Visions

What's all the flap about?

2009-10-15T17:50:40Z

S&T's prohibition era expert Kate Drowne is quoted in today's Newsday:

Even though flapper dresses were knee-length, it was still enough to raise eyebrows, said Kathleen Drowne, an associate English professor at Missouri University of Science and Technology who has written on the time period.

"This is still coming off a generation previously where if a woman showed her ankle in public, that was something to look at twice," Drowne said.

Read the full story here.

Research roundup: solar power, pond scum, white flags and more

2009-10-12T13:58:24Z

There's been a lot of research-related activity under way on campus. Here's a rundown of some of the biggies:

Fun in the sun. Missouri S&T's entry in this year's Solar Decathlon -- dubbed Team Missouri, since it's a joint venture with students from the University of Missouri-Columbia -- is the fourth solar-powered home built by S&T students. Our campus is one of only two universities in the world to have entered each of the four Solar Decathlons (in 2002, 2005, 2007 and this year). Right now, our team is in ninth place. Keep track of S&T's/MU's progress via the Solar Decathlon's Team Missouri page, or follow along at the Experience This! blog.

Workin' in a coal mine. This is old news for some of us on campus, but we're glad to see more interest in David Summers' work to turn abandoned underground mines into farms for biodiesel feedstock. Summers, a Curators' Professor of mining engineering, sees a big future in growing algae in underground mines.

Waving the white flag. While some of us are still bitter about the St. Louis Cardinals' early departure from post-season play, at least the team made it to the post-season. Many teams with no chance of making the playoffs give up their star performers in hopes of a better chance in the future. Those so-called white-flag trades are the subject of some interesting research by Samantha Schussele, a nuclear engineering major who loves baseball. She's working with Michael Davis of the S&T economics department on her statistical analysis of how white-flag trades affect attendance.

Frontiers of engineering. Congratulations to Sahra Sedigh, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, who has been selected to participate in the National Academy of Engineering's Frontiers of Engineering Education symposium. She is one of 49 young engineering researchers and teachers who will come together "to become a major force in identifying, recognizing and promulgating advances and innovations in order to build a strong intellectual infrastructure and commitment to 21st-century engineering education," says NAE President Charles N. Vest. It's great to have a Missouri S&T faculty member involved in this important national discussion.

Off to Estonia. Congratulations, too, to Eric Showalter, a lecturer in civil, architectural and environmental engineering, who is heading to Estonia on a Fulbright scholarship. Keep up with Eric's adventures by following his blog.

EcoCAR exposed!

2009-09-24T12:33:30Z

The writers of the automotive blog Car Spy Guide like to scope out the latest in car design and innovation. As they put it on their blog's about section, the writers are "snooping for the latest automotive news that the car companies don't want you to see." But apparently they're also looking elsewhere, because they recently discovered Missouri S&T's EcoCAR Team and have featured our team on their site.

S&T is one of 17 universities in the U.S. and Canada participating in the EcoCAR Challenge, a competition that requires student teams to re-engineer a GM vehicl to minimize energy consumption, emissions and greenhouse gases while maintaining utility, safety, and performance.

The car spies laud our team for "its commitment to hydrogen energy. Being the only school to use hydrogen as its source of energy shows Missouri S&T's commitment to the future of transportation without relying on gasoline."

You'll be hearing more about this team in the near future. And we promise, it won't be cloak-and-dagger stuff.

You can also check the team's blog for updates, as well as S&T's news site.

Shipping container + wastewater = awesome engineering feat

2009-09-17T15:39:06Z

Photo by B.A. Rupert

Let's be honest. No one really likes to think about where stuff goes when toilets are flushed, showers are used or dishes are washed. It's not something anyone wants to think about - unless maybe it's part of their job, like it is for one of our alums, Brandon Freeman.

But I digress. My point is this - most of us living in the U.S. are fortunate to have a system for our wastewater to be treated, whether it be through treatment plants or septic tanks. But that's not how it works at many of our forward operating bases in Iraq and Afghanistan. Daily convoys of more than 20 trucks are used to supply a base with fuel or water and dispose of wastewater and solid waste.

But Jianmin Wang, a professor of civil, architectural and environmental engineering at Missouri S&T, has an idea that could change that. His system, housed inside a shipping container, is good that it could be deployed anywhere - from small, rural communities to forward operating bases, like those in Iraq or Afghanistan. It's a pretty cool system that's low power, low maintenance and highly efficient.

Cheaper, better and faster - who knew you could get all three?

Carbon dioxide, tranformational change, shark evolution

2009-09-14T21:01:55Z

Here are some research stories we've been working on:

S&T researchers study carbon sequestration for City Utilities in Springfield

Future engineers encouraged to embrace transformational changes

Also, I got in trouble the last time I published a link to non-campus research news about evolution. But here's a story that has some teeth to it. (Kinda reminds me of the blurb we published about the S&T grad who discovered the world's largest snake.)

More interest about EarthScope

2009-09-09T18:47:21Z

Stephen Gao's work on monitoring earthquakes in the Midwest (which we reported on previously) continues to attract attention. The latest media coverage comes from Voice of America, which dispatched a reporter to meet with Gao and his graduate students earlier this summer. The result is this news story: EarthScope Advances Quake Prediction.

Here's an excerpt:

EarthScope is part of a huge project to seismographically map the continental U.S. and Alaska. "The idea is to use 400 seismographs to cover the whole U.S. in about 14 years," Gao explains, adding that the information that will come from those monitors is designed to help scientists predict, not prevent, earthquakes. "[But if] you can predict one, then you can do something to lessen the damage caused by an earthquake," he points out. "People can come out of their house and camp outside. You can shut down the power, the natural gas lines. In that situation, you can reduce the damage a lot."

EarthScope began putting down seismometers on the U.S. west coast in 2002 and is moving its operations eastward across the country. The project is currently entering the area of the New Madrid fault zone, in Missouri and several nearby states. It's the site of one of the most powerful earthquakes ever recorded in North America.

Last month, Science Daily talked to Gao about what days -- and what times of days -- earthquakes are likely to happen. They seem to be more frequent on Sundays or late at night, but Gao says "that's just because it's quiet" during those times.

This is kind of interesting

2009-08-18T16:09:54Z

Researchers at Missouri S&T have figured out why earthquakes tend to be recorded more frequently in the late night hours -- and on Sundays.

Growing tiny 'nanospears' = big breakthrough for solar cells?

2009-08-11T21:07:30Z

Once again, Missouri S&T researchers are leading the way in nanomaterials.

Today, the journal Chemistry of Materials published online an article describing how Dr. Jay A. Switzer, the Professor of Discovery in S&T's chemistry department, and his team grew zinc nanoscale zinc oxide crystals on a single-crystal silicon (full article | press release).

The research on these little crystals -- Switzer calls them "nanospears" -- could yield big results for the future of solar energy. That's because both zinc oxide and silicon are semiconductors, and by perfectly aligning the two materials, engineers could create a new breed of solar cell that absorbs more of the solar spectrum, thereby increasing the efficiency of solar cells.

The other cool thing about Switzer's work in this area is that he's come up with an inexpensive way to grow zinc oxide on silicon. It's been done before -- but not on the cheap. Previously, researchers have had to use expensive ultra-high-vacuum methods. Switzer just uses a beaker and some alkaline solution -- and gets a better result.

$15 million on tap for S&T in defense bill

2009-08-01T15:37:07Z

Defense-related research projects at Missouri S&T stand to gain $15 million through the Defense Appropriations bill, which was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives earlier this week. According to a press release from U.S. Rep. Joann Emerson, whose 8th Congressional District includes Rolla, the bill contains $3 million for power generation and storage systems, $3 million for robotic weapons systems, $3 million for heat-resistant materials used in hypersonic flight and $6 million to detect and track explosive materials such as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs), a topic we wrote about a few days ago.
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"Each of the programs at Missouri S&T utilized by the Department of Defense is a point of pride for the University and for the Eighth Congressional District," she added, noting that she is "particularly appreciative of the new program to help detect and eliminate IEDs, which are one of the leading causes of injury to servicemembers in Iraq."

The FY 2010 Defense Appropriations bill will next be considered in the U.S. Senate, and a final version of the legislation should be voted on in Congress later this year.

Grad student researches improvised explosive devices

2009-07-29T19:40:34Z

OK, try this one:

Phillip Mulligan is trying to make improvised explosive devices more powerful with the idea of eventually making them less deadly.

Read the full story here.

A 'Trojan Horse' virus that spreads healing

2009-07-24T19:47:39Z

Connecting the quantum dots. Hue-Wern Huang's quantum dots with protein transduction domains emit a green fluorescence. (Image courtesy of Hue-Wern Huang.)

Yue-Wern Huang's latest research involves creating a kind of Trojan Horse. But unlike the mythical gift from the Greeks or the more contemporary computer virus that bears the name, Huang's is designed to sneak good stuff into a bad place.

Huang, an associate professor of biological sciences at S&T, is building tiny vessels of cell-penetrating proteins that could possibly transport a cargo of quantum dots, along with proteins, medicine or DNA, into a malignant or otherwise infected cell and release the healing cargo -- medicine or some therapeutic agent of the future -- into the microscopic "Troy": the walled city of a cell.

The vessel -- Huang's Trojan Horse -- is a nontoxic protein transduction domain, or PTD,which is derived from a virus that can penetrate the cellular membrane.

This latest work is funded through a $225,000 grant from the National Institutes of Health under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

What's going on?

2009-07-17T20:26:21Z

How you doing?

Here are some researchy stories that we've been paying attention to in Rolla:

-- Researchers from Missouri S&T are investigating ways that rubber from the guayule shrub can be used to pave roads.

-- Dr. Lifeng Zhang is trying to figure out how to recycle silicon that gets wasted in the production of solar cells.

-- Dr. Stephen Gao has been getting a lot of media attention for leading efforts to select spots for earthquake monitoring stations that will soon be moving to Missouri.

Summer in St. Louis

2009-06-26T14:22:23Z

S&T student Amanda Koenig is working on a summer research project at Saint Louis University. Fortunately, she is getting an opportunity to spend some time outside the biochemistry lab. Here is the second of Amanda's summer reports.

After two weeks of safety training and extensive planning on paper, I am getting ready to set up the first of my reactions this week. Almost everything that we are working on in the lab has not been done before, so I am going to test each reaction on a small scale first to determine ideal conditions before moving on to the preparative scale.

This past weekend, I got a chance to visit several historic sites in St. Louis. On Friday, I went to the Casa Loma Ballroom in the Cherokee-Lemp district with the Missouri S&T Aerial Swing Dance Club.

The Casa Loma was built in 1927 as part of an entertainment center containing a bowling alley, shops, and the ballroom itself. Once one of eight grand ballrooms in St. Louis, the Casa Loma is the only one that has survived the Depression, a changing culture and a massive fire that completely destroyed the original building. Even though big band swing music is not as popular as it once was, the Casa Loma still holds swing nights every Friday with a live band.

I took advantage of the beautiful weather on Saturday to explore the rest of the Cherokee-Lemp area. I walked down Cherokee Antique Row, which holds the most antique and vintage shops in St. Louis. Signs along the street tell visitors about the rich history of the neighborhood.

To top off my tour, I paid a visit to the Lemp Brewery and the Lemp Mansion. Adam Lemp was the first brewer to take advantage of the natural cave systems under St. Louis for storing and ageing beer. The Lemps built their home about a block away from the Brewery and used the natural tunnels in the caves to walk to work. At one point, they even put a pool and a vaudeville stage in the caves for their personal entertainment.

Unfortunately, a good portion of the caves was destroyed when highway 55 was built. The Lemp Mansion still stands and has been converted into a restaurant. It is rumored to be haunted, since several members of the Lemp family committed suicide in the house. I didn't see any ghosts on my trip, but I wouldn't want to go back at night!

Scoping out sites to monitor quakes in the Midwest

2009-06-19T16:44:05Z

A map of the EarthScope project to date. Click on the image to access the interactive map.

Over the past five years, an array of 400 seismometers has been slowly moving across the United States, from west to east. The stations are in place for two years, then moved eastward. Now, Missouri S&T researcher Stephen Gao and some students are getting in on the action as the instruments continue their eastward migration.

Gao, a seismologist in Missouri S&T's geology and geophysics program, is working with four students from Missouri universities to conduct field surveys and identify locations for the stations. The effort is part of a National Science Foundation initiative called EarthScope. In 2010-2011, 43 earthquake recording stations will be placed in Missouri and southern Iowa as part of the program.

In addition to recording data on earthquakes, scientists can gather important information about the Earth's inner structure through this program, Gao explains. Seconds after a significant earthquake, geophysicists around the world can access the information recorded by each of the stations to learn more about that part of the Earth.

You can track the current status of the EarthScope seismonomers using this interactive map of the EarthScope website. You'll see that the west is covered with the instruments up until about midway through Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

Set your DVRs: S&T history prof discusses D-Day on C-SPAN

2009-06-05T16:45:24Z

Missouri S&T war historian John C. McManus. Photo by B.A. Rupert.

Update: the interview with John McManus is now available in its entirety online.

We just got word that our resident World War II expert, John C. McManus, will be talking about D-Day Saturday morning on the C-SPAN program Washington Journal. Saturday marks the 65th anniversary of the Allied Forces' invasion of Normandy.

Mcmanus is scheduled to be interviewed on the program from 7:10-8:05 a.m. CDT on Saturday. Check your local listings to find C-SPAN on your local cable or satellite system.

McManus is a military historian and an associate professor of history at Missouri S&T. He is the author of several books about the United States' involvement in the European Theater of World War II, including a two-volume series on the American role in the Battle of Normandy. The first book, The Americans at D-Day: The American Experience at the Normandy Invasion, was released in June 2004, coinciding with the 60th anniversary of D-Day. The second book, The Americans at Normandy: The Summer of 1944, the American War from the Beaches to Falaise, was published in November 2004.

We'll try to post video of McManus' interview on this blog, once we find that C-SPAN provides it online.