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Our United Way goal is $23,388.75! We can do it!
Here’s how:
- Jeans week ($10 donation)
- United Way lunch ($5)
- Pie in the face tickets ($1 each)
- Donation pledges (give generously)
Oct. 20-24 is jeans week. Tickets are available from Briá Taylor, Cathy Ramsey, Lee Stidham or Sarah Quinten.
Thursday, Oct. 23
United Way Lunch-11:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
Whip up some chili, cookies or dessert for the chili cook-off and cookie contest. Online registration is open! Judging begins at 11 a.m. in Founders Hall.
Pie in the face
Buy tickets from Staff Advisory Council members for a pie in the face tossed at the person who generates the most ticket sales. Candidates for a pie in the face are good sports Jenny Alexopolus, D.O., Phil Cearley, Jim Hess, Ed.D., Cindy Joice and JoAnn Lee.
Hat contest
Never mind “hat hair,” wear your best derby, bowler, stovepipe, helmet, sombrero, or cap for this fun contest. Winner gets an OSU gift basket.
Bring your donation card with you to the cook-off and lunch (or return it to Briá Taylor in room A-129 or Cathy Ramsey in room A-130, main campus building).
Watch out at 9 a.m. Friday, Oct. 31 for vampires, goblins, astronauts, ballerinas, witches and more (students from Eugene Field Elementary School, our adopt-a-school) who will visit CHS main campus for Halloween activities including arts and crafts and a 10 a.m. “trick or treat” parade with stops at designated candy stations. If you would like to donate candy, contact Briá Taylor.
Safe drinking water is Bullard's research focus
Maybe it was a bout with cholera years ago that has fueled Jay Bullard’s passion for safe drinking water. Today, his doctoral research project focuses on harnessing sunshine to help provide safe drinking water in areas of Ghana.
Bullard, a doctoral student in microbiology at the Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences, knows the method is not high-tech, snazzy, or even new. But that is the beauty of it. It is a simple and effective method of disinfecting water and one he wants to make more readily available in poor areas.
His goal is to develop a reliable purification system that needs no energy except manual labor, and no chemicals. Bullard, who is chief technologist of the college’s forensic microbiology laboratory, has created a prototype portable water purification unit that flows turbid water through a series of simple filters to clear it, and uses sunlight (ultraviolet radiation) and oxygen to neutralize pathogens.
Bullard’s prototype is a system of PVC pipes and a water tank that attaches onto a bicycle. He uses it to collect water from the Arkansas River or nearby lakes. As the water travels through the prototype, contaminants are extracted through filters of sand, diatomaceous earth and activated charcoal. A bicycle pump provides oxygenation and the water is exposed to sunlight in a holding tank.
He says his preliminary laboratory trials show elimination of 99% of bacteria in turbid water from the Arkansas River. He says viruses (coliphage) and bacteria (E. coli) have also been inactivated.
Bullard, who is trained in water and sewage treatment technology, says most adults can tolerate unsafe drinking water in their home area and may only have problems if they are traveling, or if there is an outbreak of water-borne disease. But young children under age 5, the sick or elderly can be at high risk. UNICEF statistics indicate that 1.5 million children under age five die each year from diarrhea from unsafe water, and more than one billion people do not have drinking water from improved sources.
OSU-CHS graduate student Gifty Benson, D.D.S., a pediatric dentist from Ghana, has worked with Bullard on the project. The team has applied for a grant to go to Ghana in May to conduct research of solar water disinfecting using seed material from the Moringa tree as a cheap and available source for coagulation, flocculation and sedimentation. A three-stage filtration and oxidation process they have dubbed SOMOXFILTER is followed by solar disinfection to inactivate enteric bacteria that cause diarrhea.
Eventually, Bullard wants to work in Ghana, showing residents how to use portable units most efficiently with their water sources. He hopes to teach basic health sciences, particularly water treatment technology. “We want to show people why the treatment is necessary and who needs high quality water,” Bullard says.
CME 25th Annual Primary Care update is Nov. 21-23
OSU College of Osteopathic Medicine Office of Continuing Medical Education’s 25th Annual Primary Care Update is Nov. 21 – Nov. 23, at the DoubleTree Hotel-Tulsa Downtown. The conference features lectures and hands-on activities with emphasis on situations encountered daily by the primary care physician. The full conference has been approved by the AOA for 25 hours of AOA Category 1A CME credit and is pending approval for prescribed credits by the American Academy of Family Physicians.
For more information or to register for the conference, contact Cyndi Canning, program specialist, or Rob Robinson, program coordinator, at (918) 586-4615 or (918) 586-4617 or (800) 274-1972.
Round of Applause
Sandra Hale, last year’s chair of Staff Advisory Council’s college and community relations committee, shows just a few of the items gathered for a recent Blue Star Mothers project. OSU-CHS employees donated books, toiletries, packets of individual servings of tea, instant beverages, phone cards, clothing items, compact discs, DVDs, puzzles, and many other items for use by service men and women in hot, dusty climates. The project recently concluded after 18 months. During that time, packages were sent to service people connected to OSU-CHS employee families through Tulsa area Blue Star Mothers.
“We appreciate everyone who provided us with names and mailing addresses as well as each and every individual who donated to the cause,” Hale said.
More than 30 OSU-CHS personnel volunteered to help at the annual Tulsa Area United Way Day of Caring Sept. 12. Here, volunteers Debbie Keener (left) and Tammy Lawson help on Day of Caring to provide manicures, lunch and bingo for guests from Reaching Hands. Background: Keri Robertson from Reaching Hands and Debbie Martin.
Sandy Cooper, human resources director, passed the bar examination given this summer and was admitted to the Oklahoma bar Sept. 15.
Dustin Colegrove, MS-IV, is one of two American Osteopathic Association’s Bureau of Osteopathic History and Identity second-prize winners. He won for his essay, “Osteopathic Medicine’s Transcendence of Geopolitical Borders: The Development of Osteopathic Medical Education in the United Kingdom,” in the bureau’s 2008 history essay competition. His essay was one of the best among the 12 essays submitted this year and he receives a $2,500 cash prize. Colegrove also won second place in 2006.
Abstracts Published
Testing characters in the development of hypotheses of relationship among basal Mammalia. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, supplement to 28(3):7A (Dr. Anne Weil and another).Taxonomic diversification rates and ecological niches of Neoplagiaulacid and Ptilodontid multituberculate mammals in North America's terrestrial Paleocene recovery, Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. 318-8. Anne Weil, Ph.D.
Conference
Participated in the North American Field Conference of the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, in the Hanna and Carbon Basins of Wyoming. Conference title: The Importance of Field-based Geological Documentation to Paleobiological Research, Anne Weil, Ph.D.
Grants Awarded
$5,000 one-year grant awarded for liver cancer research from Cancer Sucks Foundation to Rashmi Kaul, Ph.D.
“Effects of a Small Muscarinic M1 Receptor Domain on Internalization”, National Institutes of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), R15 grant mechanism, three years, $198,000 total costs - Greg Sawyer, Ph. D.
Paper presented
Associations between medical student attitudes about empathic communication with patients and empathic behaviors during interviews with standardized patients, research paper presented at the Research and Teaching Forum (Translating Communication Research: Bench to Bedside to Community) of the American Academy on Communications in Healthcare in Madison, Wis., Michael Pollak, Ph.D., Susan Redwood, Ph.D. and Dana Lindon, Ph.D.
Poster Presentation
“Estrogen and HSD2 Neuron Labeling in the Nucleus Tractus Solitarius” poster presented at the Research Internship Program of the Oklahoma Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics program meeting in Stillwater, Kathleen Curtis, Ph.D. and others.
Publications
Effective mast cell degranulating peptide inhibitors of the IgE/Fc epsilonRI receptor interaction. Chem. Biol. Drug Des. 72 (2), 133-139, Joseph Price, Ph.D., and others.
Metatherian mammals from the Naashoibito Member, Kirtland Formation, San Juan Basin, New Mexico and their biochronologic and paleobiogeographic significance. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 28(3):803-815 - Anne Weil, Ph.D. and another.
Reviews
Reviewed manuscripts for Journal of Microbiological Methods; Applied Biosafety: Journal of the American Biological Safety Association, Frank Champlin, Ph.D.
Reviewed manuscripts for: Journal of Food Science; Brain Research; Physiology and Behavior, Kathleen Curtis, Ph.D.
Site Visit
OU-Schusterman Center cadaver dissection lab, evaluation for the State Anatomical Board, Kirby Jarolim, Ph.D. and Kent Smith, Ph.D.
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