Could a quality control method help governments and relief agencies better predict famines or food shortages? Two Missouri S&T researchers believe it's possible. Photo via Our World Foundation.

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.

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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.

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2007 was a productive research year for UMR faculty. Here are a few highlights:

January 2007: Jagannathan Sarangapani, a researcher in electrical and computer engineering, receives NSF funding to develop a communications system that can be used during natural disasters such as floods or hurricanes. Also, we publicized computer engineering Ph.D. candidate Rana Basheer's creation of GuruLib, a virtual bookshelf designed to help people keep track of their book, CD, DVD or video game collections.

Continue reading "2007: the year in research" »

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They'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.

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One of the newest resources to help promote UMR's research activities is Scholars' Mine, described as an online repository of UMR research. Can you dig it? Take the site's search engine for a test drive and let us know what you find.

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UMR's plans to develop a research and technology park on the current site of the UMR Golf Course got the go-ahead last week from the University of Missouri Board of Curators. Plans call for eventually converting the 56-acre property into a place where the ideas of UMR researchers and students can flourish into viable businesses.

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