Saving ocean fisheries, one bait cake at a time

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APRIL 23, 2018 – GREENSBORO, N.C. –  Cammie the crayfish lives in a water filled aquarium inside a lab at Kepley BioSystems. Cammie likes to attack a white block of cake whenever it is dumped into her tank. The white, chalky block isn’t your standard piece of cake. And that’s the whole point of this story.

“What you’re watching, that cake, is a solution for the hard working folks in the crustacean, crab and lobster industry,” explains Anthony Dellinger, one of the founders of Kepley BioSystems.

The company is a small start-up life sciences firm, affiliated with the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering located at Gateway Research Park in Greensboro. The school is a partnership between the University of North Carolina Greensboro and North Carolina A & T State University.

“Currently the way the industry works is to use forage fish to lure crustaceans into a trap, ” said Dellinger.

Forage Fish are at Risk

Forage fish are also known as small schooling fish. Forage fish are the oily fish we know of as sardines, mackerel, herring and menhaden. You can recognize forage fish from the video of huge schools of fish swimming in the ocean.

Forage fish are important to all sorts of industries. In fact, 40% of the fish that are captured around the world are forage fish. That works out to about 35-million tons per year.

Forage fish are used to make feed for aquaculture. Forage fish are also a feed source in barnyards. They are also used in pet food and for human consumption, including vitamins and fish oils.

Lastly, forage fish are used as bait fish. Almost half of the forage fish caught are used as bait fish for crustaceans. But meeting all of those demands threatens the fishery; overfishing is a problem. And that poses a threat to the entire ocean because forage fish forms the base of the ocean food chain.

“These fish are exponentially important to the ocean,” says Dellinger. “Forage fish transfer energy to all of the fish in the ocean because all of the larger fish rely on these fish. All of the sea birds rely on these fish as well.”

Replacing Forage Fish with Synthetic Bait

That strain on the supply of forage fish is especially tough on the crustacean and crabbing industry, because the cost and availability of baitfish isn’t reliable. A synthetic bait would ease the strain. That’s where Cammie comes in.

“The cake that Cammie loves to eat is actually a bait that is strategically designed not from a researcher point, but from the fisherman’s point, explains Dellinger, as he bends over to watch Cammie happily breaking off a piece of the cake (actually it’s difficult to know if a crayfish is happy, but Cammie holding the cake between her claws is probably what it would look like).

What Fishermen Need

Fishermen told Kepley BioSystem researchers they wanted a bait that wouldn’t spoil and could be stored on their boats for a long period of time. They also wanted a bait that was tailored to individual needs. For example, fishermen in Florida put out crabs traps that sit in the water for more than one week at a time. Their counterparts in Nova Scotia tend their traps daily.

Any kind of artificial bait would need to be timed to release the molecules that attract crustaceans over a specific period of time and not all at once. Kepley BioSystem scientists discovered the molecules that attract crustaceans and put those molecules in the cake. No wonder Cammie is happy.

“We took all of those molecules, examined them and then teased out which were necessary for attraction,” said Dellinger. “ We then encapsulated them into a calcium based matrix that we can tune to specific release rates that can be deployed. That means the cake is releasing the attractants in a synthetic form and not use a forage fish.”

The company says its field tests show the synthetic bait works well. The challenge now is to scale up production so more fisherman can use what the firm calls Organo-Bait. The company believes it can product Organ-Bait at a price that is competitive with forage fish.

“If we can make a dent in amount of forage fish that is being taken out of the ocean just to bait traps, we will be making a huge difference in helping the ecosystem,” said Christopher Kepley, another of the company’s founders. “But in addition to the savings for the ecosystem and the financial savings for the fishermen, you’ve got the ease of storage and the convenience. That means no more rotten fish in a bucket. We solve all of those problems.”

Article written and video created by: UNC-TV

Kepley BioSystems, Inc. is located at Gateway Research Park’s South Campus located at 2901 East Gate City Boulevard in Greensboro, North Carolina.

If you’ve driven by Gateway University Research Park’s South Campus on Gate City Boulevard recently, you’ve probably noticed the increase in construction equipment at the 75-acre campus, which could see the shell of the $12 million building going up soon.

John Merrill, executive director of Gateway University Research Park, told Triad Business Journal the construction crew has been prepping the land since late September and, weather permitting, could have the concrete foundation paved within the next few weeks.

Once the concrete has dried, the next step is bringing in the pre-cast insulated concrete panels, which will make up the exterior shell of the building, Merrill said.

Many of the panels have already been manufactured and are being stored in a south Charlotte warehouse. Samet Corporation, which has been contracted for the project, already has a crane in place for when the time comes to begin putting panels in the ground, Merrill said.

“We’ll make very quick progress once the slab is paved,” Merrill said.

According to the project’s building permit, $8.75 million is going into the two-story, 72,172-square-foot building.

Merrill said the $8.75 million does not include the cost to outfit the 25,000-square-foot speculative portion of the building. Only sections of the building with secured tenants will be outfitted for the time being, he said.

High Point-based injection molding company Core Technology Molding Corp. will be the building’s anchor tenant, occupying over 30,000 square feet of the building.

Merrill said another tenant has also decided to lease space in the building, but could not disclose the name of the company. The unnamed company is based in Greensboro, Merrill said, and is moving its R&D division to a 2,000-square-foot lab space in the new building as the company expands its manufacturing operations.

Merrill said he expects to have tenants moved into a completed building by mid-September of this year.

The new facility will join a 63,000-square-foot building anchored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and a 105,000-square-foot building occupied by the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoegineering on Gateway’s south campus. The campus has infrastructure in place to accommodate eight total buildings, totaling about 400,000 square feet.

Written by:

Luke Bollinger

Reporter

Triad Business Journal

This lab is in the business of breaking things

Breaking straps to test their strength

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FEBRUARY 2018 – GREENSBORO, N.C. – Have you ever wondered just how strong those straps are that hold down loads on tractor-trailers? Or have you wondered how safe it is to drive on a highway behind a truck with a load tied down by these straps?

The researchers in the Fail Lab can answer those questions. That’s the unofficial name for the lab. It’s officially called the Materials Test Center at the Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering. It’s a partnership between North Carolina A & T State University and the University of North Carolina Greensboro.

“Ten-thousand, 12,000,” Josh Tucker calls out the increasing pounds of force as he watches a yellow cloth strap pulled tighter and tighter by the machine in front of him. Tucker is a graduate student in mechanical engineering at North Carolina A & T State University.

“We not only break things, we get to design the different ways to break things,” Tucker adds. “We have to come up with ways to test these certain products.”

As Tucker watches the strap, you start to hear faint, high pitched pops. Those are the individual fibers breaking. Suddently, the strap blows apart with a bang, blasting into the safety shield separating Tucker from the test. The strap was rated for 17,000 pounds of force. It broke at 20,000 pounds.

“You just really have to have some sort of standard to go by about how items are supposed to perform and we can help set the standard,” says Tucker. “That could be the difference between life and death in some situations.”

Fail Lab provides crucial information to companies

Companies hire the lab and its researchers to test their products and break them.

“I love breaking stuff because it goes ‘boom,’” says Evan Kimbro, Ph.D, the lab director, as he laughs and looks at the broken strap. But then he turns serious.

“You actually do want it to fail and we need it to fail so that we can quantify its failure strength,” Kimbro says. “It’s especially important that products fail when the item will be used in a situation where human life is involved because we can quantify the strengths, so that when we do engineering and design and loading we know what the limits are so we don’t go near them or exceed them.”

Testing the flexibility of clothing

However the work isn’t always a matter of life and death. After breaking straps, Tucker places a square piece of material into a machine that looks a bit like a giant hole punch for paper on steroids. It’s called a textile tension test. It’s used to measure the strength and stretchiness of a new fiber for clothing.

Once the machine is turned on, a small round ball is slowly pushed into a hold that is covered by the swatch of material. Ever so slowly, the material stretches until it breaks. Sensors recorded the entire test. Textile firms will use the information to design material for new clothing lines that are strong yet flexible.

Researchers can test products in 13 different ways

But it’s not the breaking or tearing of products that makes the fail lab unique. It’s the research and feedback the lab provides to customers about why a product failed, as well as what can be done to prevent the failure, that makes the lab’s work so valuable. Essentially, the lab provides the information that engineers will use to design products.

Researchers can perform 13 different tests of mechanical and physical properties on products.

“Many times engineers will have a problem where they are trying to figure out what is wrong and we can test the product and provide feedback,” says Kimbro, as he sets up another test. “Using our data, we can give them guidance on where to look as to where the resolution might be.”

Kimbro flicks a switch and another machine begins slowly pulling on both sides of a large piece of balsa wood. It’s a composite; smaller pieces of balsa wood bonded together. It is ultra light but also very strong.

The test is called a sheering test. Braces attached to both sides of the balsa wood slowly pull the piece apart; but the force is applied sideways. Suddenly the wood slides apart. It failed when a force of 6,400 pounds was applied. That’s about the weight of one and half cars.

Seeing the straps in action

Which brings us back to where we started, on the highway. UNC-TV Science met Tony, a truck driver, at a rest stop along Interstate-40 near Greensboro. He was taking a break from the road, hauling sheet rock to Columbia, South Carolina. But he also took time to check the straps holding down his load of wallboard.

“You have to make sure the straps haven’t gotten loose because what happens as you drive along is that the load settles,” Tony says. “So you have to make sure there is a right tension but you can’t over tighten sheet rock, because if you do you will crack it.”

Nine straps secure the thousands of pounds and hundreds of sheets of wallboard to the flatbed. Straps now exposed to the elements and the wear and tear of daily use. “You’ve got to make sure the straps haven’t frayed before you pull out,” adds Tony as he climbed back into the cab.

The straps were all tightened down but none had to be replaced. “Every once in a while you might say this strap is frayed more than I thought it was and then you have to change it. But they hold up, they’re rated to hold a lot of weight.”

Thanks to researchers at the Fail Lab, drivers like Tony know exactly just much weight that is for safety and security while out on the job.

Written by:  Rossie Izlar, Reporter, UNC-TV

The Gateway Materials Test Center is located at Gateway University Research Park’s South Campus located at 2901 East Gate City Boulevard in Greensboro, North Carolina.