Cove, Arizona Plant Project I have recently started a new project and I am getting familiar with the literature. More to follow!
Undergraduate Research
Navajo Blue Corn Meal Research Abstract: Blue cornmeal or blue corn mush is a traditional food of the Navajo people. It is often prepared with juniper ash, which has been known to provide an adequate source of dietary calcium. This is important for Navajos who are often lactose intolerant and need alternative options to add calcium to their diet. Although juniper ash is a great source of calcium, it is not widely available. Thus, the purpose of this experiment was to quantify the amount of calcium in only blue cornmeal to see if it provided the same concentration of calcium as the juniper ash. The methods include dry ashing the blue cornmeal in a muffle furnace, digesting the samples using EPA method 3052 on a CEM MARS6 microwave digestion system, and analyzing with a PerkinElmer Atomic Absorption Spectrometer AAnalyst 200.
Grocery Store Study Abstract: Uranium is an abundant mineral that was mined on the Navajo Nation between the 1940’s to the 1980’s. Community members living in areas affected by the uranium mining often wonder if their sheep are safe to eat. The alternative is purchasing sheep meat from grocery stores; however, there have been additional questions whether cooking methods increase or decrease the amount of uranium in the grocery store meat. The purpose of this study was to determine whether cooking methods have any impact on the concentrations of uranium in grocery store meat. The methods include cooking the meat with different methods (i.e. grilling, roasting, boiling, slow-cooking), drying the tissues/organs, powdering the sample, mineralizing, acidifying, filtering, and analyzing with an Inductively Coupled Plasma Mass Spectrometer (ICPMS). The results suggest that there are different concentrations in the meat tissues based on the cooking methods. Future work is focused on creating a method for replication and discussing findings with community members.