At Mindy's instigation, S&T videographer extraordinaire Tom Shipley created a 29-second video of Missouri S&T's bullet bike and entered it into KansasCity.com's 29-second Film Festival. (The festival is in honor of today, Leap Day, Feb. 29.) Have a look and if you like what you see, feel free to leave your five-star rating (and comments) on the site. You can always comment here, too, of course.

And if you've got five minutes to spare, check out the longer version of Tom's bullet bike video, filmed on location in the Nevada desert.

(Cross-posted at Experience This!)

Posted by Andrew Careaga at 10:40 AM in Design & Vehicles | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. K. Krishnamurthy, vice provost for research at Missouri S&T, talked with the Springfield News-Leader while in southwest Missouri for the Ozarks New Energy conference. Missouri S&T "has been testing the two hydrogen-powered buses since November 2006," the article says.

"Part of the project is to find out the cost of using hydrogen as a fuel," he said. "It is going to be expensive for a while, but our goal is to reach a cost of between $1.75 and $4.75 per gallon of gasoline equivalent."

Pictures of the shuttle are available from our Flickr account.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 04:45 PM in Energy | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Petty Officer 2nd Class Andrew Jackson, a 2003 computer engineering graduate of Missouri S&T, had several pairs of eyes on him Wednesday, as he prepared to take down "a wayward satellite soon to hurtle to Earth with toxic fuel," reports the Kansas City Star.

“I’ve done a whole bunch of these” missile launches, the fire controlman said in a telephone interview Thursday from aboard the USS Lake Erie. “But there was a lot more tension this time.”

Eventually, he set the controls to fire at the precise moment. The result was the latest shot heard round the world — a U.S. Navy cruiser blasting to bits a doomed U.S. spy satellite. The three-stage Standard Missile-3 launched from the guided missile cruiser screamed into space Wednesday to strike the dead and soon-to-lose-orbit spacecraft.

Jackson said all was quiet on the ship after the missile tore more than a hundred miles into the sky, long minutes until the report that it had apparently hit the target.

“Then there was a whole lot of cheering,” said Jackson, who went to North Platte High School in Dearborn and later received a computer engineering degree from the University of Missouri-Rolla. “Lots of high-fives all around.”

Posted by Mindy Limback at 11:05 AM in Aerospace | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Those in the St. Louis area might want to stop by the St. Louis Science Center and check out an exhibit featuring the research of Dr. Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe, Dr. Melanie Mormile and others. The Missouri S&T team has been conducting research on microbes, microfossils and salt crystals from acidic lakes in Australia. The exhibit at the science center documents how the research results may prove to be analogs for finding life on Mars. If you don't get a chance to see the exhibit soon, don't worry. It's supposed to be up for several years.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 12:35 PM in Research, general | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Dr. Curt Elmore and some graduate students (Will Granich, Matt Vitello and Andrea Orlando) are testing a wind and solar power device near Missouri S&T's Stone Henge. Ultimately, they hope to take the tripod to Guatemala, where it will be used to power a groundwater well. This is part of an international effort to tackle water quality issues in Guatemala.

Also, Elmore and colleagues (including Dr. Mariesa Crow) are working on an emergency drinking water system that will be powered by wind and solar energy. This research effort was mentioned in an editorial by Chancellor Carney that appeared recently in the Springfield News-Leader.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 12:28 PM in Geology | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Geeks have serious tech appeal. It’s not something you hear about often, but it’s something I see on a daily basis. Disclaimer: I work in the communications office at Missouri S&T. So yes, I have a bias, but that also means I get first-hand access to some serious geekhood.

Twenty-first-century geeks loves gadgets. Discarded are the pocket protectors and thick-rimmed glasses. In their place are the ubiquitous white earbuds and Bluetooth headsets. Blackberries, iPods and tiny cell phones are just part of the updated “geek” dress code. And you know what? They look marvelous.

The thing about these lovable geeks is that when you get them in a group, you can count on some serious action. Need to build a solar car that can travel cross country? No sweat. Want to create a superbike to try to break the collegiate human-powered land speed record? Go for it. Interested in learning how to (safely) blow things up? Welcome to summer camp.

Geeks can make things happen, especially when asked to tweak technology. That’s how a group of Missouri S&T graduate students decided a Roomba, the ultimate techie household appliance, could be manipulated to do more than vacuum a carpet. The students recently programmed the small, robotic vacuum cleaners to communicate with one another and coordinate their actions. The technology they developed, which allows the robots to use sensors to search independently for a pre-programmed target, could one day be used to remove bombs and landmines, or other dangerous search operations.

Roaming Roombas are one thing; figuring out how we can develop new, sustainable sources of energy is quite another. And like most challenges, the solutions will look dramatically different depending on who you ask. Medhi Ferdowsi and Mariesa Crow, two Missouri S&T researchers, will work with Kokam American Inc., the city of Kansas City, Mo., and the Missouri Transportation Institute to develop a $1.7 million plug-in hybrid vehicle demonstration project. Kansas City plans to purchase roughly a dozen small to mid-size plug-in hybrid sedans for employees to drive while they serve community needs. The vehicles, using Kokam batteries, would be deployed in downtown Kansas City.

Plug-in hybrids may have found their way to Chiefs country, but hydrogen-powered shuttles have made their home on the Missouri S&T campus. The state’s first hydrogen fueling station will open this summer, providing both the fuel for Missouri S&T’s two hydrogen shuttles and a test bed for demonstrating the safe generation, storage and dispensing of hydrogen. Missouri S&T researchers like John Sheffield are betting the Show-Me State is suited to develop and demonstrate the proper operation of hydrogen highways in a rural setting, which represents more than 25 percent of the nation’s transportation needs.

All women – and most men – remember that February’s holiday spotlight is owned by Valentine’s Day. This year, I’d ask you to take a moment during National Engineers Week (Feb. 17-23) to spread some of that love you’re feeling to a fellow geek. Tell them you (heart) them too.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 08:08 AM in Other | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's something Missouri S&T's Greg Hilmas, who is working on materials that could protect hypersonic missiles from intense heat, told us a year or two ago:

“These hypersonic vehicles are just test vehicles right now or simply on the drawing board. It is expected that they will exit and re-enter the atmosphere as they are gliding toward their intended target.”

WASHINGTON (AP) - U.S. officials say the Pentagon is planning to shoot down a broken spy satellite expected to hit the Earth in early March.

The Associated Press has learned that the option preferred by the Bush administration will be to fire a missile from a U.S. Navy cruiser, and shoot down the satellite before it enters Earth's atmosphere.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the options will not be publicly discussed until a Pentagon briefing later Thursday.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 11:14 AM in Materials | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Here's a post from a Brian Payne of Berryton, Kan., a senior in civil and environmental engineering at Missouri S&T, who is working with Dr. Joel Burken on an OURE project.

The overall objective of my project is to determine if it’s possible to combine two current remediation techniques, phytoremediation and permeable reactive barriers (PRBs), to improve the treatment and monitoring of chlorinated solvents in ground water. In particular, my research focuses on the parent compound perchloroethylene (PCE), a common industrial solvent (dry cleaning and metal degreasing) that is a suspected carcinogen. The compound is denser than water and sinks to the bottom of an aquifer if released into the environment. To remediate the problem, the subsequent contaminated groundwater plume is intercepted and treated. This can be done using plants such as poplar trees that uptake groundwater water volatilizing the solvents present. In the atmosphere the compounds are rapidly diluted and degraded, mitigating there toxicity. PRBs on the other hand are trenches that are dug and backfilled with some type of reactive media like metallic iron to intercept and chemically treat PCE.

The idea of this research is to place trees on the downgradient side of a PRB where they’ll increase the amount of contaminated water flowing through the PRB as well as intercept any PCE or degredants that haven’t been completely treated. In addition to improving treatment and hydraulic containment of the chemicals, the trees can be used to cost effectively monitor the contaminated groundwater. By applying work from previous researchers, tree samples can be taken from the trees and analyzed to determine how effective the treatment of the groundwater is. Capturing this large scale idea in a smaller, controlled setting has proved challenging. However, I’m enthusiastic that my most recent reactor design will provide improved results. This new batch of trees is currently soaking up rays in the green house and will be soon ready for experimentation.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 03:20 PM in Environment | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)