October 2007 Archives

If Curt Elmore's portable drinking water system would have been available a few years ago, there might have been plenty of good water to drink after Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans. Dr. Elmore is working on a prototype of an emergency drinking water system that is powered by wind and solar energy and employs UV light to disinfect contaminated water. Water from rivers or ponds can be pumped into the system, which is small enough to fit in the back of a pick-up truck. The contaminated water is treated under a UV lamp -- which looks a lot like a fluorescent light bulb but is powerful enough to kill bad bacteria -- and then the cleansed water is held in a storage tank that has a spigot. The system would allow people at emergency shelters (or soldiers in combat zones) to fill up personal water bottles. Elmore says commercial versions of the emergency drinking water system may some day be available to municipalities...

P.S. Bonus points to anyone who can tell us where the headline of this post comes from.

UMR civil engineering student Adedotun Moronkeji studied up a storm this summer at Oregon State University, where he took part in research to better understand how tsunami waves affect the earth beneath the ocean.

Moronkeji worked with some Princeton University researchers to create mini-tsunamis at Oregon State's Tsunami Wave Basin, the largest experimental facility dedicated to the study of tsunamis in North America. The research was discussed recently at the sci-tech website Science Daily.

Moronkeji worked with Yin Lu “Julie” Young, an assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering at Princeton University’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, to conduct studies that could lead to guidelines for building structures that will withstand tsunamis. Moronkeji's participation was funded through the National Science Foundation's Research Experience for Undergraduates program.

They're not exactly Bob Hope and Bing Crosby, or even Jack Kerouac and Dean Moriarty, but several UMR researchers have been spending a lot of time on the road this fall, presenting their work at various conferences or preparing to do so, and even spurring some conversation among sci-tech bloggers. Here's what's been happening, or is about to happen, with some UMR faculty hitting the lecture circuit:

• Last week, Dr. David Summers, Curators' Professor of mining engineering, traveled to Dubuque, Iowa, to discuss his experiments in growing algae underground as a possible fuel source at a regional biofuels conference sponsored by the Soil and Water Conservation Society. A brief review of his presentation was included in a long blog post on the energy-focused blog The Oil Drum, and Summers' approach of growing algae in a mine drew quite a bit of commentary from Oil Drum readers.
• This Friday, Dr. Stephen A. Gao, associate professor of geophysics, will visit the University of Texas at Dallas to present a seminar on his research into the evolution of the earth's crust. In Dallas, he'll address the crustal evolution and composition in Southern Africa. Gao and his colleague Kelly Liu in UMR's geological sciences and engineering department have tapped in to the U.S. Geological Survey's Global Seismographic Network, a collection of seismographic stations around the world, to study how the earth's crust formed throughout its volatile history.
• Dr. J. David Rogers, our Hasselman Chair of Geological Engineering, will travel to Denver soon to present a dozen ideas about the land loss problem along the Gulf Coast during the Geological Society of America’s annual meeting. The meeting will be held Oct. 28-31, but if you can't wait until then to know Rogers' 12 reasons, Discovery News' Larry O'Hanlon spills the beans on his blog.

A headline in today's St. Louis Post-Dispatch nearly says it all: "Coming soon: A hydrogen highway?"

Researchers at the University of Missouri-Rolla are "taking part in a public-private effort to establish Missouri's first permanent hydrogen fueling station and using a pair of hydrogen-powered shuttle buses to transport soldiers along a 55-mile stretch of Interstate 44 between Rolla and Lebanon beginning next year."

Hydrogen research at the University of Missouri-Rolla caught the attention of a St. Louis Post-Dispatch reporter, who made the trek down Interstate 44 to talk with a group of UMR researchers about the project. While they wait for a hydrogen refueling station to be built (should be done by summer 2008), we got at glimpse at the mobile refueling station. The article will likely appear next week, and we'll share it when it's available.

My question is this: are you a member of the hydrogen generation? Would you ride on a shuttle that used hydrogen for its fuel?

Jerrod Bouchard, a senior at the University of Missouri-Rolla, may teach us a thing or two about how to go fast this week. Jerrod and his crew are in Battle Mountain, Nev., this week attempting to shatter the collegiate human-powered land speed record. Keep up with the team -- video, photos, posts -- at experiencethis.mst.edu.