Research Archives | Page 14 of 27 | Social Sciences Newsblog

Social Sciences Participates in ISSRM 2015 and 2016

Published June 22, 2015

Members of the Department of Social Sciences and the School of Forest Resources and Environmental Science (SFRES) attended the recent 2015 International Symposium on Society and Resource Management (ISSRM). The event took place in Charleston, SC, June 13-18, 2015.

Participants included nine graduate students in the Environmental and Energy Policy (EEP) program, Erin Pischke, Mayra Sanchez, Brad Barnett, Zoe Coombs, Aparajita Banerjee, Chris Henderson, Jenny Dunn, Erin Burkett, and Rhianna Williams, and Andrew Kozich of SFRES. Also attending were Professor Kathy Halvorsen, Associate Professor Richelle Winkler, and ISSRM 2016 Conference Coordinator/Ecosystem Science Center Research Scientist Jill Fisher.

The conference is the annual meeting of the International Association for Society and Natural Resources (IASNR). IASNR is an interdisciplinary professional association open to individuals who bring a variety of social science and natural science backgrounds to bear on complex environment and natural resource issues.

Michigan Tech students created the newest IASNR student chapter. The new student chapter, named the Association of Students for People, Environment and Nature (ASPEN), was represented by a team of EEP students in the ISSRM 2015 Quiz Bowl.

Michigan Tech will host ISSRM 2016 from June 22 to June 26. The symposium theme is Transitioning: Toward Sustainable Relationships in a Different World. The conference coordinator is Jill Fisher, and the co-chairs are Kathleen Halvorsen and Richelle Winkler.

Michigan Tech students participate in the ISSRM 2015 Quiz Bowl.

Invited Paper for Mary Durfee

Published June 3, 2015

By College of Engineering

On Friday, May 29, 2015, Associate Professor Mary Durfee (SS) gave an invited paper, The EU in the Arctic: Where will it live? at a conference on the EU in the Arctic held in Dundee, Scotland.

From Tech Today.

The European Union and the Arctic (2015 EU-Arctic Conference)

This conference will bring together academics and practitioners from relevant disciplines such as international law, international relations, political science and marine biology, NGOs, representatives from EU institutions and international organisations to discuss the EU’s potential contribution to enhance Arctic governance. A roadmap for increasing the effectiveness of the EU’s action in the Arctic will be drawn at the end of the conference.

Pan American Researchers Gather in Houghton

Published June 3, 2015

By College of Engineering

VIEW THE BIOMASS PIRE FLICKR PHOTO GALLERY

About 40 biofuel and bioenergy researchers from many countries in the Pan American region (from Argentina to Canada) will attend a workshop hosted by the Sustainable Futures Institute at Michigan Tech Wednesday, June 3, 2015, through Friday, June 5, 2015.

The goals of the workshop are to develop a research roadmap report (RRR) with diverse international perspectives and to recommend priority areas for future research. The RRR will be disseminated to funding agencies such as the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and other federal research sponsors in the United States and their equivalents in other Pan American countries, as well as to industry and the general public.

This is the final workshop in the NSF-funded project “RCN-SEES: A Research Coordination Network on Pan American Biofuel and Bioenergy Sustainability“. The project is directed by David Shonnard (ChE) and with co-investigators Barry Solomon (SS), Kathy Halvorsen (SS), Sam Sweitz (SS) and Robert Handler (SF I).

From Tech Today, by David Shonnard.

Bioenergy Across the Americas

The work is part of the Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Kathy Halvorsen, a professor of natural resource policy at Michigan Tech, helps lead the PIRE research group, which is highly interdisciplinary.

“As we move forward with the project spanning six countries, I am always thinking about how are we going to be able to answer our research questions,” Halvorsen says, adding the project spans social, natural and engineering sciences. “We have to think about how we do our research so we can compare and integrate our data across the countries and disciplines.”

Biomass bridge
Vital aspect in achieving energy sustainability

Barry Solomon, a Tech professor on the PIRE team, noted that Brazil introduced the flex-fuel car engines now seen across the U.S. that can burn both high-ethanol and low-ethanol gas blends, and that bio-based ethanol has been a major boon to an economy that’s contributed to steady growth in recent years.

“The U.S. talks about energy independence, but it’s not (independent),” he said. “Brazil essentially is.”

Woody
U.P. bioelectric effort can follow Wisconsin’s lead

Regardless of the questions yet to be answered, Solomon said he sees biomass as an important part of the U.P.’s electric generation future.

“Biomass should be a part of things here,” he said. “There’s not a massive demand, but it’s far better to get rid of coal. … I think we need a combination of biomass and wind power.”

MICHIGAN TECH HOSTS FOREST BIOENERGY RESEARCHERS

A project this large can be unwieldy, so Halvorsen works with subgroup and country team leaders to effectively pursue their interdisciplinary research in bioenergy. Studying bioenergy naturally builds off multiple disciplines and goes beyond just the global biofuels discussion.

Bioenergy across the Americas

In some ways, the PIRE research is like bioenergy yoga, looking at the best ways to build both flexibility and strength to move gracefully through changing climates and economic markets. From small plantations to spanning continents, the PIRE research seeks sustainability and resiliency using the insight of many disciplines.

MICHIGAN TECH LEADS ON BIOENERGY

Sounds of Research

Michigan Tech has uploaded audio recordings of conversations with various researchers involved in the project — check out their Soundcloud account if you’re interested in hearing them.

Research Team Meeting Brings in International Researchers

Published May 29, 2015

By Amy Spahn

From Tech Today:

by Allison Mills

Researchers across the Americas look to forests for power, transportation, fuel and heat. This weekend and into next week, more than 80 researchers from Brazil, Argentina, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay and the US will meet in Houghton to research bioenergy. The work is part of the Partnerships for International Research and Education (PIRE) through the National Science Foundation.

Kathy Halvorsen (SFRES) is leading the research team meeting. She says bioenergy goes beyond just the biofuels discussion and finding alternative fuel for cars. “This a research team studying how we can help to slow climate change and ensure local energy security,” she says. “We also look to minimize the negative impacts of energy choices and maximize benefits.”

In the PIRE research team meeting, Halvorsen will help lead interdisciplinary discussions and research concerning the socio-economic impacts of different forest bioenergy sources. The results and groundwork, however, require the focused efforts of more than a hundred people.

Boyer Ontl on Tool-Assisted Hunting in Chimpanzees

Published April 15, 2015

By Amy Spahn

Kelly Boyer Ontl co-authored a paper, New evidence on the tool-assisted hunting exhibited by chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) in a savannah habitat at Fongoli, Senegal published in the Royal Society Open Science, 15 April 2015.

The paper was summarized in numerous news articles highlighting the team’s chimpanzee research including Chimps that Hunt Offer a New View on Evolution from the New York Times, Women are better at DIY (in chimps at least): Female primates can master and use tools more easily than males from Daily Mail, and Female Chimps More Likely Than Males to Hunt With Tools from Smithsonian.

ABSTRACT:

For anthropologists, meat eating by primates like chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes) warrants examination given the emphasis on hunting in human evolutionary history. As referential models, apes provide insight into the evolution of hominin hunting, given their phylogenetic relatedness and challenges reconstructing extinct hominin behaviour from palaeoanthropological evidence. Among chimpanzees, adult males are usually the main hunters, capturing vertebrate prey by hand. Savannah chimpanzees (P. t. verus) at Fongoli, Sénégal are the only known non-human population that systematically hunts vertebrate prey with tools, making them an important source for hypotheses of early hominin behaviour based on analogy. Here, we test the hypothesis that sex and age patterns in tool-assisted hunting (n=308 cases) at Fongoli occur and differ from chimpanzees elsewhere, and we compare tool-assisted hunting to the overall hunting pattern. Males accounted for 70% of all captures but hunted with tools less than expected based on their representation on hunting days. Females accounted for most tool-assisted hunting. We propose that social tolerance at Fongoli, along with the tool-assisted hunting method, permits individuals other than adult males to capture and retain control of prey, which is uncommon for chimpanzees. We assert that tool-assisted hunting could have similarly been important for early hominins.

Halvorsen Featured in Michigan Tech Research 2015 Magazine

Published March 17, 2015

By Amy Spahn

Kathleen Halvorsen and her international team are featured in the Michigan Technological University’s 2015 Research Magazine in an article titled Making Greener Leaner for their research on the impacts of bioenergy on communities.

Schneider receives grants to support his M.S.(I.A.) thesis project

Published January 13, 2015

By

Daniel Schneider at work — Daniel Schneider (MS-IA student) works on a measured drawing of a 19th-century border stamping machine that was used to manufacture wood type for printing decorative borders.

Daniel Schneider, a master’s student in the Industrial Archaeology program has received funding through two grants totaling $2,800 for his master’s thesis project at the Hamilton Wood Type Museum in Two Rivers, WI. A grant from The Kohler Foundation, Inc. of Wisconsin supports a series of oral history interviews with workers who produced wood printing type in the type shop of the Hamilton Manufacturing Company. Another grant from the Wisconsin Humanities Council supports a public archaeology component of Schneider’s thesis research, which involves the experimental operation of an 19th-century stamping machine that produced wood type for printing decorative borders. These borders would have been used on posters and other large-scale printed matter such as flyers and handbills. He has made a number of trips to the museum to document and rehabilitate the machine, meet with former employees, and use the museum’s archives. He also attended a Wayzegooze event there last in November where he interacted with leaders in the current wood type printing community.

Schneider will demonstrate the machine’s operation March 10-14, 2015, at Hamilton Wood Type & Printing Museum. The museum is in Two Rivers, WI, 40 miles southeast of Green Bay, and is the largest museum devoted to wood type printing in the country (and perhaps the world). He is also in charge of the letterpress studio at the Copper Country Community Arts Center in Hancock, MI.

Anthropology Major Wins EPA Greater Research Opportunities Undergraduate Fellowship

Published November 20, 2014

By College of Engineering

Michigan Tech student Melissa Michaelson has been awarded two years of funding to complete her B.S. in anthropology through the EPA Greater Research Opportunities (GRO) Fellowship for Undergraduate Environmental Study. She has the honor of being one of only 34 awards given nationwide in this competition. In addition to funding her education for the final two years of her degree, Melissa will be placed in a paid summer internship at an EPA facility. She is focusing her degree in the area of environmental anthropology with the aim of doing senior thesis research on social and cultural barriers to a plastic free campus and community. Building on her experience designing a display of 600 plastic bottles collected from local trash bins to engage local community members in discussions about consumption patterns, Melissa continues to do community-engaged research in Dr. Richelle Winkler’s Communities and Research class. This year the class, funded by a separate EPA People, Prosperity and Planet grant, is creating a guidebook that former mining communities can use to evaluate the social and technical feasibility of using minewater for geothermal energy. Her sponsor for the EPA GRO Fellowship is Dr. Kari Henquinet.

Melissa Michaelson with plastic bottles.

Langston Receives NSF Grant on Mining Toxin Migration

Published September 29, 2014

By Amy Spahn

Nancy Langston has received $270,000 from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for a three year research project titled “Historical and Spatial Aspects of the Migration of Toxic Iron-Mining Contaminants into the Lake Superior Basin.”

Abstract:

This project investigates the mobilization of toxic mining contaminants in the Lake Superior basin. The investigator will conduct archival research and oral-history interviews, and she will develop a geo-spatial database. She plans to link her historical research with contemporary policy and regulation issues, and to engage with local communities, including Native Americans in the region.

The investigator is a well-known environmental historian whose previous work has drawn on multiple disciplines and generated significant media interest; she has a network of contacts that includes a documentary filmmaker and relevant stakeholder groups. The project will produce a narrative of environmental history with the potential for overlap with important questions of technology, culture, and society. It will be of interest to citizen scientists, a wide-array of scholars, and the general public. The most important broader impact of the project is that it might very well influence contemporary policy and law-making.

Industrial Archaeology Students Dig for Answers Around Fort Wilkins

Published September 17, 2014

By Amy Spahn

From Tech Today:

The Holland Sentinel published a feature article on Michigan Tech’s Industrial Archaeology students’ analysis of early mining activity in the vicinity of Fort Wilkins State Park.

From the Abstract:

To better document the fort’s history related to copper mining, a group of Michigan Technological University students — led by doctoral candidate Sean Gohman and Patrick Martin, Michigan Tech professor of industrial archaeology — is exploring land that is now part of the state park, looking specifically for evidence of mining activity by the Pittsburgh & Boston Mining Co., which operated in the region in 1844-48.

Click here to read the full article: Archaeology students seek answers to Fort Wilkins’ mining past

Category: Research