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Secretary Thompson Emphasizes Alaska Issues and Learns Importance of Arctic Ground Squirrels
U. S. Health and Human Services Secretary Tommy Thompson visited the university last week on his tour of Alaska and learned that studying squirrels can help us better understand human health problems.
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UAF scientists are studying squirrels to learn more about human health problems like obesity and strokes. The scientists are studying a hormone within squirrels that keeps them from snacking when they should be hungry. Their ability to gain a lot of weight makes them ideal subjects on which to test leptin, the hormone found in lots of mammals, including humans, that curbs the desire for food.
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Ground squirrels also have an adaptation that could help medical researchers develop new treatments for human stroke victims. A stroke can occur when a clot or ruptured vessel interrupts blood flow to the brain. Denied oxygen, and glucose-rich blood, cells within the brain die. The heart of a supercooled squirrel may beat just twice a minute (the normal heart rate for an active ground squirrel is about 200 beats per minute). Such a reduced trickle of blood flowing to a hibernating squirrel's brain should cause damage, but it doesn't.
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Several years ago scientists at the UAF Institute of Arctic Biology found that hibernating squirrels' body temperatures drop below freezing, a process called supercooling. Now the scientists are investigating how ground squirrels keep daily and seasonal time in their homes in the arctic, where the sun does not set for months in the summer and it is constantly dark in their burrows during winter. None-the-less these animals keep to regular daily schedules during summer and know just when to warm up in the spring.
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Secretary Thompson learned about the squirrels, and even handled one, during his stop at the Butrovich Building where he was briefed on the importance of the squirrel research, and other issues involving the university.
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On his tour of Alaska, the secretary was accompanied by a number of officials, including Karen Perdue, UA's associate vice president for health.
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Secretary Tommy Thompson holds an Arctic ground squirrel as UA President Mark Hamilton looks on.
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arctic ground squirrel
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