Any parent at a dinner table is familiar with the age-long negotiation with their children to get them to eat fruits and vegetables. At times the bargaining can be as intense as any Middle-East peace negotiation.

But a Utah State University researcher is hoping that a program started in England will help change the attitudes of U.S. kids toward eating healthier foods.

The Food Dudes program was created by a psychology professor at Bangor University in North Wales, England. “I started it because I noticed children had switched off eating fruits and vegetables and had switched over to largely junk diets,” said professor Fergus Lowe.

Lowe said obesity among children is a global crisis. “It’s actually the biggest public health problem of our time. Obesity is a huge issue worldwide. There are now more people who are overweight and obese than there are underfed,” he said.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three Americans is obese, as are 17 percent of children between the ages of 2 and 19. In Utah, nearly 10 percent of children are considered obese.

Fruits and vegetables, have had to compete for the attention of more glitzy processed foods, like cartoon character cookies, “Cheez” with crackers and candy snacks — much of it high in sugar and fat.

The Food Dudes program takes a three-step approach for kids 6 to 11 years old. First, samples of fruits and vegetables are brought in for kids to taste. Second, they become part of a peer program which encourages kids to see eating healthier foods as a popular thing to do. The final part is that kids are rewarded by being given small prizes for eating all of their fruits and vegetables during lunch.

A year into the program, consumption of fruits and vegetables among English school kids jumped as high as 90 percent in some schools. The program impressed Irish school officials so much that the program was adopted in all Irish schools a few years ago. Even more impressive was that a follow-up study showed Food Dudes students carried better eating habits into high school.

The results caught the eye of USU nutrition professor and senior dietitian, Sheryl Aguilar. “We actually change the culture of the school so that it’s cool to bring fruits and vegetables to school for lunch,” she said. An initial pilot study of one Cache County class showed that the Food Dudes program increased eating of fruit by 40 percent and vegetables by 44 percent over just a four-month period. More…

They also took with them thousands of dollars worth of hearing aids and other equipment to help treat Vietnamese children who have hearing loss.

The USU group was invited on the trip by Seattle-based Global Foundation for Children With Hearing Loss. Thirteen other audiology and deaf education professionals from around the country joined them to share their knowledge and latest techniques.

“They don’t have access to appropriate technology,” said Lauri Nelson, an associate professor in Utah State’s department of communicative disorders and deaf education. “There are no graduate training programs in Vietnam, so the teachers there don’t get specific training in how to work with kids with hearing loss.”

Ninety instructors from several dozen schools throughout Vietnam gathered in Ho Chi Minh City from June 23 to July 29 to learn the latest techniques from the U.S. hearing specialists.

Each day, the professionals worked with the Vietnamese instructors, lecturing and teaching the latest techniques in audiology training and deaf education.

“They were so gracious and so thankful that we could come,” said Jeanette Smoot, a USU speech language pathology graduate. “They just told us over and over again how excited they were.”

The group also met with several dozen families with hearing-impaired children. The children were fitted with new hearing aids. More…

Images of Earth’s first known “Trojan asteroid” were captured by the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer space telescope that was designed and built for NASA at Utah State University.

A Trojan asteroid is one that is captured and held by the gravity of larger planetary objects. Scientists long suspected Earth has one or more of them, but this is the first that’s been confirmed.

“There’s a whole family of Trojan asteroids in the Jupiter orbit, and I think they found them in a couple other planets,” said John Elwell, WISE program manager at USU’s Space Dynamics Laboratory. “Matter of fact, there’s actually Trojan asteroids around moons of Saturn.”

Although our planet is vulnerable to giant rocks plowing through our neighborhood, scientists say this one poses no threat.

“Asteroids in a Trojan orbit are some of the ones you don’t have to worry about because they’re in a very stable orbit,” Elwell said, “60 million miles away from the earth.” The asteroid is believed to be several hundred yards in diameter.

Regular Earth-based telescopes couldn’t see the Trojan asteroid because it’s hiding in broad daylight. It’s too close to the angle of the Sun, as seen from Earth. “The telescopes tend to get blinded by the sun,” Elwell said.

WISE, though, uses infrared light instead of visible light. It was designed to map the entire universe from WISE’s own orbit around the Earth. In doing so, the infrared cameras on WISE captured images of a very dim star-like object. Now, Canadian scientists have determined it’s a Trojan. Their finding is featured this week on the cover of the prestigious journal Nature. More…

Utah State University electrical engineers have made a technical breakthrough that could solve this power-storage pitfall — not by improving batteries, but by recharging them wirelessly, according to Jeff Muhs, director of USU’s Energy Dynamics Laboratory (EDL) in North Logan.

EDL researchers have built prototype equipment that allows electricity to hop over a 10-inch span with 90 percent efficiency.

“This demonstration is an extraordinary and historic step in providing technologies to electric-vehicle owners who will be able to pull their cars into garages at home and charge without having to plug in with cords,” Muhs said. “This is just the beginning.”

The demonstrated efficiency compares favorably with the amount of electricity leaking out of the existing grid or lost from wall outlets, said Hunter Wu, a young EDL engineer leading the project.

“There are many challenges. We’re making breakthroughs on energy conversion,” said Wu during a recent demonstration. “Here we are going from direct current to high-frequency alternating energy, which creates the high-frequency magnetic fields to transfer power.”

Wu, who was born in China and grew up New Zealand, came to the lab last year from the University of Auckland, where he was a scientific prodigy. Studying under a bioengineer who developed groundbreaking technology to wirelessly power heart implants, he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering at 19.

His team, which includes engineers Ky Sealy and Aaron Gilchrist, can move five kilowatts of electricity noiselessly from one interface across an air gap to a receiving pad, which powers a bank of light bulbs. More…

How can these goats achieve such amazing things? Lets just say, they have a little bit in common with comic book legend Peter Parker.

Lewis’s goats are transgenic, meaning they have two key genes that allow a spider to weave their silk inserted into their genetic code. The result is goats that produce milk that contain spider silk proteins.

Nicknamed “spider man” by his fellow USU scientists, Lewis’ first-of-its-kind research has gained him international attention. His work has been featured in top science journals as well as National Geographic and Time magazines. He was also featured on PBS’s NOVA and the Discovery Channel. He has been featured on European television and more recently in Canada.

Lewis recently brought his research from the University of Wyoming after USU lured him with better facilities and funding. The university was able to recruit Lewis through the USTAR program: the Utah Science Technology and Research Initiative. USTAR is a long-term, state-funded program that invests in science research with innovation and commercial potential.

Researchers and biochemical companies have long thought spider silk to be an ideal material for countless applications. It’s stronger than steel and as stretchy as nylon. But milking and caring for them is much easier than working with spiders.

“They’re territorial and cannibalistic,” Lewis said. “Scientists have known since the late 1800s that farming spiders isn’t possible — spiders tend to eat other spiders.”

To read the rest of this article in the Deseret News, click here.

The USTAR Space Weather Center at Utah State University assisted the Japanese disaster relief efforts by providing data maps outlining the best frequencies for radio communication within the islands of Japan. Storms in space, specifically in the ionosphere, can adversely impact communication and complicate the coordination of rescue teams.

The technology will be highlighted at a USU Sunrise Session in Salt Lake City June 24.

To read the rest of this article from UtahPulse.com, click here.

Logan resident Munro, 24, flew last year, and this time has announced his plans to abandon ship and keep his feet on the ground.

“There’s a reason they call it the Vomit Comet,” he said. “Last year, I threw up at least five times in zero gravity, a sixth time coming down, and again at the hotel. Then I slept for 4 or 5 hours.”

It’s a sacrifice the electrical and aerospace engineering student was happy to make — once. This year, five new students will make the flight on the specially modified Boeing 727, and Munro and one other student will stay grounded in gravity. The USU group will participate in the Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program today through June 11, with flights scheduled for June 9 and 10.

All seven have worked on refining last year’s heat transfer experiment, which tested the possibility of using water to diffuse excess equipment heat that might otherwise damage or disable vital equipment on a space craft. A relatively small amount of water would be lighter and less complex than the motorized fans currently used.

The Utah State team’s research is all about the bubbles created by boiling water, and just how those bubbles might behave without gravity to force them to rise. The students have prepared silicon chips, partially covered with platinum, for use in their experiment.

To read the rest of this article from the Ogden Standard-Examiner, click here.