PROSPECTIVE STUDENTS     CURRENT STUDENTS     ALUMNI & FRIENDS     COMMUNITY     FACULTY & STAFF
 

Main

June 18, 2008

Got water in your basement?

David Rogers is one of our most prolific experts here at Missouri S&T. He knows as much as anyone about things relating to levees, floods, hurricanes, and so on. So, after pumping out the ex-wife's flooded basement for the fourth time in four months last week (this is in Springfield), I sent Dr. Rogers an email to ask him some questions about basements and water. I'm passing his response on as a sort of public service announcement:

In regards to your basement:

1) We have had record rainfall this year, even greater than in 1993, so it should be no surprise that you are experiencing some seepage
2) seepage always occurs "bottom-up", just as you describe, because of hydraulic pressure increasing with depth, at rate of 62.4 pounds per cubic foot per foot of depth. The more hydraulic pressure you get against the basement wall, the more seepage that can pass through a hairline crack at the base of the wall stem, where it joins the foundation footing. There is usually a "cold pour" joint at that location which develops a shrinkage crack, and that's where the moisture typically seeps in. So, seepage is all about hydraulic pressure (depth of water on opposite side of the wall), more than any other factor. We've had a really wet year, so all the pores in the soil become saturated, incapable of accepting additional moisture. When it rains the water presure increases very quickly. The other problem is anteceedant mositure. When the ground is near-saturated, rain can't be absorbed by the soil, so runoff increases, dramatically. That's why it floods with a so-called "normal storm (about 1.5 hrs duration), that never previiously caused problems. In the Midwest all of the flooding is intimately tied to anteceedant moisture levels, looking at the past 72 hrs, 1 week, 2 months, and even past 3 months, depending on the size of the watershed.

The bad news is it took months to get into the predicament we find ourselves in right now, and it will take another 6 months or so for us to get out of the "flood danger window," because the anteceedant moisture levels are so high. For example, the Gasconade River experienced its highest recorded flow this past spring, greater than 1983 (the previous record) or even 1993. So from here on everything devolves down to the rainfall patterns that develop this summer, with the most important factors being the duration of dry spells between storms.

Hope that info helps you understand what's going on.

February 20, 2008

Modern marvels

windsolar1.jpg.jpg

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.

October 30, 2007

So much water so close to home

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.

October 27, 2007

Making waves with tsunami research

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.

October 21, 2007

UMR research on the road: in Dubuque, Dallas and Denver

OnTheRoad.bmpThey'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.

July 02, 2007

Can Missouri handle the 'big one'?

Today's Springfield News-Leader asks whether Missouri will be ready when "the New Madrid earthquake fault in southeast Missouri suddenly rips itself apart." Had the reporter checked with UMR's David Rogers, he would have explained that New Madrid Seismic Zone quakes pack quite a whallop.

newmadrid1895.gifRogers suggests officials focus on preparing for a magnitude 6.6 to 6.8 quake -- not the 8.0 "big one" series of temblors in 1811-1812 that shook the Midwest and rang church bells in Boston. A 6.6- to 6.8-magnitude quake, similar to what took place in 1895 (illustrated at right and compared to the 6.7 earthquake in L.A. a decade ago), is more likely and could do significant damage, Rogers says.

"It's in our face here and now, not 200 or 300 years from now. This one could happen tomorrow." Rogers and several graduate students have been modeling fictional seismic events of approximately the size of an1895 quake that registered 6.6 on the Richter Scale. As part of their research, they have tried to estimate the impact such a quake would have on long-span bridges across the Missouri River. The preliminary results are sobering, Rogers says. Data indicates ground shaking would be magnified about 600 percent within the flood plain of the Missouri River, a development that would predict soil liquefaction and cause most of Missouri's existing long-span bridges to collapse. "You don't need a big earthquake to do significant damage in Missouri," Rogers says.

June 14, 2007

The continuing vulnerability of New Orleans

An excerpt from a recent story in National Geographic Magazine:

J. David Rogers, a geological engineer from the University of Missouri-Rolla who investigated the levee failures after Katrina with Bea for the National Science Foundation, concurs with Bea's assessment of the system's weak spots, particularly the eroded levee that is the primary hurricane protection for St. Bernard Parish and the Lower Ninth Ward. Both engineers say a more detailed study of the levee soils is necessary to determine just how weak the MRGO levee is, but Rogers says the image of the eroded structure "certainly doesn't give me any confidence that it would survive eight hours of overtopping—what you would need for a Category 3 storm. It might survive an hour. They've obviously got a problem there. The veneer is not thick enough and the core of the levee is cohesiveless material—organic muck and silt."

Read the whole story here.

May 23, 2007

Blogging from Bahamas: Tara's final note

Tara Gosnell, an English and technical communication major, ends her series of blog posts from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas with a note about "the final countdown."

San Salvador Island
21 May

Today was more or less a "choose your own adventure" day, as the geology group went off on some field trip and biology went to the high school for an assembly. A couple English students went with the biology group, who presented a digital projector they bought for the school through fundraising. We stood outside, and I could only hear part of what was being said. I heard a prayer, they recited the Lord's Prayer, they sang the national anthem of the Bahamas, recited the pledge to the Bahamas, there was a reading from Genesis, a song called' What a Mighty God We Serve,' another prayer, and then a short speech from the principal. Sparrow, one of the biology students, said a few words to the students, and then we presented the projector and left. The whole thing lasted about 10 minutes. The students sang really well.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: Tara's final note" »

Blogging from Bahamas: Amanda's final note

Amanda Conigliaro, a geology and geophysics student, ends her series of blog posts from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas with a note about car repair and the continental shelf.

Today was our last full day on the island, but unfortunately, it did not go completely as planned. The geology group split from the other groups today, and began the morning heading to Fernandez Bay to snorkel over Telephone Pole Reef. Not only did we see some amazing creatures, but we also got to swim to the continental shelf where the ocean floor dropped from beneath us and we stared down into the vast depths of the blue sea.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: Amanda's final note" »

May 21, 2007

Blogging from Bahamas: The crab invasion

You've read about her experiences with hiking, snorkeling and riding in the truck in the rain. Read more from Tara:

20 May

I slept until 9:30 today. Since today was our free morning, I intended on hiking to see the sunrise at a little after 6:00, eating breakfast, and then going to church to see a little culture. However, that didn't happen.

I had opened the door and was walking into the bathroom when I heard this ticking sound and a somewhat large crab scuttled in front of me. I yelped, and then realized it wasn't a huge spider and was, therefore, cool, and called for Mike to get his camera. It ran into the corner near a large hole, so I backed out and stood with my back against the wall, lest it see me.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: The crab invasion" »

Blogging from Bahamas: bananas and spiders

Tara Gosnell, one of three student-bloggers reporting from the Bahamian island of San Salvador, shares her latest experience, complete with pictures from Saturday, May 19.

Mike and I had just sat down with our chow this morning when Dr. Swenson came over to tell us to be prepared for anything but hard hiking today. The plan was to go snorkel in French Bay, float Pigeon Creek, and see Watling Castle. Oh, and we were to be at the trucks in 15 minutes.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: bananas and spiders" »

May 20, 2007

Blogging from Bahamas: a perfect day

Our series of blog posts from San Salvador Island in the Bahamas continues with a note from Amanda Conigliaro, a geology and geophysics student, who writes about "the perfect Bahamian day" of Friday, May 18.

finger_coral.jpgToday couldn’t have been a more perfect day. We woke to the warm shining sun in a cloudless sky. We began the day with visits to the inland lakes, We visited Storr’s Lake, first, where we got to see mangroves and stromatolites. We also visited Pigeon Creek, Big Salt Pond and Little Salt Pond.

The afternoon was the highlight of the day. We took a boat ride out to Bird Island, Iguana Island, and snorkeled in Gaulin’s reef. Not only was the scenery breathtaking, but the reef dive was spectacular. On the reef we saw parrotfish, barracuda, triggerfish, sea fans, sea anemones, and tons of coral. The water was crystal clear and calm allowing all the life on the reef to easily be seen.

We ended the day with a visit to the local bar to relax and tell stories about all the splendor that we’ve seen. The day ended with fun and laughter. A perfect end to the perfect Bahamian day.

Blogging from Bahamas: teaching poetry, watching iguanas

Bahamas kids 01.JPGVisions staffers may get weekends off, but our intrepid bloggers on the Bahamian island of San Salvador -- Amanda Conigliaro, Tara Gosnell and Scott Perdue -- all stayed busy over the weekend writing about their latest academic adventures on that island. First up is Gosnell, an English and technical communication major who, along with her fellow English students, spent time on Friday teaching similes and metaphors to some local schoolchildren.

May 18, 2007: Lost on a One-Road Island

Today was the English trip to the elementary school. It was also the first completely sunny day we've had. We rode out in a full-size van with a door that threatened to open while driving and windows that had to be propped open by hand. We dropped off one of the biology girls at the medical clinic along the way, but we passed by it so we had to turn around.

The school consisted of several trailers with grade levels posted on the doors. We split into two groups; one for 3rd grade and one for 6th grade. All the younger students were happy to see us, and the grades that we didn't visit were disappointed we didn't stop by.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: teaching poetry, watching iguanas" »

May 18, 2007

Bats and other Bahama beasts

Tara continues her updates from San Salvador, where UMR English, geology and biology students are studying everything from the local culture to local creatures.

16 May

Today, half of the SCUBA group left at 7:30 to go diving. The rest of us went to the Cockburn Town Fossil Reefs to explore. Again, it was raining. Rain doesn't seem to take away from the experience; the water is still about a dozen shades of blue, people are still walking around enjoying themselves, and all the rocks and life we're here to see aren't afraid of the water, so we can still do what we need to. Several people (including myself) learned from yesterday's experience, and wore trash bags to keep covered from the rain.

After we wandered around the fossil reefs and the town, we again ate lunch at the Christopher Columbus monument, and went to Grotto Bay. The water was choppy at Grotto Bay, so everyone ended up just riding the huge waves and trying to avoid being smashed on the rocks. It was like a giant water park. We stopped at some tidal pools on the way back to the research center.

Continue reading "Bats and other Bahama beasts" »

May 17, 2007

Blogging from Bahamas: Tara's take

The infamous English group

Tara Gosnell continues her dispatches from the Bahama island of San Salvador, where she and her fellow Englsh students (pictured above) are studying this week.

When we woke it was raining. Woe to those who left laundry on the line overnight. Regardless of the rain, we all slathered on sunscreen. We had breakfast (pancakes and bacon), and then climbed on the trucks to head to Sue Point. Dr. Maglia was driving, so Neil asked to switch trucks. Second gear didn't work well, so we heard a lot of grinding. Scott Perdue lost his water bottle on the way, and we had to pull the convoy over so he could retrieve it. He also later poured rotten coconut juice in his hair.

Continue reading "Blogging from Bahamas: Tara's take" »

May 16, 2007

A biologist perspective from the Bahamas

crab
Sally Lightfoot, a rare, evasive crab
Scott Perdue, a UMR student enrolled in the Caribbean Biodiversity course, shares his tthoughts about the trip so far:

May 15, Day 3

Two and a half days into the trip. I’m exhausted, yet ready for more. After many adventures on the beautiful island of Nassau, we arrived here in San Salvador yesterday on a gorgeous afternoon. The gradients of blues in the ocean are unbelievable, as we witnessed from our small propeller plane.

After landing, we ate lunch and went to a brief orientation. And then we had another orientation---snorkeling. We each grabbed a buddy and went into Graham’s Harbor, right outside the Gerace Research Center where we are staying. It turns out that those quizzes throughout the semester were actually useful for something---in a matter of minutes, I identified at least 15 different species of plants and animals which I didn’t previously know about. From the colorful fairy basslet to the swaying staghorn coral, I was amazed to find so many creatures to be easily identifiable.

Continue reading "A biologist perspective from the Bahamas" »

Blogging San Salvador, Bahamas: struggle in paradise

welcometoSanSalvador.JPG
More dispatches from our troika of student bloggers on the Bahamian island of San Salvador. This one comes from Tara Gosnell, a graduate student in English and technical communications. Gosnell is one of 30 UMR students on the trip, and is joined by fellow English students Katherine Durham, Tara Gosnell, Mike Gosnell, Neil Hamilton, Liz Hogancamp and Julie Massey.

* * *
Sunday, May 13, 2007

With a little mishap (Liz having to recheck an extra bag and Tara, Mike, Liz and Neil almost missing the flight to Nassau), we arrived in the Bahamas. The pilot came over the speaker and said the walkway wasn't operational, so we had to exit the plane by the aft stairs, ducking out past the roaring engines. As soon as we walked in, we were greeted by a live rhythm band, and a few people started to dance in line.

Continue reading "Blogging San Salvador, Bahamas: struggle in paradise" »

May 15, 2007

Blogging San Salvador, Bahamas

beachIn true Visions spirit, we're again passing the blog torch over to students at the University of Missouri-Rolla. This time, we'll be sharing posts we receive from our student bloggers in San Salvador, one of the Out Islands of the Bahamas. And in typical UMR fashion, we'll be sharing the journals of an interdisciplinary group of students as Anne Maglia, Francisca Oboh-Ikuenobe and Kristine Swenson are teaching their biologiy, geology and English classes from the island of San Salvador, also known as Columbus Island (named after its most famous visitor). Amanda Conigliaro, a geology student, is one of the three students we will be receiving dispatches from. Here's her perspective on the trip so far:

Today we arrived on San Salvador from Nassau. We have a very large and diverse group of students and professors. There are 30 undergrads, three graduate students, and five professors (Wronkiewicz, Laudon, and Oboh-Ikuenobe in geology, Maglia in biology, and Swenson in English and tech comm). The majority of the students are geology, biology, and English, but there are even computer science and electrical engineering students.

Our first journey was to Graham’s Harbor for our very first snorkel. In just one day we’ve already seen starfish, spiny lobster, barracuda and a variety of corals.

The sheer beauty and friendly culture is overwhelming. The skies are blue, the water is crystal clear, and the beach sand is snowy white. I can’t wait to see what tomorrow brings!

May 08, 2007

Hurricane season will be here soon...

From yesterday's New York Times:

The most revealing of the photographs, taken from a helicopter, looks out from the levee across the navigation canal and a skinny strip of land to the expanses of Lake Borgne. From the grassy crown of the levee, small, wormy patterns of rills carved by rain make their way down the landward side, widening at the base into broad fissures that extend beyond the border of the grass...J. David Rogers, called the images “troubling.” Dr. Rogers, who holds the Karl F. Hasselmann chair in geological engineering at the University of Missouri-Rolla, said it would take more work, including an analysis of the levee soils, to determine whether there was a possibility of catastrophic failure. But he said his first thought upon viewing the images was, “That won’t survive another Katrina.”

You can read the full story here.

Then, closer to home (if you live in Missouri), there's this.

December 14, 2006

How we stopped worrying about North Korea and learned to love the bomb

In the event of a nuclear explosion anywhere on the globe, the U.S. government wants to know about it right away. Meanwhile, geoscientists are using the government's monitoring stations to record the planet's seismic information (earthquakes) in real time. Dr. Stephen Gao is using the data to study the earth's crust.

September 29, 2006

Did you know?

minerals.jpg UMR's minerals collection dates back to the turn of the century (the one where it turned from the 1800s to the 1900s), when, following the close of the World's Fair in St. Louis, many of the minerals that had been exhibited were shipped to Rolla. UMR now has the largest university minerals collection in Missouri. Housed in McNutt Hall, the minerals museum has approximately 3,500 specimens from all over the world. The collection includes gold, diamonds and meteorites.

August 23, 2006

Journey to the center of the sinkhole

The UMR researchers who are studying the sinkhole that swallowed Norman Scrivener's garage in Nixa, Mo., were recently featured during a KY-3 (Springfield) newscast. The story is now available online.

P.S. Is there anybody out there? Our ability to receive comments was compromised for so long (by spam robots or some dang thing) that we kinda feel like we're out of touch. But every thing should be hunky-dory with the comments feature now, so fire away.

August 22, 2006

The anatomy of a sinkhole

sinkholevisions.jpg

Drs. Neil Anderson and Derek Apel are spending this week at the sinkhole that swallowed Norman Scrivener's garage in Nixa, Mo. Anderson, a geological engineer, and Apel, a mining engineer, are conducting geophysical survey scans at the site to see what other surprises might be lurking below the surface. The Springfield News-Leader published a story about the research efforts this morning.

August 11, 2006

Engineers Without Borders: back from Bolivia

Earlier this month, a team of students from the UMR chapter of Engineers Without Borders traveled to Bolivia. The students traveled to Bolivia's rain forest region to assess the needs of Rio Colorado Technical Agricultural High School, which -- despite its rain forest setting -- lacks a safe a sustainable water supply (see Water Wanted from last month's blog). The team plans to build a system for the school on a return trip next spring.

While in Bolivia, the group also visited a tiny village deep in the Andes Mountains to check on a latrine project they worked on last year.

Now, they're on their way back from South America. Team member David Longrie of Grover, Mo., a senior in civil engineering, filed this brief report from the nation's capital, La Paz.

Hello from La Paz, Bolivia!

The team has just completed our assessment of Rio Colorado school. After discussing with the parents and faculty of the school, we have decided on drilling a new well and providing an alternative power source to help supply power longer than the 3 hours daily.

We have also just returned from Inka Katurapi where our team in May built a composting latrine. The village has kept up its side of the deal and has begun work on the second latrine.

We wish you all the best from Bolivia.

The Rio Colorado Team

Tags: , , ,

May 31, 2006

Nature Q&A with David Rogers: 'Drilling for truth in New Orleans'

davidrogers.jpgThe scientific journal Nature, in today's news@nature section, features an interview with UMR's David Rogers on his work to uncover what caused New Orleans' levy system to fail during Hurricane Katrina. (Rogers, pictured at right, has been back to New Orleans 11 times since Katrina.) Some excerpts from the Q&A:

What was it like working in New Orleans?

It was like pictures you see of Hiroshima and Nagasaki after the Second World War. Just complete devastation for mile after mile. No people, no bathrooms, no water. Choking dust; very fine dust on everything.

What went wrong with the levees?

We don't think that everything was due to overtopping. We feel a lot more of it was seepage related. When the storm hit, water was forced under the structures, eroding their bases and knocking them down.

April 07, 2006

Papa's got a brand new bacteria

Some bacteria living in very salty conditions, like those in Soap Lake, Wash., can use iron instead of oxygen to breathe. A new genus of iron-breathing bacteria, discovered by a UMR grad student, could help clean up metal-contaminated environments.

This research project is just one of five presentations UMR biology and geology students are making today and tomorrow at a regional conference of the American Society for Microbiology in Kansas City, Mo.

Continue reading "Papa's got a brand new bacteria" »

March 15, 2006

New ocean in Africa is forming fast

It's known as the cradle of civilization, and now it's in the process of giving birth to a new ocean. The continent of Africa is breaking apart, and, compared to most geological phenomena, the new body of water is forming with staggering speed. This is just the kind of event that really gets the attention of geologists like Dr. Estella Atekwana. "We have never really witnessed this before," says Atekwana, a professor of geophysics at UMR. "We expect geological processes to be slow...Depending on how fast the plates are moving apart, we expect the area to eventually become like the Red Sea." Not too long ago, Atekwana co-organized a workshop on the East African Rift System in Ethiopia, and she continues to have a scholarly interest in the fascinating geology of the region.