Cooperative Media Group is a partnership of University of Missouri Extension, College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources and University of Missouri System Communications
Contact:
Kent Faddis, Producer
University of Missouri
Cooperative Media Group
(573) 882-5361
(:43) (MU researchers experiment with center pivot irrigation on rice)
Gene Stevens(:13) Right now there is a shortage of rice worldwide as the economies of the world are able to purchase more food in Africa and Asia the amount of consumption of rice is increasing.
(:14) It really opens up the possibilities for farmers who have not grown rice before because their soils would not allow them to flood their fields and now if this system is successful they could grow center pivot irrigated rice even on hillsides.
(:12) In Missouri, we have about 200,000 acres of normal flood irrigated rice but this our experiment we are doing to look at reducing the amount of water and fuel used for rice production.
Jim Heiser(:10) With this system you greatly reduce the amount of water you have to use on rice and you also decrease the amount of fuel consumption to pump the water for the rice.
(:11) It is something new but it is going to take awhile for people to adjust to that but once they see the benefits and the cost savings which is really what drives farmer’s decisions they will come around.
Contact:
Kent Faddis, Producer
University of Missouri
Cooperative Media Group
(573) 882-5361
(:59) (Scouting for soybean rust)
Allen Wrather(:17) There are estimates that yield loss may be 60 to 80 percent if fungus attacks in the latter part of August or even early September when reproduction just begins.
(:20) Our worry is that same will happen this year and so a lot of our soybeans because of late planting will be in vegetative growth or still filling beans at that stage so rust developing at that point mid September could really damage yields.
(:13) When it first begins to develop in an area because that is the time when farmers need to be applying fungicide to protect their crop once it’s easy to see on leaves then yield loss has already occurred.
(:15) If rust does show up in this area we will alert farmers in the area and suggest they take action to protect their crop by applying fungicides if the crop is in the seed filling stage of growth.
Contact:
Kent Faddis, Producer
University of Missouri
Cooperative Media Group
(573) 882-5361
(1:00) (Sweet sorghum biofuel research at the MU Delta Research Center)
Gene Stevens(:14) If we go ahead and harvest the early planting earlier and then it will grow back again we can get a second crop or second cutting of it and potentially double our yields of ethanol so we can get two harvests instead of one.
(:08) If we can take genes from the cold-tolerant variety and put them into a variety that produces more sugar, we´ll get the best of both worlds.
(:09) With those high prices and demand for biofuels it’s an opportunity for local farmers in southeast Missouri to make more profits.
Roland Holou(:09) In Africa, we can grow sweet sorghum twice a year but here in America you can grow it just once.
(:13) What we have now from sweet sorghum is not enough to yield a great production; we need to do some genetic modification to make those plants produce more.
Contact:
Kent Faddis, Producer
University of Missouri
Cooperative Media Group
(573) 882-5361
B-Roll (1:00) (Wind energy)
Jerry Baker(:14) Extension Community Development Specialist (:14) The county will gain about $400,000 in revenue for their budgets. This is a unique situation because in rural areas this is quite uncommon to have this kind of an increase in taxation revenues.
(:13) It´s a savings for the community in general, savings for the rural electric companies, and it does provide electricity service over at least 20-year time period which is the anticipated life of these turbines.
Jim Crawford(:12) New mapping technology has shown that there is an excellent opportunity for sustainable wind in northwest Missouri. So we have the sustainable winds here to make something like this and make wind farms and wind generated electricity more economically feasible.
(:18) This is definitely a creative and innovative way of diversifying and farming in a way that we hadn´t thought of. We´re farming the wind, which is something that we have up here. And the payback on a per acre basis is generally quite good when compared to a lot of other crops, and it´s as simple as getting a cup of coffee and watching the blades spin.
Contact:
Kent Faddis, Producer
University of Missouri
Cooperative Media Group
(573) 882-5361
B-Roll (1:00) (Working out on machine)
Steve Ball(:13) It´s really a mixed bag. The Weight Watchers group did well and they lost 9 pounds. However, when you look at their body composition they didn´t do so well. They actually lost a lot of lean tissue or another way to say it is they lost a lot of muscle.
(:11) Lean tissue is directly correlated to metabolism so as our lean tissue goes down, typically our metabolism slows so then it becomes more difficult to lose weight later on.
(:16) This was really one of the first studies to look at body composition change. There´s lots of Weight Watchers research out there and other research on commercial weight loss programs, but they simply focus on body weight, and we know body composition is much more predictive of cardiovascular disease and your health than is your body weight.
(:22) One of the pros with the Weight Watchers group is that we had a very low dropout rate. In the exercise, in the fitness center group, we had about a double dropout rate so a lot more people dropped out of the fitness center program than they did the Weight Watchers program, and there´s a lot of reasons for that and one is probably this group, social support that comes with the Weight Watchers program.
(:17) Just looking at the number on the scale isn´t a great predictor of your overall health, and that´s one reason we did the study because we wanted to look at body composition which is a better predictor of those types of health outcomes than is your body weight. So just losing weight on the scale doesn’t really tell us a lot.
B-Roll (2:00) (4-H with veterans)
(:09) Just seeing them laugh gives me a really good feeling inside, seeing that I did something for these people because just in this little time I got to do something to make them forget their worries, forget their problems.
Dana "Liberty" Abendschein(:09) Being sick is no fun and so anything that can kind of give a distraction and help us to laugh really helps us through that situation.
Virgil Moore(:09) I thought it was wonderful. I didn´t have any idea it was going to happen and I was surprised and I thought it was great.
Hilda Moore(:13) It´s a routine that they all get tired of and when the young people come in and entertain them it is just excellent. I appreciate it as much as he does.
B-Roll (:52) (Working)
Sound Bites
(:05) It was a lot of work but it's been really fun, it´s been a really good learning opportunity.
John Moore(:05) This is just a good example of what we stand for and now that we've done it I'm really glad.
(:09) They´re here because they want to be here and one thing we know is that they have felt really good about the process of giving back and helping another family.
Lisa Hamilton-Hill(:09) There´s a lot that can be done with landscaping to help cool and shade the home. So we really wanted to bring home the simpler aspects that weren´t so expensive, that really anybody can do for themselves.
(:19) To be here it's like, we finally feel like we found our place.
B-Roll (1:00) (Running)
Sound Bites(:15) They go out and they just do too much too fast and we all know what happens you get sore the next day or you get hurt and that can decrease adherence to a program so it is very important that people start off gradually and build up over time.
(:21) With exercise there is always risks so to make sure that we don´t cause more harm than good it is a good idea to make sure people are medically ready and it is safe for them to begin and for the majority of people it is going to be fine to start some type of gradual program but there would be some cases where we might have to put some limitations on people so it is always good to talk with your physician before you begin.
(:23) We really never want to stretch a cold muscle so ideally to improve flexibility we would stretch at the end of our aerobic workout; now flexibility and stretching can be part of their warm up people would be better served if they went and did 5 or 10 minutes of a light cardiovascular type warm-up to warm the body up to get the muscles prepared to stretch.
(:11) Get a pair of shoes that fits you well and are comfortable but make sure that you check them for wear and tear over time and so a lot times a shoe will wear out on the inside before it wears out on the outside.
(:19) Depends on what your goals are if your goals are weight loss the recommendations are different and so we want to exercise for a longer duration to lose weight and we are not going to be able to run for 60 or 90 minutes continuously most people are not going to be able to do that so walking then becomes the preferred mode for weight loss.
B-Roll (:56) (Grocery Store)
Sound Bites from Cynthia Fauser(:11) We spend about $2.17 per minute in the store, so we want to minimize our time because that minimizes the amount of dollars we spend.
(:10) Coupons can save you about $.89 per item and when you use double coupons or add them to a sale it really starts to add up, but don´t let them entice you to buy something that you wouldn´t buy anyway.
(:11) So if you reach down and you reach up, you´re going to be buying those lower price items and saving over buying the higher priced items, the high profit margin items that are right at eye level.
Sound Bites from Ellen Schuster(:17) A family of four wastes in food on fruits and vegetables, grains and meat $600 a year and if you think of it, that´s 10 $60 gas fill-ups, so that´s a huge savings, again something that people can control.
B-Roll (:40) (red cedar trees and MU research lab)
Sound Bites from Amber Spohn(:16) The focus and most exciting has been the anti-melanoma qualities. So from here we need to definitively prove how good this chemical fights melanoma or prevents melanoma and then find a way to commercially produce it.
Sound Bites from Mike Gold(:19) It’s the chemical soup that makes up cedar heartwood that has so much potential that we really have not yet exploited it fully and that’s what we’re intending to do. And it’s not just the wood it’s also the vegetation and it’s also the chemistry within the cedar fruit or the cedar berry.
(:15) There are many different chemicals that we are essentially breaking out to find out what their potential uses are, whether that’s against insecticides, fungicides, anti-cancer and so forth.
Sound Bites from Chung-Ho Lin(:10) Value added phytochemicals from red cedar might have potential to create a new industry in Missouri with an abundance of red cedar resource.
(1:00) Higginsville, Missouri farmer converts his hog facility into a fish hatchery
(:20) Ellis is a prime example of what opportunities exist for farmers. You know, people have land, they have the resources. In Ellis´s case he had all the facilities and he just had to retrofit them, and it´s been a great opportunity for him to get into a different market that diversified his farm.
(:17) The networking aspect of Ellis´s operation is really important because he’s kind of alone out here in Lafayette County doing this. He doesn’t have access to a lot of tools at hand. So it´s really important for him to be able to access the knowledge within his industry.
(:11) You don´t hear about aquaculture in Missouri. It´s livestock and grain and I think that´s one of the reasons why he was identified as being somebody who really needed that grant.
(:07) It opened up a lot of eyes as far as putting fish tanks in a hog building and trying to raise fish indoors.
(:11) There are only two people in the state doing what were doing and I am one of them and so if there is a niche market we should have it and least I am hoping.
(1:00) (Livestock, lab work)
(:11) We want to make sure that these compounds are being broken down in the environment, decomposed or degraded if you will and that is going to help reduce the potential for antibiotic resistance.
(:12) So the antibiotics that are given to livestock, between 30 and 80 percent of that antibiotic dose or what´s in the feed can pass through the animal.
(:10) At this point the amount of antibiotics entering the environment is still relatively low, and so we need to be concerned about it but perhaps at this point not alarmed about it.
(:15) Microorganisms that are growing in the soil where the Poplar tree are growing are helping to break this compound down, which will prevent it from remaining in the environment for long periods of time or being moved on to surface water resources.
(1:00) (Pigs, lab work)
(:10) If we develop pigs that had the same mutation as humans, then potentially we could develop therapies or treatments on pigs rather than experimenting on children.
(:16) By breeding these animals together we hope to be able to come up with animals that have both copies mutated in the same animal, and we anticipate and we hope that they´ll have some phenotype so we can use these pigs as a model to come up with strategies for treating cystic fibrosis.
(:23) When you make that mutation in mice, they don´t get any lung disease, so really to develop treatments or therapies or cures, there´s no model to experiment on except for people that have the disease, and so what we would like to do is to develop these pigs to be able to experiment on them to develop these cures and these therapies instead of experimenting on children.
(:09) One quarter of the off spring should have both copies mutated and so a quarter of the off spring should have cystic fibrosis if they´re going to get it.
(:13) Pigs are actually really useful for studying the human conditions. They´re very similar; their physiology is very similar; their anatomy is quite similar. They´re actually genetically about 3 times closer to humans than are mice.
(:56) (People shopping and pumping gasoline)
(:21) We would expect this to be another year of food prices rising at a rate faster than the overall consumer price index for all good and services. We think there´s enough higher energy costs, higher raw product price increase that it´s going to continue to cause consumer prices to rise for 2008.
(:28) I think when you look back at what’s been going on, it´s a combination of factors that have been driving food prices for consumers. Number one it is the raw value that we get from agriculture driving that change. But on top of that we are seeing energy cost increase as well, so transporting that beef or transporting that milk to the ultimate destination certainly has gone up quite a bit as well. So it´s a combination of factors that have been driving prices higher of late.
(:24) Well I certainly think a four percent growth from the CPI for food is well above average and it’s something that is going to get the attention of consumers. They´re very used to going to the grocery store and buying products where prices don’t change very often. And now going to the grocery store and seeing prices start to rise, going to the restaurants and seeing prices start to rise, certainly means their income level needs to stretch a little further to cover these additional costs.
(:20) Well the shift to biofuels has definitely been a very major shift in agriculture. We’ve seen a large increase in demand for U.S. agricultural products this year, with the increase in the use of corn to make ethanol the number one shift. In fact, the increase in corn use to make ethanol this year is probably the single largest factor behind the increasing market prices that we´ve seen.
(:13) Farmers are making more money under the current environment in spite of higher cost for their production of items and consumers are going to pay more because of this increase in farm prices.
(1:16) (People filing their taxes)
(:14) There were some misnomers that the social security administration would share its information with the IRS and people could receive checks without actually filing, and that’s not the case. You have to file in order to receive a fiscal stimulus rebate.
(:06) The fiscal stimulus payment is not taxable at the federal level, but some states may decide to tax the rebate.
(:18) If you owe back taxes or if you defaulted on your student loans that the government lent you or if you have child support payments that you haven´t been making, then the government will treat your basic tax rebate like a regular refund from the government and they´ll intercept it and keep the money. You will get a letter in the mail however telling you how your stimulus payment will be used.
(:08) You do have a second chance. If you don’t qualify based on this year´s taxes, you can file next year and receive the rebate check again.
(1:16) (Shots of Missouri Hunger Atlas, food bank and food pantry)
(:22) Roughly 500,000 Missourians each month worry about having sufficient quantities of food to eat and probably 200,000 or more each month go hungry. But again we have no department of hunger, we have no census of hunger, we have no central group that brings together information on hunger, so it was our idea to produce the first Missouri Hunger Atlas.
(:20) One of the surprising findings though is when you look at participation rates in programs, a lot of the counties that have the highest need also have the highest participation rates. So it´s really good news in the sense that Missouri seems to be really effectively targeting its resources towards the areas where there are the highest concentration of the hungry.
(:29) Really we created this as a tool for policy makers and for decision makers. Whether they are state level legislators, county commissioners, community food security advocates, this is really a tool that brings everything together. We do have hunger programs in Missouri; they tend to be spread out through agencies and in the private sector, so this is a tool that brings data from lots of different programs together. We think it really should be a good planning tool for people to use.
(:18) Given the forecast for the economy, people expect the problems to become more extensive or to become worse. This will actually allow us to measure is the problem becoming worse, are more people now eligible for food stamps, are more people experiencing hunger than they were two years ago.
(:22) There are still people who are eligible for participation who aren´t participating so this will help them identify the regions of the state where participation rates are the lowest, right now the only measure they have is a statewide measure. This is a first county by county assessment of participation so it should help people target really scarce human and fiscal resources.
Flash news piece
(1:15) Show surgical residents and medical students using the laparoscopic training device created by MU biological engineering students
(:15) Any device that we have that helps with simulation is going to help all of our students. This device is especially helpful because it’s affordable and it’s cheap. It’s also a type of device that the students can use without having to have someone there holding the camera to help them.
(:17) If we can get medical students and residents training out of the operating room first and practicing procedures, knowing how to use cameras, knowing how to use instruments before they get in the operating room, once they get in there they’re safer, they’re more efficient, and it’s just that much better care for the patient.
(:08) I think it’s a big thing, and it’s important for them, and it shows also that engineering and medicine can collaborate to do really good things.
(:08) My goal was to give them something they could use in the end, and hopefully that’s what this has done and will help them prepare for surgery.
(:06) Residents could purchase this, have it at their house. I mean they spend that on one textbook, so having this device there would really help them out in a real life situation performing surgery.
(1:15) Voice lab; professional singers on stage
MU Communication Science and Disorders Assistant Professor(:15) This can be a good instrument or a good feedback for them to see their voice changing in the long run and identify what´s going wrong and then correct them and avoid getting a voice problem.
(:22) If the lung pressure is really high and air flow is really low, they can tell that the problem is somewhere at the valve level or the vocal chord level and they can pinpoint that kind of problem. And once we know the source of the problem, we can correct that with different vocal techniques or voice therapy techniques.
(:17) Even subjects who have voice problems who understand better and realize that ‘oh my god I´ve been putting so much pressure and I´ve been clearing my throat throughout my life and now I realize that throat clearing is not good’ and seeing it visually would really help them.
(:30) People with Parkinson´s have issues with vocal projection and loudness because their muscle power goes down as they get into the disease. And these exercises which work on breathing and vocal aspects of voice production can help them in improving their vocal projection in terms of improving vocal loudness. And regular practice may help them in getting a louder voice even though they get into the Parkinson´s disease.
Professional Singer(:17) Anything that can help you understand the voice in absolute terms and not in relative terms-and this is a way of measuring what happens-helps a voice teacher and helps the student.
(:14) I´m 40 years old and anything that I can do to sing and to keep singing healthy well into my 70s; I would love to be able to do that.”.
(1:22) Tour of Missouri racing footage; finish line
MU Tourism Economics Research Initiative Co-Director(:12) The out-of-state visitors were spending on average about $550 during their trip, and that’s significantly higher than we find in general travel throughout the state.
(:25) A little more than 25 percent of the visitors from outside the state said that they had never visited the local area before, or at least they hadn’t within the past five years. Especially to smaller communities that’s very important. Because if they get those visitors in for the first time, they show them a good time, it’s likely those people will come back.
(:17) Overall, $21.1 million was spent by visitors from outside the state. Another a little over $5 million spent by people within the state who traveled around to different areas outside their home residences.
(:12) The advantage is they get visitors to those sites that they’ve never had before. If those visitors have a good time, they go home, they tell their friends and so on. It’s good word of mouth.
(1:10) simulated falling; detection technology
Marilyn Rantz(:14)We´ve seen a lot of falls of older people. So we wanted to, today, judge as the stunt actors fell, is that a realistic fall that is likely to occur in an older person.
(:14)Billions of dollars are spent in healthcare costs following up a treatment in falls so what our work is targeted to do is to not only detect falls but were also doing fallrisk assessment.
Marjorie Skubic(:28)The reason it´s important that we have the stunt actors help us out is that we need to collect data of people falling down and they need to be realistic in terms of the way older people really do fall so that we can use that to train our software programs in the computer so that we will be able to automatically recognize what these falls look like when they happen in real life.
(:16)We can tell where in that three dimensional space the person is actually performing this type of action, so we can tell the difference between lying on the floor and lying on a couch, and we don’t want to create a false alarm of a fall.
B-roll (1:06) dousing flames on an simulated aircraft fire; fire truck; group of firefighters in training
Captain Addington Stewart(:08) I mean it’s an important training where you can get some experience. It simulates what you’re trying to do if you actually have an actual aircraft.
(:11) They take the experience of just being able to go in there and just have the same ideas as what’s going on in the air craft when you’re dealing with fire, and this will give them experience of having to deal with when we actually have it at the airport.
(:16) Firefighters going into this though, they say too, it’s not as hot as a structure and I understand that. What we’re trying to do is give them fire, smoke, and principles, those techniques and ideas and things to do a safe operation.
(:09) We’re not here to cure their gear, make their helmet black, or all of those things. It’s work on the principles and learn and be safe.
B-roll(:55) playing games in kitchen; toy train and accordion
(:13) It gives the grandparents an opportunity to come together and realize I’m not here by myself. There are others like me and it’s really their sharing their stories back and forth that really spurs more people attending and the help.
(:16) Support groups are absolutely valuable in sharing not only emotional issues that a grandparent or relative caregiver experiences, but it’s sharing the basic financial and legal situations that one might find themselves in.
(:12) The emotional issues, the psychological issues that a child is exposed to all bring issues that need to be dealt with the grandparents; these are all things we need to help them with.
(:10) When I started him in school I thought he is going to be the only boy living with his grand parents but he is not there is just a lot of children out there living with their grandparents.
(:36) frozen turkey dropped in fryer; fryer overflowing
Eric Evans(:06) “Make sure it is completely thawed, completely dried off, and then so you put it in there very slowly, and you don’t drop it in that hot oil.”
(:11) “They would have boiling oil basically coming out and landing on their body. Again, if you have ever fried chicken and felt it on your hands you know it hurts a lot; multiply that a 100 times, very dangerous.”
(:08) “There may be some popping. It gets people excited, and they sometimes literally drop the bird in there. Sometimes they put in a whole frozen bird in there, just basically creating a bomb.”
(:08) “If you don’t feel comfortable using this appliance, and if you think something could go wrong, you know what? Probably better to find another way to cook your bird.”
(:10) “It’s actually equivalent to a small bomb, in a sense, because that oil and grease will ignite extremely quickly. It will burn very intensely, very hot, and of course it will run everywhere.”
(:36) carving turkey
Andrew Clarke
(:15) “Particularly when we think about handling the raw turkey and getting it ready to put in the oven, immediately after handling the turkey you need to wash your hands, utensils, kitchen countertops or cutting boards and so forth before going on with further handling of any other food items in the kitchen.”
(:20) “The danger zone is between 40 and 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So if foods are supposed to be kept warm for serving, it is very important to keep them in the oven just before serving time or using some method that will ensure so when the family sits down that all of the hot dishes are warm.”
(:12) “Certainly when it comes time when family is visiting leftovers are on the table a little bit longer and so forth. You will find the recommendation is after two hours you should not keep it; it should be thrown out.”
(:13) “They are very reliable for popping up, but they just mark one spot on the turkey. You many want to check another spot or two just to be sure it is cooked properly on both sides of the bird.”
(:22) “When it comes time to thaw the turkey there are lots of options available. Clearly the No. 1 recommendation is to thaw this in the refrigerator, which means you do have to plan some time. Basically, it takes about one day for every 5 pounds of turkey, and so for the typical family gathering, that’s really going to take three to four days to get the turkey thawed in a refrigerator.”
(:36) radon test kits and system
Michael Goldschmidt
(:07) “There is no myth behind it, you can’t see it, you can’t smell it, but it is there and it can make you sick.”
(:14) “There are short term kits that you can buy at most home stores, hardware stores that will check within 48 hours what your level is. They are not as accurate as the more expensive test, but they can give you a good indication of approximately where you are on the radon scale.”
(:16) “It could be in older homes, it could be in newer homes. It is naturally occurring in the soil and the air around the soil, and so we tell people if you get indications from your neighbors that they have a high radon problem that you should be tested also. But we also encourage people to test at least once when they are living in the house.”
(:15) “If there are a lot of cracks in the foundation, in the basement wall, the basement slab or if it is a slab on grade, cracks on the first floor, then that is a concern and that means there is more chance that the radon is getting airborne and getting in the lungs of the occupants of the house.”