I’ve been involved with what began as the March for Science Iowa, now Science Iowa, almost since its inception. Launched as part of the national March for Science, its greatest achievement may have been drawing around 2,500 people to the Iowa Capitol on April 22, 2017. The Des Moines event was one of thousands around the world on Earth Day.
Another top achievement is the Iowa Science Policy Candidate Survey, an attempt to get every person seeking office in Iowa, from state legislature to U.S. Senate, on the record regarding science and science-related policy. Science Iowa has led this effort since the 2018 midterm election.
In 2020, Science Iowa’s survey received logistical support from Science Debate and the National Science Policy Network (NSPN), nonprofits that sought to foster similar efforts in other states. We joined with Iowa State University’s ASPIRE, an NSPN chapter, and the University of Iowa’s Connecting Science to Society, now an NSPN chapter, to devise the survey. Our coalition worked with multiple other Iowa science, environmental, education and agriculture organizations to compose the questions.
The Des Moines Register and multiple other Iowa newspapers, plus the Bleeding Heartland political blog, published opinion pieces promoting the survey. (Our attempts to appear on a conservative-leaning blog failed.)
Most importantly, we’ve received 24 candidate responses. The highlight: Both U.S. Senate candidates, Democrat Michael Franken and Republican Charles Grassley, weighed in.
Yet, that’s still only around 10 percent of the possible responses – and those we did receive revealed a worrisome phenomenon.
University of Maryland Medical Center surgeons prepare a pig heart for transplant into a 57-year-old man. Credit: University of Maryland.
Xenotransplantation – replacing human organs with ones from animals – has advanced since I reported last fall that the first pig kidney attached to a living human came from Iowa.
Doctors repeated the experiment at least twice, once at the University of Alabama at Birmingham on September 30, 2021 and again at New York University, which conducted the first kidney xenotransplant.
Then, in early January, University of Maryland Medical Center surgeons replaced a 57-year-old man’s failing heart with one from a genetically engineered pig. He has since died.
All the organs came from Revivicor, a division of medical conglomerate United Therapeutics. The first kidney transplanted at NYU came from a pig raised at an Iowa facility operated by Exemplar Genetics, a subsidiary of Sioux Center’s Trans Ova Genetics.
The pigs are engineered to remove three genes that would prompt a human body to reject the transplanted organ. Six human genes that Revivicor inserted into swine DNA are designed to help human bodies accept a transplanted organ.
The genetically modified pigs must be raised in medically conditions avoid exposing them to diseases hogs share with humans. Trans Ova subsidiary Exemplar specializes in providing such settings for research animals.
Although the first NYU kidney came from Iowa, it appears the other pig organs may have come from elsewhere. The Alabama pig was raised at the university. The New Yorker magazine notes that the heart transplanted in Maryland came from a Virginia facility.
Iowa may not have a monopoly on genetically modified hogs for transplant purposes, but the question remain: Is it ethical to turn animals into spare parts stores for humans?
A genetically engineered pig kidney, raised in Iowa, is cleaned and prepared for transplantation to a human. Credit: Joe Carrotta for NYU Langone Health.
The day is nearing when doctors will safely transplant animal kidneys, hearts and other organs to ailing humans.
When they do, there’s a good chance that animals providing those body parts will be grown in Iowa – at least in the early stages.
In September, New York University surgeons connected a kidney from a genetically modified pig to a patient destined to die but kept alive on a ventilator. (The subject’s family consented to the experiment.) The kidney functioned normally, removing urine and other wastes from the person’s bloodstream, for more than two days. Because researchers had modified the pig’s genetic code, there were no signs of immediate – hyperacute – rejection from the patient’s immune system.
The Associated Press reported last month that the pig was part of a herd of 100 raised “in tightly controlled conditions at a facility in Iowa.”
I’ve identified the Iowa company that did the work and the facility’s likely, approximate location. What’s less clear is what animal-sourced organs could mean for the state.
The approximately 45 acres of rolling woodland southwest of Boone that Aaron and Melissa Gillett bought last month are a haven for deer, wild turkeys, foxes and other wildlife.
Plus one white elephant.
After months of bureaucratic and pandemic-related delays, the Gilletts closed on a deal with the Iowa Board of Regents to buy the former Erwin W. Fick Observatory, a venerable facility where hundreds of Iowa State University students got their first taste of large-scale astronomy. The college abandoned it about five years ago. Workers stripped the steel-sided building of most electronics and metal for salvage, disposal or sale as surplus equipment.
But they left behind an enormous reminder of the observatory’s past.
Jill Viles (with her son, Martin) in 2015 and Priscilla Lopes-Schliep. Image via the Toronto Star.
I’m behind the curve on this (life, you know), but I have an update on one of my most popular posts – one that still gets regular views, partially thanks to search engines, more than three years after it went up.
It’s the story of an Iowa mother who uses a scooter to get around due to a muscle-wasting condition and her strange connection to a world-class athlete.
Although the mother, Jill Viles, is still at it and busy spreading her story, the update is not all happy news.
Regular readers of this blog (Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?) know I’ve nagged them to push political candidates (for almost any office, dogcatcher included) on science and evidence-based policy.
March for Science Iowa is all about this and asked candidates in the 2018 elections to answer science issue questionnaires. As one of a handful of active members, I helped organize panels of science advocates and journalists to insert science into the Iowa Caucus campaign.
But there hasn’t been hard data on how Iowans feel about science policy or how presidential candidates should address it – until now.
A new poll indicates that we care about candidates’ positions on science – and care a lot.
A fuzzy forager beating multiple feet across an Iowa blacktop. See you flitting around my yard light next spring, little fella.
If you drive the little-traveled county blacktops of rural Iowa, as I do, you’re sure to notice a slow (and sometimes not-so-slow) march at this time of year.
They’re easy to spot in the distance: small smudges inching across the blue-gray pavement. The contrast of dark on light and the steady movement draws the eye, making the sojourns of woollybear caterpillars hard to miss, even though they’re relatively tiny.
I saw countless fuzzy travelers on my trips through southeast Iowa one recent weekend. There seemed to be one every few yards, crossing the pavement and, with luck, avoiding the many tires that would halt their travels (and their lives).
Jill Viles (with her son, Martin) uses an electric scooter to get around. Priscilla Lopes-Schliep is a world-class hurdler. The women have discovered they share a rare muscle condition. For Viles, it’s part of the reason she can no longer walk. For Lopes-Schliep, it’s one reason for her dominance on the track. Image via the Toronto Star.
The idea seemed ludicrous: A muscle-bound world-class athlete and an Iowa mom with arms and legs reduced to sticks, sharing the same rare muscle condition.
When her sister suggested it, Jill Viles scoffed. “Who in a million years would possibly put together somebody who can’t walk and somebody who’s an Olympic hurdler?” Viles said this week from her home in Gowrie, in north-central Iowa
But doctors had been wrong before about Viles, who lost use of her legs several years ago. And the more she examined photos of Priscilla Lopes-Schliep, a Canadian who won bronze in 2008, the more she began to think her sister was right.
Looking a picture of Lopes-Schliep from the back, “it was absolutely my dad. It was something I had seen since I was a little girl,” said Viles, a Des Moines native. “Our family is connected to that picture and we have a mutation” in a gene that led to the unusual physique. “It’s uncanny.”
But did they really share a genetic hiccup? And if so, why did it put Jill Viles into a motorized scooter but made Priscilla Lopes-Schliep a track champion?
The search for answers led Viles onto another leg of an already remarkable tale of discovery. It’s a science story, but also a human-interest story that has gotten attention from across America and around the world.
The quest goes on. Viles is seeking donations to support research into the differences and similarities between her and Lopes-Schliep – the anti-Jill Viles – with the hope it could lead to new therapies, even for those suffering from more common muscle conditions. With enough donations, Viles also hopes to help others travel to consult with the world’s leading expert in her condition.
Ames Lab’s Matt Kramer with the Tecnai transmission electron microscope at the new Sensitive Instrument Facility (SIF). The microscope was moved to the SIF from Wilhelm Hall on the Iowa State University campus.
In 2015 Ames Laboratory scientists who investigate materials’ fundamental properties received their Christmas presents early.
In November and December technicians unpacked and installed around $6 million worth of high-tech microscopes, some capable of identifying individual atoms and how they’re arranged in materials. The three new devices joined one already owned by the lab, a Department of Energy (DOE) facility Iowa State University manages on its campus.
The equipment is installed at the lab’s Sensitive Instrument Facility (SIF), a fortress against interference recently finished northwest of the ISU campus. In my last post, I described the many steps the building’s designers took to keep vibrations and electromagnetic noise from disturbing the powerful microscopes inside.
In this post I’ll tell you more about the devices themselves. With their power, scientists can better understand materials and develop new ones that save energy and improve the performance of devices we use every day. Read the rest of this entry »
A SIF schematic with notations designating the location of each instrument. From Ames Laboratory’s Inquiry magazine.
It’s not a much to look at from the outside. The long, low building just northwest of the Iowa State University campus could be classrooms or offices, maybe for a small manufacturer or a medical practice.
The offices and public spaces are airy and furnished in a style echoing IKEA. There’s no hint that the structure is unique in Iowa and rare in the United States.
But take a tour, as I did last week, and you learn that this, the first new scientific structure Ames Laboratory has built since 1961, is a near-fortress against even the tiniest outside interference.
The Sensitive Instrument Facility (SIF), still awaiting its first occupants, can’t be disturbed. Really. And that’s what makes it a great place for researchers to make some minuscule discoveries. Read the rest of this entry »
From Science Comics, April 1939, via the Digital Comics Museum. Perhaps conservatives view the Iowa Department of Education this way. They would be wrong.
Here’s a quick update on Iowa’s possible adoption of the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS).
You may recall that a task force of educators began considering the standards in October as part of a regular review of Iowa classroom standards. After weighing the benefits of several sets of standards, the task force said the NGSS (which were developed by a coalition of states and education organizations) were the best choice to adapt for Iowa.
Since then, the group has been busy writing its report to the State Board of Education. On Friday, the board heard a brief report on the task force’s status. Your faithful correspondent was there. Read the rest of this entry »
Henry A. Wallace in 1939, as secretary of agriculture under Franklin D. Roosevelt. Credit: washington_area_spark via photopincc
It’s hard to think of it now, but at the turn of the 20th century the area of Des Moines just southwest of Drake University was a largely open field. And on 10 acres at 38th Street and Cottage Grove Avenue, where Grace United Methodist Church now stands, the roots of an agricultural and scientific revolution began to take hold.
The land once was the home of Henry C. Wallace, the founder, with his father, “Uncle Henry” Wallace, of the influential Wallace’s Farmer magazine. Henry C.’s son, Henry Agard Wallace, was 13 when the family moved to the location, according to the definitive Henry A. Wallace biography, “American Dreamer.”
Henry A., of course, went on to become secretary of agriculture, vice president and secretary of commerce. He also founded the hybrid seed corn company that today is the giant DuPont Pioneer in Johnston.
The seed empire’s embryo was formed on that Des Moines acreage. Now a local committee wants to recognize the location’s significance.
Lactobacillus casei, a strain of bacterium similar to what Michael Cho and colleagues have engineered to express proteins in the hope of sparking an immune response to HIV. AJC1 via photopincc
The investigation into faked AIDS vaccine tests “followed an atypical path compared to most research misconduct cases,” an Iowa State University administrator wrote in a report last October.
The case “began with proof of research misconduct and only after considerable effort was the responsible party identified,” Charlotte Bronson, Iowa State University’s associate vice president for research and research integrity officer. Multiple researchers handled samples that later proved questionable. The research also hadn’t been published, at which point other scientists may have questioned the results.
The investigation, which led ISU scientist Dong-Pyou Han to resign, played out over nearly 10 months, starting a year ago this week. It actually began at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where Han and the leader of his lab group, Michael Cho, worked before Iowa State recruited Cho.
The investigation exonerated Cho and other members of his lab, but it doesn’t erase their embarrassment and chagrin at having pursued a dead lead – and at facing questions about the federal financing that supported the research.
Recent observations by NASA’s twin Van Allen Probes show that a local kick of energy accelerates particles in the radiation belts surrounding Earth. The readings help explain how these particles reach energies of 99 percent the speed of light. Image Credit: G. Reeves/M. Henderson
I was in knee pants when I first heard about the Van Allen radiation belts, the donut-shaped rings of charged particles circling the Earth. In the movie (and later television series), “Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea” the belts catch fire, threatening the planet with global warming at hyperspeed – an impossible apocalypse.
The belts were new and little explored then, and one of my siblings told me they were named for their discoverer, James Van Allen, a University of Iowa physicist and a born and bred Iowan. In typical chip-on-the-shoulder Iowa fashion (“Hey, we’re more than corn! We have scientists!”), I’ve been proud of that discovery and its name ever since.
Van Allen’s research brought prestige and fame to U of I’s physics department and attracted some top scientists. And almost 60 years after the belts’ discovery, the university’s research still yields new insights.
The latest, published last month, shows the belts act as a potent particle accelerator, pushing electrons to nearly light speed.
Terry Branstad and his lieutenant, Kim Reynolds, have been pushing Iowa educators to do more to engage kids in STEM – science, technology, engineering and mathematics. The idea is to have a well-trained workforce for all those high-tech jobs they want to bring to the state.
So far, they’ve accompanied the drive with action, starting the Governor’s STEM Advisory Council, handing out grants to scale-up activities, like FIRST LEGO League, that are designed to engage and attract students to technical fields, and holding annual summits of educators, administrators and business people.
Now, however, Branstad may face the biggest test of his resolve to make Iowans STEM leaders. His administration will have to decide if and how to adopt new science education standards – guidelines and goals that have prompted controversy elsewhere and could upset the conservative base of Branstad’s Republican Party.
For Iowans who support the standards, there have been reasons for despair – and perhaps for hope.
Iowa Science Interface 