Arsenic veggies take top honors at Campus Research Day

April 14, 2010

Jenn Wagaman
907-474-5082

University of Alaska Fairbanks freshman business and pre-dental major Jeff Bue’s family is careful not to drink water from the household well. However, Bue wondered if arsenic, so common in Interior wells, makes its way to the family dinner plate via the garden.

Bue’s experiment, which proved that the arsenic does indeed transfer to heads of lettuce in substantial amounts, took first place in the undergraduate research symposium held at UAF last Friday. The symposium was part of Campus Research Day, a day of events celebrating research at UAF. The day also included an open house in labs across campus and student poster competitions. Winners were awarded credit on their UAF accounts. Winners include:

Symposium
First place ($2,500): Jeff Bue, mentor Meriam Karlsson, “Arsenic Absorption in Vegetables”
Second place ($1,500): Levi Wegner, mentor Matt Olson, “Comparing Cold Hardiness of Balsam Poplar from Northern and Southern Latitudes”
Third place ($1,000) (tie): Josh Holbrook, mentor Cheng-Fu Chen, “Multitouch at UAF: Designing and Assembling a Large-scale Multitouch Screen” and Melissa Rhodes-Reese, mentor Ginny Eckert, “Effects of Habitat and Diet on the Coloration of Hatchery-reared Juvenile Red King Crab”

Undergraduate poster session
First place ($1,000): Shaina Bhojwani, mentor Todd O’Hara, “Tissue Distribution of Mercury in Alaska Sculpin Species”
Second place ($500): Sam Herreid, mentor Anthony Arendt, “Quantifying Supraglacial Debris in the Western Chugach Mountains, Alaska”
Third place ($250): Shaun Milke, mentor Geng Sheng, “Design and Construction of an Electric Snowmobile”

Graduate poster session
First place ($1,000): Jessica Beecher, mentor Diana Wolf, “Cold Tolerance in Arabidopsis kamchatica”
Second place ($500): Sara Carroll, mentor Lara Dehn, “Declawed - Foraging Records from Stable Isotope Signatures Within Ice-seal Claws”
Third place ($250): Anna Liljedahl, mentor Larry Hinzman, “Present and Future Water Balance of an Arctic Coastal Plain Wetland: Wetter or Drier Future Soils?”

JW/4-14-10/198-10

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