Penn State University - La Vie Yearbook (University Park, PA)

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Want to Get Healthy? Exercise can give you the aerobic capacity of a non-active person ten, maybe even fifteen years younger than yourself, says Dr. James L. Hodgson, an applied physiologist at the Human Performance Laboratory. And if you don't exercise from ages twenty through fifty, you'll probably lose ae- robic capacity faster than active people. Hodgson has studied the effects of long-term, regular exercise on people of all ages, focusing on middle-aged men. He and Dr. Elsworth R. Buskirk, director of the laboratory, summarize their research and that of others in the paper Physical Fitness and Age, with Emphasis on Cardiovascular Functions in the Elderly. Aerobic capacity is the ability of the lungs to take up oxygen, the heart to deliver it, and the muscles to use the Iife-giving gas. Aerobic capacity reflects performance of the cardiovascular sys- tem. In this era of a million heart at- tacks a year, it is nothing to ignore 22 ReviewXResearch For the approximately 20 million overweight people in the United States, being fat is no laughing matter. It's a problem that may not be solved by simply eating less. Researchers in the University's Laboratory for Human Performance Research, directed by Dr. Elsworth R. Buskirk are trying to find safe, permanent weight loss methods. Many of the problems of the obese begin during childhood. Buskirk and others believe that physical training in youth may carry through to adulthood and substantially decrease chances of becoming overweight. In the exercise groups of Dr. Karl G. Stoedefalke and former graduate stu- dent Barry Franklin, exercise was found to be beneficial psychologically as well as physiologically. StoedefaIke's and Franklin's programs banish the depres- sion so often attributed to diet-only plans. The researchers have discovered that people are especially spirited and optimistic in group exercise programs. UIIVSIMIOGNIII'MV 3 q9ducatlonal i J 1t QyDoduleslor E :3 ,. Li, QDaterlala i :t i $clence and 51 ognglneerlng ' N i D , , ,7 , , i E. Textbooks Out- Modules In Textbooks are obsolete. They're go- ing out of style in materials science and engineering, and in many other scientific and technical fields, as well, says Dr. Rustum Roy. Roy heads the Materials Research Laboratory tMRLt, and is project director of EMMSEeEducational Modules for Ma- terials Science and Engineering, a fresh approach to university teaching. EMMSE's principle component is the print module, a twenty-five to thirty- five-page booklet treating one defined topic, much like a chapter in a text. Over the next three years Roy expects EMMSE to produce 150 to 200 modules which draw on expertise and current research of materials scientists and en- gineers throughout the world. A typical module features an outline of the subject to be covered, a list of available audiovisual aids, prerequisites for easy understanding, authors, and other pertinent facts. A statement of objectives follows, then the text, and finaIIy a set of review exercises. In a field where knowledge is in rapid acceleration-so rapid that it regularly outstrips texts of a general nature-modules may be the books of the future.

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Happier Hunting Grounds Many hunting accidents are terrible tragedies. Fortunately, there are fewer such tragedies in Pennsylvania today-only half as many as twenty years ago-and much of the credit goes to Hunter Safety , an educational pro- gram designed cooperatively by the Pennsylvania Game Commission and Penn State. Representing the commission is hunter education specialist John C. Be- hel. He began working with Penn State's Dr. Frank Anthony, an agricul- tural educator, back in 1958. That year, there were 480 accidents among 985,070 licensed hunters-almost double the 247 recorded in 1977, when 1,285,013 hunters caused a record low 10 fatal and 237 nonfatal accidents. Since 1969 all first-time hunters un- der age sixteen have taken the course. A decreasing number of accidents caused by the young-formerly a high- risk segment of the hunting popu- lationvshow the course's high rate of effectiveness. Growing Older Pennsylvanians are aging-from 1970 to 1977, the number of Com- monwealth citizens age sixty-five and older increased 10 percent, and sociol- ogists at the University's Population ls- sues Research Center predict another 10 percent rise by 1985. Dr. Gordon F. Delong, R. Thomas Gillaspy, and research assistants Debo- rah Street and Kenneth Keppel have published a paper entitled A Meth- odology for Projecting the Older Popu- lations of Local Areas, focusing on the counties of Pennsylvania. Their goal is to specify the number and location of older people for planners who must predict social needs. The work drew data from the 1970 US. Census and the number of deaths registered by the Pennsylvania Department of Health from 1968 through 1972. In Pennsylvania, current population over age fifty could be represented by a pyramid: the largest proportion of persons in younger age groups, with successively fewer persons in older cat- egories. By 1990, the representation will look more like a candle flame: narrow at the bottom, with a bulge from ages fifty-eight through seventy, and tapering to age eighty-five and beyond. Society must meet the needs of its expanding older population-a group which increasingly is realizing its right to adequate and reasonably priced transportation, housing, and health care. Finer Wine Ten years ago, Pennsylvania had one winery. Today there are more than twenty. The boom results, in part, from a thirteen year study of wine grape varieties by PSU pomologist Dr. Carl W. Haeseler. Thirty-three wine grape varieties were studied. Haeseler, his associates, and cooperating vineyard owners had to adapt the new varieties to local growing conditions. Three new red wine grapes passed all tests, as did Vidal 256 and Seyval, two white wine grapes. Now, says Haeseler, Pennsylvania growers have greater flexibility. They can offer a wide variety of high quality, locally fermented wines, and can also grow grapes in new parts of the state, picking varieties tailored to their own preferences or to local soil or weather limitations. Review7Research 21

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Milk Myth Destroyed By drinking milk your serum choles- terol level ought to drop. So it appears from the findings of three food scien- tists who say that cholesterol synthesis is inhibited by a milk compound called orotic acid. For years, nutritionalists warned adults of the dangers of milk drinking and its contribution to high cholester- ol. Baloney , say food scientists Dr. Robert D. McCarthy and senior re- search aide Gerald A. Porter. Studies of African Masai tribesmen by other re- searchers, Penn State rat feeding ex- periments, and Vanderbilt University experiments with Americans, all show serum cholesterol levels dropping as more milk was consumed. McCarthy, Porter, and Libyan gradu- ate student Ahmed A. Ahmed, who did much of the Penn State research, en- listed an army of analytical techniques to isolate and identify orotic acid as the cholesterol blocking agent. McCarthy says this acid was first re- ported in milk in 1904, but not fully isolated and identified until Porter and Ahmed's research efforts. In the future, McCarthy would like to explore orotic acid's effect on liver tissue, examining metabolism of com- pounds other than cholesterol. Perhaps in a year or two, we'll have more answers, concludes McCarthy. a.- ; v Catching Rays Costly A few years ago, many people felt we could clean up pollution while re- taining economic growth, says econo- mist Gary A. Shute. Now we're not sure. One of the uncertainties is the apparent collision course between energy and environment. Another is expense. In the position paper Energy and the Environment: Can We Afford Them Both? Shute says, If we contin- ue to strive for a high level of environ- mental quality, the price will be paid in terms of escalated inflation, unemployment, energy short-falls, etc. Solar space heating also has eco- nomic drawbacks. Supplemental solar hot water heat is only marginally eco- nomical in Pennsylvania, unless finan- cial incentives are legislated. If your house is heated by oil, unsubsidized solar heating probably won't pay for itself. In one of those paradoxes that seem to dominate the energy scene, it ap- pears that the pocketbook must be hit even harder before free sun energy is worthwhile. The reason, of course, is that solar heat is not free. The cost of solar equipment, installation, and maintenance is still too high to com- pete with that of present fuels. a 1x G vi f x t f A oimm': w Wm V'gdv mil fr W New Graphics The Applied Research Laboartory, in conjunction with the University's Com' putation Center and the acoustics graduate program, is exploring the ef- fectiveness of computer graphics as a research tool, as well as applying it to specific problems in several fields. A tremendous boom in computer use is predicted, with graphics por- traying everything from weather pat- terns to automobile designs to games and entertainment. Most information that can be shown in a visual, graphic form may end up stored in computers. If so, learning methods developed by ARL's graphics groups .will become in- creasingly important-and not just to scientists and other technical people, but to the general public as well. ReviewIResearch 23