Category: Health & Medicine

Barnett gas-drilling boom pollutes Dallas-Fort Worth air

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 11, 2009

The first comprehensive analysis of air emissions associated with natural gas and oil production in the Barnett Shale finds that those emissions might be a significant contributor to smog formation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The emissions are comparable to the combined emissions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from all cars and trucks. State regulators for years have targeted cars and trucks as a major source of smog in the D-FW area.

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The study, “Emissions from Natural Gas Production in the Barnett Shale Area and Opportunities for Cost-Effective Improvements,” was written by Al Armendariz. He is a research associate professor in the department of environmental and civil engineering in the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University.

The report takes into consideration the emissions of smog-forming compounds, such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. In addition, it also looks at air-toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases.

The study found that emissions of carbon dioxide and two other major greenhouse gases underlying climate change were estimated to be roughly equivalent to the impact of two 750-megawatt coal plants.

“It’s true that Barnett Shale oil and gas activities are producing significant air emissions, but there’s good news as well,” Armendariz said. “There are off-the-shelf technologies that can greatly reduce these emissions and improve the D-FW area’s air quality.”

Experts say cost-effective control strategies are readily available and can substantially reduce emissions from production in the massive Barnett Shale, a 5,000-square-mile geologic formation.

“These controls can in many cases, reduce costs for oil and gas operators after short payback periods,” said Ramon Alvarez, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund, which commissioned the study. “Such controls are already used by some producers, but not universally.”

The City of Fort Worth recently adopted an ordinance requiring the use of “green completions” to capture the greenhouse gas methane and volatile organic compounds during well completions. That is one of the controls recommended in the report for areas throughout the Barnett Shale area.

Natural gas production in the Barnett Shale region of Texas has increased rapidly since 1999, where as of June 2008 there are now more than 7,700 oil and gas wells producing and permits issued to drill another 4,700.

In 2008, the Barnett Shale was responsible for 21 percent of the state’s natural gas production. Unlike most historical drilling for oil in Texas, this activity is taking place in and around a heavily developed and populated area.

Natural gas is a critical feedstock to many chemical production processes. It has many environmental benefits over coal as a fuel for electricity generation, including lower emissions of sulfur, metal compounds and carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, oil and gas production from the Barnett Shale can impact local air quality and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the Armendariz study.

The report examines each step of the gas production process, from well drilling and completion, to gas processing and transmission. It concludes that peak summertime emissions of smog-forming emissions from production activities in the Barnett Shale are about the same as the emissions from all the cars and trucks on the road in the D-FW area. Barnett Shale emissions total 307 tons per day, while cars and trucks total 273 tons per day.

SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, founded in 1925, is one of the oldest engineering schools in the Southwest. The school offers eight undergraduate and 29 graduate programs, including both master’s and doctorate levels.

Tags Al Armendariz, Lyle School of Engineering

Health & Medicine Technology

Titanium-alloy technology simplifies dental implants

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 20, 2008

The Christmas tree that adorns the SMU Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering holiday card is more than a colorfully lit symbol of the season. It’s a unique and festive embodiment of the capabilities of the School’s cutting-edge laboratories.

Designed and built in the Lyle School’s Research Center for Advanced Manufacturing, called RCAM, the tree features a 3-dimensional lattice structure, known for its strength and versatility in a variety of manufacturing applications. With an actual height and width of about 5 inches, the tree was “grown” in a vacuum chamber from thin layers of titanium-alloy powder and shaped by the controlled melting of an electron beam.

In the holiday card photo by SMU photographer Hillsman S. Jackson, a high-power fiber laser stands in for a treetop star.

The RCAM refined the techniques used to construct the tree during a collaboration with Dallas’ Baylor College of Dentistry, says Radovan Kovacevic, Herman Brown Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the RCAM and the Center for Laser Aided Manufacturing, CLAM. Working with Baylor researchers, the RCAM has developed a way to manufacture a dental implant typically assembled from three pieces as a single component. The unitary construction results in devices with fewer weak points at which breaks can occur.

The technology has many other potential applications in industries ranging from medicine to aviation, Kovacevic says. In the meantime, he says, the Lyle Christmas tree “is a good example of the complexity we can achieve.” – Kathleen Tibbetts

Tags Lyle School of Engineering, Radovan Kovacevic, SMU Research Center for Advanced Manufacturing

Health & Medicine

Diabetics could get relief from daily injections

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date December 8, 2008

Chemist Brent Sumerlin, assistant professor in the Dedman College Department of Chemistry at Southern Methodist University, is assessing the potential uses for nano-scale polymer particles. One of those could be controlled drug delivery.

In one scenario, polymers could detect high glucose levels in a diabetic’s blood stream and automatically release insulin, freeing diabetics from a daily injection schedule.

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Sumerlin’s research has earned him a $475,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Award. NSF gives the award to junior faculty members who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars in American colleges and universities.

Sumerlin will receive the grant over five years for two related nanotechnology research projects. One of those projects has potential biomedical applications, and the other has a promising advanced materials application.

The prestigious award also includes support for education outreach. Sumerlin’s grant will fund a program for K-12 school districts and community colleges to help prepare and attract minority students for SMU chemistry internship positions.

“As a teacher, as a scientist, and through his community outreach and service, Professor Sumerlin exemplifies the finest scholarly tradition,” said Cordelia Candelaria, dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences. “His work is dedicated to expanding minds through exposure to basic science, including a generous willingness to share his lessons and labs off campus with teachers and students in elementary, middle and high school classrooms. Dedman College is thrilled by NSF’s recognition of Brent’s achievements.”

Sumerlin, 32, works with an SMU team of postdoctoral research associates, graduate and undergraduate students who fuse the fields of polymer, organic and biochemistries to develop novel materials with composite properties.

“This award enhances what I do at the university level and what I can do through SMU for the rest of the community,” Sumerlin said.

The first part of Sumerlin’s NSF-funded research will investigate how nano-scale polymer particles can be triggered to come apart in response to a chemical stimulus. One of the potential applications of the technology is an automatic treatment solution for diabetics by releasing insulin from tiny polymer spheres when they encounter dangerous levels of glucose in the bloodstream.

“Researchers worldwide are looking toward methods of insulin delivery that will relieve diabetics of frequent blood-sugar monitoring and injections,” Sumerlin said.

The second aspect of the project involves making polymers with the ability to come apart and put themselves back together again – a technique that Sumerlin believes can be used to construct materials that are self-repairing.

“We could potentially think about coatings for airplane wings that are damaged by debris during flight,” Sumerlin said. “After landing, we could quickly treat the coating, causing it to re-form itself.”

Sumerlin received his doctorate from the University of Southern Mississippi in 2003, accepted a position as visiting assistant professor at Carnegie Mellon University for the next two years, then joined SMU in 2005.

Tags Brent Sumerlin, Dedman College, SMU Department of Chemistry

Health & Medicine Mind & Brain

Protecting brain’s neurons could halt Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 30, 2008
No Comments on Protecting brain’s neurons could halt Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s

Researchers at Southern Methodist University and The University of Texas at Dallas have identified a group of chemical compounds that slows the degeneration of neurons, a condition that causes such common diseases of old age as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and amyotropic lateral sclerosis.

SMU Chemistry Professor Edward R. Biehl and UTD Biology Professor Santosh R. D’Mello teamed to test 45 chemical compounds. Four were found to be the most potent protectors of brain cells, or neurons.

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Their findings were published in the November 2008 issue of “Experimental Biology and Medicine.”

The synthesized chemicals, called “substituted indolin-2-one compounds,” are derivatives of another compound called GW5074 that was shown to prevent neurodegeneration in a past report published by the D’Mello lab.

While effective at protecting neurons from decay or death, GW5074 is toxic to cells at slightly elevated doses, which makes it unsuitable for clinical testing in patients. The newly identified, second generation compounds maintain the protective feature of GW5074 but are not toxic, even at very high doses, and hold promise in halting the steady march of neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

“Sadly, neurodegenerative diseases are a challenge for our elderly population,” D’Mello said. “People are living longer and are more impacted by diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis than ever before, which means we need to aggressively look for drugs that treat diseases. But most exciting now are our efforts to stop the effects of brain disease right in its tracks. Although the newly discovered compounds have only been tested in cultured neurons and mice, they do offer hope.”

The most common cause of neurodegenerative disease is aging. Current medications only alleviate the symptoms but do not affect the underlying cause, which is degeneration of neurons. The identification of compounds that inhibit neuronal death is thus of urgent and critical importance.

The new compounds may offer doctors an option beyond just treating the symptoms of neurodegenerative diseases. The development isn’t a cure, but doctors may be able to one day use compounds that stop cell death in combination with currently existing drugs that battle the symptoms of brain diseases. The combination of stopping the disease in its tracks while treating disease symptoms can offer hope to people suffering and the families impacted by these diseases.

Tags Dedman College, Edward R. Biehl, SMU Department of Chemistry

Health & Medicine

Blocking enzyme may prove novel way to thwart HIV

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date November 21, 2008

In 1996 the introduction of “triple cocktail” drug therapy transformed AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable chronic disease. The drug regimen, also known as HAART for highly active antiretroviral treatment, involved treating patients with three or more classes of antiviral medicines.

But the virus fought back. It mutates easily, and the mutations caused resistance to first one and then another drug making up the cocktail. Unsettling reports of newly infected patients with the drug-resistant virus meant researchers needed to find new ways to fight HIV infection.

That could be what is happening in the Dedman Life Sciences Building at SMU, where a young assistant professor of biological sciences is conducting research that may lead to a novel way of combating HIV-1.

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In his office in Dedman College’s Department of Biological Sciences, Assistant Professor Robert Harrod talks about an exciting discovery his research team made last year. The discovery involves the way viruses replicate and the disease Werner syndrome, a rare genetic disorder that causes premature aging.

The HIV-1 virus infects white cells involved in fighting infection, inserting itself into the genetic material of the cells, commonly known as T-cells, to cause AIDS. Once the virus is integrated into the host cell, Harrod explains, it is dependent on “human cellular transcription factors” to replicate. The researchers have shown that the Werner syndrome enzyme is an essential factor in that transcription process. They reasoned if they could inhibit the enzyme function, they could block the transcription.

Using cells developed by researchers at the University of Washington who are studying Werner syndrome, the SMU researchers were able to insert the enzyme defect that causes Werner syndrome into HIV-infected T-cells, blocking 95 percent of retroviral transcription. If the HIV/AIDS virus can’t be transcribed, it can’t replicate.

The one in 1,000 people in Japan who are Werner syndrome carriers (without developing the syndrome) have not been observed to develop AIDS, Harrod points out, suggesting that affecting the functioning of the enzyme that causes Werner syndrome is a plausible way to fight HIV/AIDS.

The beauty of the Werner syndrome-enzyme approach to HIV/AIDS treatment is that the virus can’t mutate to defeat treatment, Harrod says.

The HIV-inhibition research was published in the April 20, 2007 issue of “The Journal of Biological Chemistry.”

Harrod’s research group, which includes Master’s degree student Madhu Sukumar and three biological sciences undergraduates, now is searching for molecules that will inhibit the function of the Werner syndrome enzyme, and thus, viral replication.

Harrod’s work also is an example of the international collaboration that is occurring to find solutions to global health issues. He is collaborating on the research with Antonito Panganiban from the University of New Mexico-Health Sciences Center, Carine Van Lint from the Universite Libre de Bruxelles and two clinical researchers, Dennis Burns and Daniel Skiest, from UT Southwestern Medical Center at Dallas.

According to the World Health Organization, 33 million people are living with HIV/AIDS worldwide. That is why Professor William Orr, chair of Biological Sciences at SMU, calls Harrod’s research exciting.

“It’s going to provide an alternative way in which one might be able to deactivate or slow down this scourge,” Orr says.

Harrod joined SMU in 2002 and teaches undergraduate and graduate students. He earned his Ph.D. at the University of Maryland in 1996, and received postdoctoral training at the National Institutes of Health and the Naval Medical Center. — Cathy Frisinger

Tags Madhu Sukumar, Robert Harrod, SMU Department of Biological Sciences, William Orr