Michigan Tech News Archives | Page 3 of 3

Winkler Receives Funding for Geothermal Energy Feasibilty Guide

Published September 3, 2014

Richelle Winkler was recently awarded a Phase 1 grant from the Environmental Protection Agency’s P3 (People, Prosperity, and Planet) program to supervise an interdisciplinary team of students to develop a guide that former mining communities can use to self-evaluate the feasibility of tapping into water in abandoned mines for geothermal energy. The student design team, led by Environmental and Energy Policy MS student Edward Louie, will present their guide at the Sustainable Design Expo in Washington DC in April 2015 and compete for a Phase 2 award of $90,000 to implement the project. Social science students are partnering with an Alternative Energy Enterprise team led by Jay Meldrum (Michigan Tech’s Keweenaw Research Center) on this project. The full team is also working closely with a community advisory board made up of leaders in the Calumet, MI community. It was Calumet community members partnering in Winkler’s community-engaged research with Main Street Calumet that started the idea for this project.

West Point Foundry Recognized by Sustainable Sites Initiative

Published September 3, 2014

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Waterwheel sculpture at the West Point Foundry Preserve — Waterwheel sculpture at WPFP

The Sustainable Sites Initiative—a program designed to ensure that built environments are planned, designed, developed and maintained as healthy, functioning landscapes—has awarded a one-star designation to the West Point Foundry Reserve in Cold Spring Harbor, N.Y. The foundry is the site of several years of research and a number of graduate theses in the Department of Social Sciences’ Industrial Archaeology Program. The conversion was also overseen by a MTY-IA graduate. See West Point Foundry.

The foundry rehab was also recently noted in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Preservation magazine in an article entitled, “Industrial Strength: Cold Spring, N.Y.,” as well as in Hudson Valley Magazine, in an article, “History and Preservation of the West Point Foundry in Cold Spring.”

Gorman: Before There Was C, There Was N

Published July 2, 2014

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Gorman, Story of N book cover — The book also made #1 on Carl A. Zimring's Best Books of 2013!

A recent article in the Michigan Tech News highlighted Hugh Gorman’s book, The Story of N and how our current need to fix the nitrogen cycle bears a striking resemblance to problem in the carbon cycle that needs fixing. Read the full story in the article entitled: “Before There Was C, There Was N: How Humans Derailed the Nitrogen Cycle and Are Trying to Put It Back on Track”

It also mentions that his article that came out of his work on the book, “Learning from 100 Years of Ammonia Synthesis: Establishing Human-Defined Limits through Adaptive Systems of Governance,” Gaia 22.4 (2013): 263-270, that won second place in Gaia’s Best Paper competition for 2013. Congratulations, Hugh!

Social Sciences in Michigan Tech News

Published April 15, 2014

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Spiraling Up with Arts and Sustainability in Calumet
March 25, 2016
Birds Abroad: How Oil Palm Affects Habitat in Mexico
February 16, 2016
Connecting People and Geology on Volcanoes
July 30, 2015
Daisuke Minakata Wins Powe Award from ORAU
June 25, 2015
Bioenergy Across the Americas
June 8, 2015
Tapping into Mine Water for Geothermal Energy
April 2, 2015
Graduate Student’s VISTA Broadens as She Earns a Degree Through Volunteer Service
June 27, 2014
Peace Corps Ranks Michigan Tech Tops in the Nation—Again
May 7, 2014
Kathleen Halvorsen Wins Research Award
April 17, 2014
Houghton County Aiming for $5 Million Energy Prize, with Help from Michigan Tech
April 16, 2014
FinnForum X and Retrospection & Respect Remember the Copper Strike of 1913-14 this Weekend
April 9, 2014
Payments to Upstream Landowners to Protect Water Downstream: How Well is that Working
March 13, 2014
For the Love of Steam
March 6, 2014
Alumnus Digs Deep into St. Thomas’s Past
January 31, 2014

Nancy Langston on Mining in Northern Climes

Published June 28, 2013

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Mining in Northern Climes: Whose Decision is it?

A Michigan Technological University researcher is looking at the Sápmi region of Scandinavia and the possible impacts of new iron mines on the human and reindeer populations, in addition to ecological concerns. – See more at: http://www.mtu.edu/news/stories/2013/june/story92219.html#sthash.c2TWvP6l.dpuf

“Local communities feel that they need more input into the decisions about the mining and the reindeer,” says Nancy Langston, a social sciences professor just ending her nine-month stint in northern Sweden. “Whether it is the Sámi (the indigenous people of northern Scandinavia who often make their living as reindeer herders), commercial fishermen or people living along the local rivers, they feel that they should have a voice in land use decisions.”

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Dennis Walikainen.

Archaeology Tours at the Cliff Mine, Clifton

Published June 10, 2013

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The public is welcome to free tours of the 2013 archaeological dig at the historic Cliff Mine and Clifton town site on the weekends of June 15-16, 22-23 and 29-30.

The tours are led by faculty and students in Michigan Technological University’s industrial archaeology program. The tours leave from the east end of Cliff Drive, about one mile from the small town of Phoenix, near the junction with US-41. Tours start at 10 a.m. and begin about every 30 minutes. The last one will begin at 3:30 p.m.

The team will provide maps with self-guided trails for people who wish to explore on their own. “We’re cutting new paths through the woods this week and will put historic photos and maps around to help people see the site,” said project co-director Sam Sweitz.

“We’d like to be able to look at the map of rose bushes, for example, and see how the different plants overlap with residential buildings,” said project co-director Timothy Scarlett.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Marcia Goodrich.

The Cliff Mine Archeology Project Blog

Winkler on Net Migration Patterns

Published June 3, 2013

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Migration Patterns Reveal Much about US Population, Research Finds

Richelle Winkler, assistant professor of social sciences, says Detroit attracted fewer young adults in the 1980s and 1990s than did revitalizing cities like Chicago. Then, with the economic recession between 2000 and 2010, more young people actually left Detroit than people of other ages.

“In this extreme situation, the young were more likely to move out,” she says, “because they are more mobile and not as tied to families and mortgages. This kind of shift in the signature [age-based pattern] is rare and indicative of real and profound socio-economic change.”

Winkler’s work is part of a new population-map website, Net Migration Patterns for US Counties housed at the Applied Population Laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Dennis Walikainen.

Cookstove Project in Sustainable Design Expo

Published April 16, 2013

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Michigan Tech students found a low-cost, highly effective way to reduce the impact of cooking over biomass fires without designing and installing high-tech, costly stoves. They have been invited by the Environmental Protection Agency to take their work to Washington, DC, to participate in the EPA’s annual Sustainable Design Expo. Known as P3 (People, Prosperity and the Planet), the competition challenges college and university teams to design and develop sustainable technologies to help protect the world’s health and the environment.

The cookstove project team includes Mark DeYoung and Jonathan May, mechanical engineering; Travis Wakeham, anthropology and biological sciences; and Jarod Maggio, Abram Peterson, Mollie Ruth, Kelli Whelan and Alex Wohlgemuth, environmental engineering. Their faculty advisor is Kurt Paterson, associate professor of civil and environmental engineering.

Read more at Michigan Tech News, by Jennifer Donovan.

CBS Detroit and its Technology Report published an article about Michigan Tech’s two student teams chosen to exhibit in the EPA Sustainable Design Expo in Washington, DC, this week. See EPA Sustainable Design Expo.

From Tech Today.

Category: Michigan Tech News