Grants support researchers sustainable agriculture project
The U.S. Department of Agriculture and Shimadzu Scientific Instruments have awarded grants to Dr. Liangcheng Yang, an associate professor in the Department of Health Sciences, and Dr. David Kopsell, a professor in the Department of Agriculture, to advance their anaerobic digestion technology.
Appears InThe researchers have received nearly $150,000 from the USDA and $12,600 from Shimadzu Scientific Instruments to be spread over two years. The grants will help Yang and Kopsell to scale up a novel anaerobic digestion technology they’ve invented and bring it closer to commercialization. The technology is used to recycle essential plant nutrients and generate and capture bioenergy more efficiently from vegetable farm waste. The nutrients recovered from this process will be applied in a greenhouse vegetable production system to evaluate the feasibility of replacing commercial fertilizers.
Several students are being hired and trained to perform research tasks and will have the opportunity to learn how to use a new scientific instrument (gas chromatography) to analyze volatile fatty acids.
MCN faculty win American Heart Association article of year award
Mennonite College of Nursing faculty Drs. John R. Blakeman and Myoung Jin Kim and their co-author, Dr. Ann L. Eckhardt, of the University of Texas at Arlington, were honored last year by the the American Heart Association’s Council on Cardiovascular and Stroke Nursing with the “Clinical Article of the Year” Award.
The award was given for the researchers’ article “Initial Development of the Chest Pain Conception Questionnaire,” which was published in Heart & Lung: The Journal of Cardiopulmonary and Acute Care. Blakeman is an assistant professor, and Kim is a professor and the director of the Office of Nursing Research, Scholarship, and Innovation.
