of research.

“The vision for the ETD initiative is eternal. There will always be a need for a future professoriate that has the right skills for the job,” said Fox. “When graduate students deposit their thesis or dissertation in the ETD collection, they are learning the technical skills required to create and manage files for sharing and long term storage. At the same time, they are participating in and contributing to the open culture scientists must practice in research.”

The ETD initiative has certainly proven to improve accessibility to research. The data files for Glen R. Gibson’s dissertation titled “War and Agriculture: Three Decades of Agricultural Land Use and Land Cover Change in Iraq” have been accessed more than 3,500 times. The ETD initiative has also improved the richness of graduate students’ thesis or dissertation. From the beginning, students have taken advantage of the ability to deposit any kind of file that showcases the scope of their research. Unlike the dissertations of President Steger’s era, today, ETDs can contain color photographs, videos, websites, non­standard page sizes, raw data files or code.

Fox’s Ph.D. student, Uma Murthy, created a tool that helps a user identify fish. She deposited her code and fish database along with her electronic dissertation so that future users can access the fish ID tool.

On January 1, 2017, Virgnia Tech’s ETD initiative will celebrate its 20th anniversary. As a virtual resource, it is awkward to throw a party for something that doesn’t have a physical form. There won’t be a party with cake and balloons. But we can still celebrate. The best way to honor the achievement is to use it. Pull out your laptop, tablet or phone and browse the scholarly work of Virginia Tech’s community.

Highlights of the ETD collection include contributions from an astronaut, a high-ranking USDA official, and video files of historic Turkish coffee houses among others:
Former VT President Charles Steger’s dissertation:
“An integrated modular watershed planning model applied to the Upper South River watershed, Waynesboro, Virginia.”

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/27427

Astronaut Charles Camarda’s dissertation:
“Development of advanced modal methods for calculating transient thermal and structural response”

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/39810

USDA Undersecretary Catherine Woteki’s dissertation:
“Some nutritional considerations of lactose malabsorption in Mexican American children.”

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/37854
An example of video files in a dissertation:
“A Contemporary Turkish Coffeehouse design Based on Historic Traditions” by Oral, Timur

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/36551
An example of a website as a dissertation:
“bipolar[i].discuss();” by Walker, Megan Anna Hein

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/23805
Graduate student Uma Murtha’s fish identification tool:
“Digital Libraries with Superimposed Information: Supporting Scholarly Tasks that Involve Fine Grain Information” by Murthy, Uma


http://hdl.handle.net/10919/26866

An example of color used in a dissertation:
“An Urban Park Pavilion as a Sense of Place: A Community Theater and Water Taxi Terminal at the Foot of King Street” by Seong, Rok

http://hdl.handle.net/10919/71283

Written by Nancy Dudek, grants coordinator, College of Agriculture and Life Sciences

Researchers discover a royal flush in wastewater

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As far as sources of renewable energy are concerned, poop would seem a likely candidate as a never-ending supply of fuel.

But it turns out wastewater energy plants stink at maximizing their energy output in a sustainable way.

Nationally, treatment plants consume 5 percent of the country’s total output, but that could be significantly reduced if the plants could harvest the energy from the waste that people flush down their drain pipes every minute of every day.

Two Virginia Tech researchers have discovered a way to harness the energy from wastewater using two distinct methodologies: using a novel tracing technology to determine which bacteria work well together to chew through waste, and also which ones are good conductors of energy.

Xueyang Feng and Jason He traced bacteria, which led them to discover that the working relationship between two specific substrates produced more energy than either did separately. This work will help take the mystery out of how electrochemically active bacteria create energy. It could help in the development of new treatment system called a microbial fuel cell.

“Tracing the bacteria gave us a major piece of the puzzle to start generating electricity in a sustainable way,” said Feng, an assistant professor of biological systems engineering. “This is a step toward the growing trend to make wastewater treatment centers self-sustaining in the energy they use.”

Feng is in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering; He, an associate professor of environmental engineering, is in the College of Engineering.

The discovery is important because not all organics perform the same job in the same way. Some work because they are food for the electricity-generating bacteria while others are good at conducting energy.

While one substrate known as lactate was mainly metabolized by its host bacteria to support cell growth, another substrate known as formate was oxidized to release electrons for higher electricity generation.

The team found that when these two substrates are combined, the output of energy is far greater than when they are working separately. The organics work in tandem with receptors in fuel cells, and while research using microbial fuel cells is not new, the kind of organics that Feng and He used was novel in generating electricity because they were able to measure the symbiotic nature of two particular organics.

The unique methodology that allowed them to trace the metabolic pathways of the different strains of bacteria, called carbon 13 pathway analysis, was the first time this type of isotope labeling process was used in measuring metabolism in microbes, the researchers said. The analysis works by creating a non-radioactive isotope on a carbon group that is visible through a mass spectrometry.

Harnessing energy from wastewater is a sustainability measure that even urban plants such as the wastewater treatment facilities in Washington, D.C.

The results of this work encouraged the further development of microbial fuel cells, especially system scaling up. The He lab is currently operating a 200-L microbial fuel cell system in a local wastewater treatment plant for evaluating its long term performance with actual wastes.

For now, however, Feng and He are not only giving wastewater it’s moment in the sun, they are making sure that, whether it’s ammonia or organic waste, that producing energy from wastewater is part of a movement.

Watch a video here about He and Feng’s discovery.

Researchers respond to threat of Zika virus

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While the Zika virus has been busy grabbing headlines as a public health menace that seemingly came out of nowhere, it is in fact just the latest iteration of viruses — from a family called flaviviruses — to rear its head as a public health menace. Flaviviruses stealthily adapt quickly to changing environments to infect the human population.

“Today, it’s Zika virus. Yesterday it was West Nile virus and chikungunya virus,” said Kevin Myles, an associate professor of entomology in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate. “It’s always going to be something and you can’t predict what it’s going to be next. So what you have to do is develop a sound research infrastructure that’s in place and ready to go so you can rapidly respond to the next threat.”

That’s exactly what Myles and colleague Zach Adelman, also an associate professor of entomology and College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and Fralin Life Science Institute affiliate, are doing in their labs.

The flavivirus family also includes other important pathogens, such as yellow fever virus and four different dengue viruses.

Myles and Adelman will now begin work on Zika virus.

“Viruses evolve very rapidly, especially these types of viruses because they are RNA viruses,” said Myles. “In fact, the traditional definition of a species doesn’t even apply to a RNA virus. They actually exist as what’s called a quasi-species, which can be thought of as a swarm of RNA sequences. This allows these viruses to adapt to a changing environment very rapidly.”

Zika virus has infected a growing number of Americans over the past few months, and the disease may cause a birth defect called microcephaly, in which infected pregnant women give birth to brain-damaged babies with abnormally tiny heads.

While Zika had only previously been associated with mild symptoms in humans, it may produce more severe symptoms in areas where the virus has been recently introduced because populations have no pre-existing immunity.

Myles pointed out that the development of a vaccine is paramount to resolving the current public health crisis. However, other tools, such as new strategies for vector control, for example gene drives, should also be explored to prevent future viral outbreaks.

One application of gene drive might involve genetically engineering a mosquito to either increase or decrease its immunity to a virus; the mosquito would either never become infected or would die quickly before it could transmit the virus to another host. Of course there are also more conventional approaches to vector control, which would involve regional, state, or national organization participation in coordinated spraying.

Read about more actions you can take to protect yourself from Zika virus here.

Photo Credit: CDC/James Gathawy

 

 

Stopping the tomato leafminer in its tracks

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From Italy to Tanzania to Mexico, no matter if they are garnish in a salad or the base of a sauce, tomatoes are a food staple the world over.

Unfortunately an invasive tomato pest known as the South American tomato leafminer, has become just as prolific as the tomato crops themselves.

The pest, whose scientific name is Tuta absoluta, is a particularly terrible threat. It globetrotted from its native Latin America to Europe in 2006 and later crossed the Mediterranean to Africa.

Now threatening Asia, the moth strikes small-holder farmers around the world, leaving a destructive path in its wake.

But Virginia Tech researcher Muni Muniappan is working to quell the effects of the pest. Muniappan noticed Tuta’s arrival in Africa in 2012 and subsequently led several workshops in Senegal, Ethiopia, Nepal, Bangladesh, Kenya, and Tanzania to raise awareness of the pest and give tips on controlling its prolific destruction.

“When the tomato leafminer strikes, it can cause between 80 and 100 percent crop loss unless proper management technologies are adopted,” said  Muniappan, entomologist and director of the Virginia Tech-led Integrated Pest Management Innovation Lab. “The moth can’t be completely eradicated. The best you can do is control it.”

Muniappan recently convened a group of plant protection specialists in 2015 to develop strategies to control the moth at the 18th International Plant Protection Congress in Berlin, Germany.

Some control measures include quarantining the plant and not importing tomatoes with stems, leaves, or a calyx, the green sepals of a flower that form the outer floral envelope, and using pheromone traps in border areas, and also developing a roster of Tuta’s natural enemies that could be used as biocontrol.

World production of tomato is approximately 163 million tons annually, and production of the crop covers 10 million acres worldwide, Muniappan says. In the United States, the tomato industry accounts for more than $2 billion in annual farm cash receipts, according to the USDA.

The economic impact of this insect has already been severe in countries where it has become established. In Spain, its presence led to an increase of $209 per acre per season related to pest management. In central Argentina, management of Tuta accounts for 70 percent of the pest management costs for late-season tomato crops.

Image: llustration by Steven White, sketchysteven.tumblr.com

Traveling at the Speed of Evolution

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Chickens are unlikely harbingers of the invention of time travel, but a recent study using a line of White Plymouth Rock foul developed in Virginia Tech’s College of Agriculture and Life Sciences caused evolutionary history to speed up a bit.

Specifically, the experiment proved that evolution happens 15 times faster than previously thought.

The research was published recently in Biology Letters, a journal of Royal Society Publishing. The discovery involved researchers from several universities, including the University of York, Oxford University, the University of Sydney, Uppsala University, the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences, and Virginia Tech.

“This experiment and many others involving everything from animal appetites to genetics could never have been done without the pedigree lines here at Virginia Tech,” said Siegel, distinguished professor emeritus of animal and poultry sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “This experiment was also an excellent example of international collaboration between six countries that was necessary for the success of the study.”

Siegel’s other primary research area using genetic lines of chickens focuses on why some animals pack on pounds and others don’t, and will be a key component of finding out how to breed chickens to feed the projected 9 billion people set to besiege the planet in 2050.

Siegel, along with Ben Dorshorst and Christa Honaker, also in the Virginia Tech Department of Animal and Poultry Sciences, were co-authors on the current paper.

The pedigree lines of White Plymouth Rock chickens were developed by Siegel, who began breeding them in 1957. From the common founder population, he produced two distinct lines of chickens selected for high- and low-body weight. Today, the high-weight line dwarfs its low-growth counterpart by an average of 12 times more by the time they reach the eight-week selection age.

In the latest experiment, researchers analyzed blood samples of chickens of the same generation using the most distantly related maternal lines to reconstruct how the mitochondrial DNA passed from mothers to daughters.

Mitochondria are specialized structures in the cells of animals, plants, and fungi that generate energy, synthesize proteins, and package proteins for transport to different parts of the cell and beyond.

Previously, estimates put the rate of change in a mitochondrial genome about 2 percent per million years,” Greger Larson, professor of archaeology at Oxford University, said in a news release. “At this pace we should not have been able to spot a single mutation in just 50 years, but in fact we spotted two.”

The sampling scheme yielded 385 mitochondrial transmissions that were analyzed for linkages within the mitochondrial DNA.

The rate of evolution was calculated by analyzing the number of observed mutations in the approximately 16,000 samples of mitochondrial DNA in the genome over 47 generations.

The scientists then reconstructed the maternal pedigree based on the mitogenome sequences.

“Our observations reveal that evolution is always moving quickly, but we tend not to see it because we typically measure it over longer time periods,” Larson said in the news release. “Our study shows that evolution can move much faster in the short term than we had believed from fossil-based estimates.”

The experiment also determined that mitochondria are not solely passed down from maternal lines. Strictly maternal inheritance has long been thought of as the characteristic of mitochondrial genomes.

“The thing everyone knew about mitochondria is that it is almost exclusively passed down the maternal line, but we identified chicks who inherited their mitochondria from their father,” said Michelle Alexander, lead author. This finding supports the theory that “paternal leakage” is not such a rare phenomenon.

Invasive Eats

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Fancy a sweet treat? Well, look no further than your local creeping vine — kudzu, to be exact. Or at least that’s what students in Jacob Barney’s biological invasives class learned this past semester. Kudzu was just one of several species the students learned about and concocted into entrées for an end of the semester project.

The class was an introduction as to why and how invasives become a dominant species in a given region, and send the original tenants of an area packing their bags not unlike the speed at which disgruntled hipsters take off after their “cool” neighborhood gets discovered by the unworthy masses.

And while it’s tempting to think of kudzu as a nasty, rude space invader, the truth is that like the majority of invasives, the plant that ate the South was in fact purposefully introduced in 1876. It later became part of the Roosevelt administration’s New Deal and an integral component of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Soil Erosion Service’s plan to stabilize the nation’s soil quality in 1935.

“I wanted students to get a sense of why and how people move species around from this class,” said Barney, assistant professor of plant pathology, physiology, and weed science in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences. “The species we have now were introduced a long time ago, and it’s not always cut-and-dry as to whether or not these species are bad. It really depends on the eye of the beholder.”

So how do you eat kudzu (besides, of course, with a fork)? We aren’t talking about a kudzu salad in this instance. More like kuzu powder, as it’s known in Japan.

Student Elizabeth Gray used the invasive-derived ingredient in a delicious traditional Japanese dessert known as kuzomochi. Kuzu powder is used as a thickener in a gelatinous confection of roasted soy flour and brown sugar.

Other dishes made by the class included fried catfish, crawfish cornbread, rosehip jelly, caribou sausage, kangaroo chili (yes, they are invasive in Australia), and coffee cupcakes made from Arabica beans.

According to the Institute of Applied Ecology, invasive species cost the U.S. over $120 billion annually, and more than $1.4 trillion worldwide, with the annual cost of impact and control efforts equaling five percent of the world’s economy. Their website appliedecology.org, touts the motto, “eradication by mastication,” and features a cookbook called, “They’re Cooked: Recipes to Combat Invasive Species.”

Some herald eating invasives as a way to nosh ourselves out of an infestation of the out-of-control flora and fauna. But that is about as unrealistic as eating one bowl of Cheerios and expecting to get the same amount of fiber in that bowl as an all bran cereal. You would have to eat so many bowls it would be impractical, and also impossible, to ingest equal amounts of colon-cleansing matter, and also to eradicate invasives through regular food production and consumption.

So, what’s the point of eating invasives? As Barney’s class found out invasives are here to stay, but to steal a phrase from Celebrity Chef Alton Brown, they’re also good eats.

Saving the Bay is all in a day’s work

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Zach Easton2

Not everyone’s office gathering place is a front row seat to a storied body of water.

But for Virginia Tech scientists in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences the office IS the Chesapeake Bay, and as a premier research team they conduct leading research on determining what it’s going to take to keep one of the nation’s most famous proverbial water coolers a sustainable water source for generations to come.

Kurt Stephenson, professor of agricultural and applied economics, is part of a cadre of faculty whose research focus is the Chesapeake Bay.

Stephenson investigates how and to what extent financial incentives can be created for pollution prevention from programs like nutrient credit trading.

“The first inclination is for source reductions,” said Stephenson. “But the goals for cleanup of the Chesapeake are so ambitious, we need to consider other avenues we have for mitigating excess nutrients. I’m asking, ‘How do you create incentives to enhance the assimilation of nutrients already in the system?'”

In theory, regulated dischargers could purchase credits from entities and individuals who make investments to lower pollutant levels in the bay. Wastewater treatment plants successfully use nutrient credits to lower the cost of complying with stringent regulatory requirements.

Stephenson is looking at ways to expand the range of potential investments that could be used and credited for improving bay water quality.

According to Stephenson, Virginia is the only state in the country that has authorized the use of in situ nutrient removal in a nutrient trading program. The commonwealth approved the system in 2012.

Pollution reduction investments lead to a cleaner bay more quickly, Stephenson said.

Another researcher in the college, Zach Easton, has also been ensuring that the Chesapeake Bay will remain a healthy water resource for decades to come.

Easton, an assistant professor of biological systems engineering in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences and the College of Engineering, recently won a grant from the National Science Foundation to study the impact of climate change on the bay and develop strategies to mitigate the stresses of climate change on water quality and bay function, particularly with respect to farming and land development.

Easton also helped to alleviate runoff when legislation passed that dramatically reduced the amount of nitrogen and phosphorous allowed to flow from rivers and estuaries into the bay.

He developed a cost-effective biofilter that filtered out excess nutrient runoff and was easily incorporated into farming operations.

Other scientists from the college working on developing solutions to keep the Chesapeake Bay clean include Gene Yagow, senior research scientist in the Department of Biological Systems Engineering. One aspect of his research seeks to calculate the total maximum daily load of pollutants that the bay can accommodate using a method that breaks down water use by population segments.

Another scientist, Brian Benham, a professor of biological systems engineering, Extension specialist, and director of the Center for Watershed Studies, works to mitigate the harmful effects of agricultural and other land-disturbing activities and disseminate information about sustainable water resources management.

In the Department of Entomology, Thomas Kuhar, professor and Extension specialist, is working to develop sustainable and integrated pest management practices to minimize the use of toxic pesticides that could make their way into the bay from farming vegetable crops. He conducts some of his research at the

Saving one of the nation’s most storied and fragile bodies of water? That’s all in a day’s work for researchers in the Virginia Tech College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

 

 

Pathways, pigs, and vaccines

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Kiho Lee works with pathways.

Whether these pathways are responsible for food intake, or pathways that viruses use as entryways to the host, Lee and his collaborators want to use these conduits to develop vaccines for humans and find ways for pigs to utilize feed more efficiently.

“Studying pathways means that we effectively have a platform to develop vaccines for a large number of infectious diseases,” said Lee, an assistant professor of animal and poultry sciences in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.

He collaborates with Lijuan Yuan, an associate professor of virology and immunology in the Department of Biomedical Sciences and Pathobiology in the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, to study norovirus and rotavirus, both of which cause gastroenteritis.

Their goal is to develop effective vaccines against norovirus gastroenteritis — a condition that is especially prevalent among elderly people and young children and is responsible for 56,000 to 71,000 hospitalizations and approximately 800 deaths per year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Their work is conducted in a gnotobiotic pig facility at Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine, where pigs are studied.

Lee said pigs display disease symptoms similar to humans and they also correlate to human health better than rodent vaccine testing models.

While Lee conducts research on pigs together with Yuan to develop vaccines, he is also making inroads in hog production.

“Basically I am a pig farmer,” said Lee. “I’m still interested in production. The question I am asking is how can I produce these animals at a high rate and with high efficiency.”

He is developing a way to design models that both agricultural and biomedical industries can utilize to increase profit margins.

Typically it takes two-and-a-half years to select for traits in pigs through conventional genetic engineering approaches, but Lee’s techniques shave two years from the process, which is helpful for agriculture specialists and pharmaceutical companies alike.

“That’s a huge difference,” said Lee. “In six months you have your model. The cost is lowered, and the low cost makes this kind of research practical for agriculture when it was not practical before.”

Lee believes the research will increase livestock production. By revealing pathways in charge of food intake, the animals can better metabolize feed to increase muscle mass.

Lee works in conjunction with Dr. Sherrie Clark, an associate professor of theriogenology — the study of the physiology and pathology of reproductive systems — in the Department of Large Animal Clinical Sciences. Her work in embryo transplantation has helped move the research forward.

Whether it’s biomedicine or hog production, Lee said the research in treating enteric viruses will itself be a pathway for research on more deadly viral diseases.

 

When treating yourself is bad

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Aziz Ansari’s character Tom Haverford on the series “Parks and Recreation” has made the catch phrase “treat yourself” a popular refrain for those who want to justify indulgent behavior.

But indulgent behavior, which includes overeating and eating high-fat foods even in the short term, is more damaging to your health than previously thought, which means even Tom Haverford might be skipping the extra brownie in the break room.

Eating behavior that justifies short-term food benders during holidays, vacations, and even that seemingly harmless afternoon fix of salt, sugar, and fat may become trends of the past thanks to research conducted by Matt Hulver, associate professor of human nutrition, foods, and exercise in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, and his team.

Hulver and his colleagues found that muscles’ ability to oxidize glucose after a meal is disrupted after five days of eating a high-fat diet, which could lead to the body’s inability to respond to insulin, a risk factor for the development of diabetes and other diseases.

“Most people think they can indulge in high-fat foods for a few days and get away with it,” said Hulver. “But all it takes is five days for your body’s muscle to start to protest.”

Sorry, Tommy H. Looks like you’re going to have to stick to the fragrances, fine leather goods, and low-cal smoothies.

To conduct the study, healthy college-age students were fed a fat-laden diet that included a lot of what Anzari himself might use to treat himself as a native South Carolinian: sausage biscuits, macaroni and cheese, and food loaded with butter to increase the percentage of the daily fat intake. Students in this study consumed diets that were about 55 percent fat compared to a normal 33 percent. Their overall caloric intake during the study remained the same as it was prior to the high fat diet. Muscle samples were collected to see how they metabolized glucose. Although the study showed the manner in which the muscle metabolized glucose was altered, the students did not gain weight or have any signs of insulin resistance.

Hulver and the team are now interested in examining how these short-term changes in the muscle can adversely affect the body in the long run and how quickly these deleterious changes in the muscle can be reversed once someone returns to a low-fat diet.

So, treat yo’self. Just not to a baker’s dozen of rainbow sprinkles cupcakes.

Image: iperl

They promised us jetpacks

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Meet Percival Zhang and Joe Rollin. They may have just ushered in the era of Jetson’s-style transportation, making clean, nonfossil-fuel travel a reality in coming decades.

But it’s not because they’ve invented the hydrogen-oxidized flying cars or personalized jetpacks that pop futurists have been promising us since the pages of science-pulp fiction magazines blew up with images of air-defying heroes in the 1920s.

It’s because the team has discovered a way to create hydrogen fuel using a biological method that greatly reduces the time and money it takes to produce the zero-emissions fuel– using abundantly available common corn stover – the stalks, cobs, and husks – to produce the hydrogen.

Their new discovery is unique in two ways.

Unlike other hydrogen fuel production methods that rely on highly processed sugars, the Virginia Tech team used dirty biomass — the husks and stalks of corn plants — to create their fuel. This reduces the initial expense of creating the fuel and enables the use of a fuel source readily available near the processing plants, making the creation of the fuel a local enterprise.

The team also increased enzymatic generation rates. This reaction rate is fast enough for hydrogen production in distributed hydrogen-fueling stations. The achieved reaction rate is at least 10 times that of the fastest photo-hydrogen production system.

Hydrogen-fueled cars and machinery would displace dependency on fossil fuels that are associated with climate change.

“We believe this exciting technology has the potential to enable the widespread use of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles around the world and displace fossil fuels,” Rollin said.

Commuting by flying car? Not likely anytime soon, but Zhang and Rollin are already making the clean fuel to combat climate change – and maybe even power a jetpack.

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