Today, the class traveled to a remote village outside of the highlands of Guatemala. It was the first time that we had traveled outside of the highlands. It was more tropical with a lot of palm trees. We left at 6 a.m. because it was a four hour drive to the village. We traveled there to visit towns that the Ecofilters had been distributed to. While there, we did water quality measurements and surveys to see how they liked the filters. Some of the students interacted with the children at the local school. It was nice to see a new part of Guatemala. The car ride was long, but it was well worth the visit. We will be visiting another remote village tomorrow, and we will report back after that.

Adam

P.S. I will have someone send you some pictures to post as well.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 09:17 AM in Guatemala 08 | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We’ve spent the last couple of days working at the Ecofilter factory near Antigua. It’s not really a “factory” in the traditional sense. There are no forklifts ferrying supplies and no big industrial smoke stacks spewing fumes into the atmosphere. There are about 20 workers who transform big clods of clay into ceramic pot-shaped water filters, and they do it with surprisingly little machinery – a lot of the work is hand-labor. We students, of course, get to help out in that hand-labor department, doing all sorts of things, like stacking firewood, bashing big clods of clay into smaller clods, boxing up filters, and doing whatever else we can help with. And naturally, it’s all done with a cheery smile on our faces ;)

Speaking of the students, our Missouri S&T population in Antigua has more than doubled. Last Saturday night the senior design class was joined by the Women As Global Leaders group (or the Wagles, as we affectionately call them). Dr. Huebner from the materials sciences department has also joined our ranks, and Ernie too, who has become the honorary Grandpa of our classmate from California. I’ve not counted everyone myself, but I hear tell that there are about 29 of us altogether, counting professors and students alike.

The fine folks at Ecofilter have treated us to some educational classes as well. When the filters are distributed to the communities, health instructors also provide some lectures about proper hydration and hygiene, especially for young children. We were able to sit through some of these lectures and were highly entertained by the visual demonstrations – a plastic bag with holes poked in it and a leaky gourd were all part of the fun (both of those served to highlight some of the effects of dehydration). The opportunity to concoct herbal remedies even came up during some classes on medicinal plants.

Tonight we’re going to try to concoct some sleep, because tomorrow’s adventures require us to be up by 5:45 a.m. It sounds horrible, and it probably will be. (Ever tried organizing a 5:45 a.m. journey for 30 people before??) Somehow we’ll survive though, and there will be good stories to tell at the end of it all, no doubt.

Buenos noches,

--David Moluf

Posted by Lance Feyh at 01:32 PM in Guatemala 08 | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From Friday, March 21:

This morning started off in a superb fashion in Chichicastenango, with all the hotel rooms benefiting from hot water in the showers (it was a very welcome change from the day previous when the water was downright frosty). All the students went out in the city before breakfast to watch the Good Friday processions, but apparently we were overzealous in our early rising, and we wound up having breakfast and making arrangements for departure to Antigua before the processions began. The Chichi residents put a lot of effort into decorating for their celebrations: purple drapes hung from the street-side windows, a strange effigy dangled from the church entrance, and colorful sawdust designs could be found on many of the cobblestone streets.

Our departure from Chichi was more adventurous than intended. We have a lot of supplies with us, which requires a lot of room, and a lot of people too. The usual arrangement is for us to travel in one van, while our luggage and supplies are transferred in another van. The arranged luggage van plan didn’t work out though, and we were left scrambling to find a replacement. Fortunately, a very kind fellow from Tennessee agreed to help us out – he’s a youth pastor for the church that supports the orphanage in Lemoa – and he was traveling back to the USA to be home for Easter. Conveniently for us, Antigua was more-or-less on his path of travel back to the Guatemala City airport.

Also complicating things in Chichi were various fellows in orange vests who were working to direct traffic away from the processions. They directed us hither and thither and yon as we attempted to leave the city, but they too were overzealous and we wound up seeing most of the procession from inside our van as it passed by right in front of us. (This was perfectly fine, except that by that point, we were trying to *avoid* the processions.)

Chichi wasn’t alone in celebrating the day. On our drive, we were stuck in traffic for a bit while a parade in another city passed by, taking up the roadway. And when we got to Antigua 2.5 hours later, the streets were packed with both tourists and locals who were enjoying the festivities.

Some were planning to make a trip to Sacalaj (where our grad student is working with the community to provide renewable energy for powering a water well pump), but the meeting had to be rescheduled due to the various delays encountered on the road. So instead, we’ve spent the remainder of the day re-acquainting ourselves with Antigua. A couple of students embarked on a trip up a local volcano, while others worked on homework (yes, we’re still students), and others enjoyed the sunshine and relaxing atmosphere beside the hotel pool.

Tonight is our first night in Antigua since the last trip, and we’ll be here for the remainder of the week.

The end for now,

--David Moluf

P.S. If you want to see what one of these volcanoes looks like, check out this photo from an earlier trip.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 12:35 PM in Guatemala 08 | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're catching up on Spring Break reports from Guatemala, where S&T students are once again conducting water quality studies and learning about the local culture. The students left last week and are spending the remainder of this week in Guatemala. This dispatch is from last Thursday:

We had planned on observing some of the Holy Week festivities here in Chichicastenango in the morning. Unfortunately, today was a break from the festivities, so we changed our plans. We went to Hogar de los Ninos (orphanage) in Lemoa, a town about 30 minutes from Chichicastenango. There we did some water quality testing, but spent most of the time playing with the children. All of the students got to ride a chicken bus (a brightly colored school bus that drives like a race car). It was definitely a once in a lifetime experience. After we returned from the orphanage, we spent some time in the local market at Chichi. Some students bought masks while others bought hammocks. The rest of the evening was free. Tomorrow we hope to see some Holy Week festivities early in the morning and then leave for Antigua. We will report back soon. -- Adam Nanney

Posted by Lance Feyh at 12:30 PM in Guatemala 08 | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Spring Break is almost here, and that means S&T students are headed back to Guatemala to do more water quality studies. David Moluf checked in earlier this week when the students finally made it to their destination. Sorry, David, we're just now getting this up:

The GE 352 class has embarked on our second trip of the semester to Guatemala. We arrived in Guatemala City on Tuesday afternoon around 2:30 local time, almost a full day later than scheduled. We also arrived one classmate short of our full contingent, much to our sad dismay. When we left the St. Louis airport on Monday morning, we had 10 undergrads, one grad student, and one favorite professor. While en route, one of the students became super sick, and we made an emergency landing in Little Rock, where an EMT team was waiting to escort the student to the hospital. The student is doing much better now, but we´re not sure yet whether he will be joining us later or not.

Due to the stop-off in Little Rock, we were late for meeting our connecting flight in Houston, and the airline said they wouldn´t be able to fit us on another flight until the following day. They were, however, kind enough to set us up with some hotel vouchers (at the oh-so luxurious Ramada Inn) and some meal vouchers as well. Thus, we spent the remainder of St. Patty´s Day soaking up the Houston sunshine and ambiance. (And by that I mean that it was cloudy, and there were planes flying overhead about every 5.4 minutes.)

On Tuesday though, we finally caught a flight south (albeit after about another 3 hour delay at the airport due to high winds), and were greeted with the pleasant Guatemalan spring weather, and the unpleasant Gutemalan customs officials, who wanted to dig through our boxes of scientific instruments. Eventually, they were satisfied that we were here for legitimate reasons, and we boarded our trusty Toyota Haice van for the 3-ish hour trip to Chichicostenango. Everyone was pretty zonked after all the traveling, and we all called it an early night.

On Wednesday, we began in earnest with doing our water quality studies at Pastor Tomás´ home. The family was busily engaged in repairing their all-purpose Toyota pickup in the yard, and we did our best to not be a hinderance while testing their household water for various and sundry things like turbidity, bacteria, arsenic, and other exciting nouns. The most exciting part of the whole day, though, was finally meeting Pastor Tomás himself (which we didn´t get to do on our previous trip in January).

This evening and tomorrow morning we will experience some of the holy week festivities in Chichi, and then in the afternoon we will be visiting the Hogar del Niños orphanage in Lemoa to do more water sampling and to follow up on our last visit back in January.

¡Hasta luego!

--David Moluf

Posted by Lance Feyh at 09:29 AM in Guatemala 08 | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Two energy researchers at Missouri S&T are revved up about the future of plug-in hybrid vehicles, what they see as the next generation of electrically driven automobiles.

“I would compare my excitement about plug-in hybrid technology to where we were with the Internet in the 1980s,” says Mariesa Crow, the Fred W. Finley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Energy Research and Development Center. “The utility industry should be going gung-ho about plug-in hybrids.”

Read the full story.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 04:28 PM in Energy | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We're still 10 minutes early, but before the clock strikes 1:59 p.m. CDT (or SPT, St. Pat's Time), we wanted to wish our readers a Happy Pi Day. (Pi day always occurs on March 14 -- or 3.14 -- at 1:59:26.)

Also, please remember to celebrate our beloved Patron Saint of Engineers on this, the 100th anniversary of St. Pat's.

Posted by Andrew Careaga at 01:48 PM in Mathematics | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Three student teams from Missouri University of Science and Technology went head-to-head with others from across the region during the Idea-to-Product competition, hosted March 7 and 8 by Saint Louis University.

Missouri S&T undergraduate student John Gier of Marshalltown, Iowa, graduate student Paul Robinette of Rolla, and Missouri S&T alumnus Ryanne Dolan, now a Ph.D. student at the University of Missouri-Columbia, represented Missouri S&T at the competition. There were a total of 20 student teams at the competition, which were assigned to one of five different tracks to present to panels of judges March 7. The best teams then were selected to present ideas to a different panel March 8. Among Missouri S&T’s competitors were students from SLU, Washington University, the University of Illinois-Champaign, the Illinois Institute of Technology and Missouri State University.

“These three young men did an outstanding job representing Missouri S&T in the competition,” says Malcolm Townes, business development specialist with Missouri S&T’s Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development.

Gier’s entry, an innovative cooling system for body armor that draws power from various renewable energy sources, placed first in his track and came in fifth in the overall competition. Moreover, Gier walked away with business cards from two angel investors.

The teams of Robinette and Dolan, who had two entries in the competition, barely missed the cut for the second day’s round for top-five entries. Their entries were a low-cost, interactive white board and digital capture device called an eBoard, and NxBz, a business and resource management software suite for small businesses.

“Feedback from experienced industry professionals really helped us figure out what our next step should be,” Robinette says.

Missouri S&T graduate student Ryan Meuth of Rolla, and undergraduate Paul Drews of Floristell, Mo., also worked on the team that developed the idea for the eBoard.

“The students did a remarkable job, given that they had less than three weeks to prepare their entries,” Townes says. “Most of the other teams that performed well had participated in the Idea-to-Product competition previously, prepared their entries as part of a semester-long class assignment or competed in other business plan competitions.”

Barry White, director of Missouri S&T’s Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach agrees.

“We learned a great deal about this unique type of competition in our first attempt,” he says. “As a solo entry, John Gier essentially beat out teams that had extensive faculty support to earn an invitation to present on the second day of the competition. That is a huge accomplishment.”

The Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development serves as the focal point for entrepreneurship, economic development, technology transfer and technology commercialization within Missouri S&T. The Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach is part of the Office of Technology Transfer and Economic Development.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 08:58 AM in Business | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The recent investigation into the nation's drinking water by the Associated Press has shed light into work that's been conducted for numerous years by researchers like Craig Adams, the John and Susan Mathes Missouri Chair of Environmental Engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology. Here's his take on pharmaceuticals and our drinking water.

“Clearly, the most important concern is that humans could become exposed to antibiotic-resistant bacteria,” Adams says. “The role of antibiotics in drinking water treatment plants in the formation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria is currently unknown. However, the formation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria in the environment is one of the most important public health issues for the new century.”

Adams’ study shows that while many surface and groundwater supplies in the United States contain antibiotics, commonly used water treatment processes should be able to remove those antibiotics effectively, should health and environmental officials one day require and regulate their removal.

“Many other pharmaceuticals may even be of greater concern in drinking water,” Adams says. “For example, hormonally-active compounds such as estrogens have powerful effects on human metabolism even at extremely low concentrations. Analgesics, cytostatics and antipsychotic drugs in drinking water are also of particular concern.”

Recent research by Adams and others has pointed towards the best ways to control and remove pharmaceuticals from drinking water. “This is important if it is determined that pharmaceuticals need to be removed from the drinking water due to health effects or regulatory requirements,” Adams says.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 01:37 PM in Environment | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Provost Wray, accompanied by Drs. Wiebe, Frimpong (pictured above, right) and Summers, recently traveled to Botswana, where they met with officials from the University of Botswana, toured a mining pit and ate grubs. Missouri S&T is partnering with the University of Botswana on mining engineering endeavors.

Dr. Summers practiced for a future trip to Pamplona while in Botswana.

Posted by Lance Feyh at 02:23 PM in Mining | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From page 20 of the Feb. 29, 2008, edition of the New Scientist magazine:

Lakshmi Pandrangi and Glenn Morrison from the University of Missouri in Rolla exposed eight washed and eight unwashed hair samples to ozone for 24 hours. They found that, on average, unwashed hair absorbs around seven times as much ozone as freshly washed hair (Atmospheric Environment, DOI: 10.1016/j.atmosenv.2008.02.009). "Ozone is probably reacting with components of hair oil," says Morrison. ... Ground-level ozone can cause respiratory problems and has been associated with increased mortality. Morrison says that having greasy hair could reduce your ozone exposure if you are indoors. ... However, just before you throw out your shampoo, Pandrangi and Morrison found that unwashed hair samples produced more secondary-reaction products, such as the respiratory irritant 4-oxopentanal, because of the ozone reacting with the hair oil.

Posted by Mindy Limback at 08:06 AM in | Permalink | add to del.icio.us| Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)