Research roundup at MSU-Bozeman (#230), Latino literature, Blackbird sundae, A soy ploy for diabetics?, Flu and more

Latino literature

Latino authors are a hot literary commodity these days. MSU’s modern languages professor Bridget Kevane looks at this phenomenon in a new book, "Latino Literature in America." Kevane examines the fiction of writers whose work is much studied in college classes: Julia Alvarez, Rodolfo Anaya, Sandra Cisneros, Junot Diaz, Christina Garcia, Oscar Hijuelos, Judith Ortiz Cofer and Ernesto Quiñonez. Kevane brings her bicultural and bilingual perspective( she’s an American raised in Puerto Rico) to bear on such issues as cultural identity and dissimilar versions of histories–prominent themes of Latino fiction. "I teach Latino literature, and students at MSU love it," said Kevane. ”There’s a need for ways to teach this literature as Latino culture becomes increasingly a part of U.S. reality.”

Blackbird sundae

It was blackbird heaven at MSU’s Western Triangle Agricultural Research Center in Conrad last summer. Blackbirds found plenty of water in the irrigation canal and plenty of food in the form of sunflower seeds. In fact, the birds ate so many sunflower seeds that they didn’t leave any for Grant Jackson. Jackson is an agronomy professor who was growing sunflowers and flax so he could evaluate the oil their seeds produced. Jackson’s technician sprayed the sunflowers with a grape seed extract that normally deters blackbirds in the Midwest, but it didn’t work at the research center. Blackbirds flocked to the sunflowers as if they were ice cream sundaes. Fortunately, Jackson had other test plots that weren’t bothered. The study will continue this summer with several additional crops.

A soy ploy for diabetics?

Diabetics are two to four times more likely to develop heart disease than non-diabetics, but they’ve been excluded from most heart disease studies, says nutrition researcher Christina Campbell of MSU’s Department of Health and Human Development. That’s because researchers targeted the larger population of non-diabetics for their studies. However, because diabetics have a higher risk, they would benefit greatly from better approaches to managing heart disease. Campbell recently received a grant to investigate the effect of soy consumption on heart disease risk factors in postmenopausal women with Type 2 (non-insulin-dependent) diabetes. She will look for changes in classic risk factors, such as lipid profiles, but also unique factors, such as whether soy enhances insulin sensitivity.

Flu and more

Getting influenza can be bad enough. But it’s often not the flu alone that makes people so sick. It’s another lung infection such as pneumonia on top of influenza that’s the 7th leading cause of death in the U.S., according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Just how influenza develops into secondary lung infections is what MSU doctoral student Quinton King wants to know. One theory is that the flu leaves people’s immune systems vulnerable to other infections. But King’s mice experiments suggest this is not the case. So now King’s investigating whether the flu virus modifies the surface of the lungs in some way that makes it easier for pneumonia to set in. He’s working with veterinary molecular biologist Allen Harmsen on the studies that are funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Contact: Annette Trinity-Stevens, (406) 994-5607 or [email protected]

http://www.montana.edu/commserv/csnews/nwview.php?article=1599