A new study focused on solar-hybrid energy systems using cogeneration, photovoltaics and battery technology and its potential impact in the Upper Peninsula was picked up by several media outlets including Solar Thermal Magazine, Phys.org and e! Science News.
The research was conducted by Abhilash Katamneni (CS), Richelle Winkler (SS), Joshua Pearce (ECE/MSE) and Lucia Gauchia (ECE/ME).
From Tech Today.
Professors Don Lafreniere and Sarah Scarlett, along with Ph.D. candidate John Arnold were interviewed by ABC 10 about the Keweenaw Time Traveler. The Time Traveler is funded by an NEH grant (see earlier story).
ABC News 10 Interview on KTT: “Traveling back in time into Upper Peninsula history”
The miners in the boom days of the Copper Country knew that in order to find what they wanted, they had to “drill down.” Today, thanks to the efforts of researchers in Michigan Technological University’s Social Sciences Department and a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, those wishing to find out about the people and the places of the Keweenaw’s past can “drill down” through history.
Keweenaw Time Traveler is an online map-based tool allowing visitors to explore the layers of history for any location in the Houghton, Keweenaw and Ontonagon county region. The project uses proven technologies and techniques of participatory Geographic Information Systems (GIS). It also employs collections of geographic data and tools that are interactively connected, enabling users to incorporate their own information about a place and store that data long-term, to create a high-resolution database that maps changes in the social, natural, industrial and built environments of the Copper Country from 1850 to 1970.
The project is the brainchild of Social Sciences faculty Don Lafreniere, assistant professor of historical geography; Sarah Scarlett, assistant professor of history; and PhD candidate John Arnold, an architect by profession. They have received $259,882 from the National Endowment of the Humanities to support their work.
The project can be accessed at http://www.keweenawhistory.com.
Read the full story.
From Tech Today.
Timothy Scarlett is the principal investigator on a research project that received $20,000 in a co-op/joint agreement from the National Park Service, Isle Royale National Park. The project is entitled “A Proposal for Archaeological Testing at the Ghyllbank Townsite (20.IR.0224), Isle Royale National Park, Keweenaw County, Michigan.” This is a 16-month project.
From Tech Today.
Graduate students in Richelle Winkler’s Sociology of the Environment course presented a report on waste and recycling in Hancock, Houghton and at Michigan Tech on Dec 9 at the Portage Lake District Library. You can download the Executive Summary or Full Report here.
Click here for ABC 10 News story.
In October 2011, heavy rainfall poured down the sides of El Salvador’s San Vicente Volcano, nearly four feet of water in 12 days. Coffee plantation employees, working high up on the volcano’s slope began noticing surface cracks forming on steep slopes and in coffee plantations. Cracks herald landslides—places where the wet, heavy upper layers, saturated with water, slide over the less-permeable rocky layers underneath. The workers radioed downslope, keeping close tabs on the rainfall gauge network.
Luke Bowman was also there, helping direct radio calls and conducting fieldwork. Bowman, who recently defended his doctoral research in geology at Michigan Technological University, studies geohazards on San Vicente. The Journal of Applied Volcanology recently published some of his research, co-authored by Kari Henquinet, director of the Michigan Tech Peace Corps Master’s International Program and a senior lecturer in the Department of Social Sciences. Their work combines traditional hazard assessments with social science techniques to develop a more in-depth understanding of the risks present at San Vicente Volcano in El Salvador.
Ethnography
Incorporating social science techniques—like ethnographic interviews and participatory observations of community meetings—is no easy feat for physical scientists, who have not been trained to think that way. Collaboration is important, and Henquinet worked with Bowman on his volcanology research to round out his social science data gathering methodology.
“The ethnographic approach is immersion,” Henquinet says, explaining researchers have to learn in the field and adjust their work accordingly. “It’s an approach that’s exploratory, grounded in reality and the context that people live in, so you’re not isolating or manipulating an experiment in a lab.”
Associate Professor Adam Wellstead (SocSci) presented a paper “Beyond Adaptive Capacity: Policy Capacity and Climate Change Adaptation Assessments and Frameworks” at the Midwest Public Affairs Conference in Milwaukee on July 9-11, 2015.
Wellstead chaired the Environmental Policy session. The topic of the 2015 Midwest Public Affairs Conference was “Restructuring Governance: Emerging Solutions for Advancing the Public Interest.” The conference was hosted by the UWM Department of Public and Nonprofit Administration and the Helen Bader Institute for Nonprofit Management.
Bruce Seely, Dean of the College of Science and Arts authored the chapter, Engineering and the Land-Grant Tradition at the University of Illinois, 1868-1950, pp. 269-96 in “Science as Service: Establishing and Reformulating American Land-Grant Universities, 1865-1930” edited by Alan I. Marcus, Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2015.
Bruce E. Seely, Dean of the College of Sciences and Arts contributed The Challenges of Transportation Integration in the U.S.A., 1890-1960, (pp. 229-47) in “Linking Networks: The Formation of Common Standards and Visions for Infrastructure Development” edited by Martin Schieflebusch and Hans Liudger-Dienel. (Ashgate Publishing, 2015).
Mary Durfee (SS) gave a paper, “TTIP, CETA and the Arctic: Social and Environmental Indicators in the EU’s Trade Impact Assessment Process” at the Interdisciplinary Approaches to Security in the Changing World conference held in Krakow, Poland, June 18-20, 2015.
Durfee led the discussion on the Food, security, and free trade panel, as well as chairing the panel on Security of Global Commons.