On obesity, type II diabetes and chickens
JUSTIN HARMON/Staff
The Wytheville Enterprise
Monday, February 12, 2007
Obesity and the resulting health complications, such as type II diabetes, have become a national epidemic in recent years.
Any research can help further the understanding of obesity, which is where Jenna Boyer comes in. A senior at Rural Retreat High School and Southwest Virginia Governor's School student, Boyer conducted research into obesity, type II diabetes and a recent study that found that lipoic acid, an antioxidant found in foods, could affect the onset of type II diabetes.
All of this for a science fair project.
For several months, Boyer researched the effects of injections of the antioxidant into the brain and stomach cavity of domestic chickens and the effect it had on their food intake.
According to Boyer, her project is titled "The Effects of Intracerebroventricular and Intraperitoneal Injections of Lipoic Acid on the Food Intake Regulation in White Plymouth Rocks."
Boyer said that she started collecting her data at Virginia Tech in October and only finished her research in January. According to her, she experimented on 110 overweight and underweight chickens by injecting them with lipoic acid and recording their feeding habits at timed intervals.
While most science fair participants are doing last-minute preparations for the county science fair this Thursday, Boyer won't have to worry about her project until March.
Boyer used her research in the Governor's School Science Fair preliminaries in January and tied for the grand award in biological sciences. This puts her into the Blue Ridge Regional Science Fair -- a fair that has often been dominated by Governor's School students.
"It's a really big deal," she said.
According to Boyer, the Governor's School is research-based and requires its students to engage in a research project each year.
While working with chickens may not sound appealing to most people, Boyer said the chief reason that she chose to do this project is that she did a similar project last year and wanted to work with the same people. She's also interested in medicine. "I've always wanted to do something in the medical field," she said. "I don't know if I necessarily want to work with chickens."
According to Boyer, she hopes to get her doctorate in optometry from a school in Memphis, Tenn., in the future.
In addition to making it to the Blue Ridge Regional Science Fair, Boyer said there is a separate program called the Virginia Junior Academic Sciences presented at Virginia Tech that Boyer is entering her paper on her project into.
This isn't the first time Boyer has made it this far into the competition. According to her, this will be her second time at the Blue Ridge Regional Science Fair, but Boyer said she didn't make it past that. While she won third place overall, Boyer said that they only take first and second place. She also got honorable mention with her paper last year in the Virginia Junior Academic Sciences competition.
However, she hopes to change that this year. She's hoping that the experience she gained from last year will give her an edge this year.
While all this may seem enough for some people, it would seem Boyer isn't too keen on having idle hands. According to her, she is a member of the Math MACC team, a singer in the school choir (where she recently participated in All-District Choir for District, plays the fiddle and the piano (she's the pianist for Grace Baptist Church), plays volleyball and softball, and volunteers at Smyth County Community Hospital in the radiology department where she's served more than 40 hours of volunteer time. The Blue Ridge Regional Science Fair will be held at the New River Community College in Dublin on March 2-3.
Obesity and diabetes
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