Missouri S&T graduate student Parthiv Shah and his advisor -- Elizabeth Cudney, assistant professor of engineering management and systems engineering -- have borrowed a statistical method used by manufacturers to improve product quality to try to determine agricultural yields. Their approach, using a method developed by Genichi Taguchi, a pioneer in the quality improvement field, has proven amazingly accurate at predicting agricultural output. The two researchers believe the method could be used by global relief agencies and governments to help predict food shortages or famines.

Employing a method called the Mahalanobis-Taguchi System, Shah and Cudney evaluated two years’ worth of agricultural yields from a dozen industrialized nations to predict the output for a third year. The results of their research were accurate to within 95 percent of the actual yields for the third year.

Working with 2001 and 2002 data on the yield of 12 types of agricultural products – including grains, wheat, meat and dairy products, and fruits and vegetables – the researchers then compared their results with the actual 2003 yields for those 12 nations. “Using just two years of data, we are able to get fairly accurate predictions with this method,” says Cudney in a Missouri S&T news release.

Food shortages have been the subject of recent discussions of global planners, as conferences in Rome and Paris in early June called for more research on long-term agricultural sustainability. The meetings followed a May 29, 2008, report from the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, based in Paris, that suggested policymakers reconsider biotech or genetically modified crops to improve crop yields.

Rachel, the rabbit. I just saw it as we were walking around the Dragon Boat festival, and had never seen one so tiny before. When I cropped the picture, I purposely left the Coke bottle in the frame for a size reference. Just one of those random things that I found entertaining.

And for anyone who is unaware, we left the U.S. on May 26, and will be returning July 22. So we’ll be here for eight weeks, with about a week in the middle where we’ll be taking a ‘vacation’ to Kenting National Park and visiting another university.

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.

HEY! I know you are reading this, so talk to me! Leave me comments, ask me questions, let me know I’m not talking to myself here. I’m writing about what I think would be interesting to read, but if you are curious about anything, or want to hear more about something, just leave a comment. I’d love for this to be more interactive.

Alright, to start, I want to explain the picture of the fish from the last post, in case anyone else is confused. Yes, that is a tiny fried fish. There was a small pile of them on my plate of lunch the other day. I’ve been pretty willing to try just about everything that’s been thrown at me, but the exception is seafood. Not only do I not like fish, but I have a problem eating something that can stare back at me. So shrimp, one of the few kinds of seafood I actually do like, is also usually not an option, because they are typically served whole, heads, legs, roe, and all.

Scientists at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden are testing a spruced-up Toyota Prius, a plug-in hybrid sedan complete with a solar panel attached to its oval roof and a bigger battery in the trunk to supply power in lieu of the gasoline-fueled engine.

Read the full story from the Rocky Mountain News.

So I was wrong in my count of lab members. There’s not twelve. There’s eighteen. But I’m doing much better on names, although by no means do I have all of them yet. Every Monday starts with a lab meeting, where each member discusses the work they did over the previous week. It was a long meeting this Monday, because they are not used to presenting in English. There have been some interesting mix-ups in translation, although the only one that immediately comes to mind was substituting “machine” with “mushroom” when explaining the menu at a restaurant.

So I’ve heard it said that every plan has to have its glitch, and I think our trip has already had its share, just from the travel to get here in Taiwan. First, Angela has a ridiculously turbulent flight from KC to Detroit, while Isaac, Dr. Huang, and myself decided that we had a new pilot for our flight from St. Louis, judging from the weaving on the runway at takeoff, and the bouncing on landing. If that had been all, it wouldn’t even be worth mentioning. But after that, our flight out of Detroit was delayed for three and a half hours due to a broken plane. We are all boarded, head out to the runway, accelerate… and stop. Some light is apparently going off, so the pilot tells us we are going to try again, see if it was just a computer malfunction. Such a reassuring turn of phrase when dealing with air travel, wouldn’t you agree? Well, it happens again, so once more we just accelerate down the runway only to stop and head back to the terminal. After holding us on the plane for an hour while they try to fix the problem, but they end up making us deboard and move to a new plane. Which we have to wait another hour to board. This one at least works the first time, and we finally take off. Oh, and I’m being blamed for the glitch, seeing as the same thing happened to me when I traveled to China a few years ago.

The group that was working in the bathrooms was stalled for the first half of the day so that they could help lift the stairs into place. But now that the stairs are almost mounted the bathroom crew should be placing the new pipe and also pouring concrete to set the pipe permanently in place.

Today the registered nurse, Kathy Donohue, that traveled with us went from classroom to classroom handing out toothbrushes and toothpaste showing the children how to do it properly. Through the translations of both Phil McGee and Gabriel Olivio the kids thoroughly enjoyed the demonstration and the free toothbrushes after the show. We even saw a group of kids head straight to the sink at their recess and start brushing their teeth the way they were shown.

That is all for now... there should be more tomorrow.

So far in Guatemala everything is going alright. Yesterday (Sunday May 18th) we flew out without a hitch. After leaving St. Louis around 5:45AM we spent approximately 4 and a half hours on two different planes. After we got off the planes we had to spend a bit more than 4 hours driving from Guatemala City to Solola.

Once we arrived in Solola we were surprised by our in country contact Mario Corzo that we had a slightly better place to stay than we originally thought. Instead of staying on the floor of the school that we are working at we were told that we could stay in a small house at an agriculture school on the other side of the city of Guatemala. We are still sleeping on the floor, but now have showers and mattress pads to sleep on. It makes the shock of living in a different country a little less. After we showed up at the house, we went out and got dinner from a local restaurant. Then we were so tired we all went to bed at the late hour of 9:00PM so that we could wake up for the next days work at 6:00AM

Now it is about 2:00 in Guatemala and we took a small break after eating so that we could send this letter. We currently have three different teams working at the school. One team is taking some prefabricated stairs and connecting them from the ground to the second floor of the school. Another group is finishing off the little block laying that needs to be done, and also pouring concrete to form the pillars of the rooms. The third group is currently working on disinfecting and washing out one of the bathroom units. The bathroom group is also chiseling out a clogged pipe from under the concrete urinal so that it can be replaced.

That is about all that is going on currently. I´ll have more information on what is being worked on at a future date.