Recent NewsNew interim dean for our college has been selectedGeologist earns State of Illinois Mitigation Award from the Illinois Assoc. for Floodplane and Stormwater ManagementSIUC Microbiologist publishes in NatureExpert talks rivers at SIUNew microscope reveals world of the super tiny
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In an email released April 27, 2012, the provost has announced the selection of the College of Science Inerim Dean: "I am pleased to announce that, pending Board approval, Dr. Laurie Achenbach has been named Interim Dean, College of Science, effective August 16, 2012. Dr. Achenbach's background and experience will serve her well in this position. I believe she will be able to represent the college extremely well while a national search for a permanent dean is conducted. Please join me in congratulating Dr. Achenbach. In addition, I would like to extend my thanks to Dr. Ken Anderson, Dr. Gary Kinsel, and Dr. Karen Renzaglia for their willingness to serve and enthusiasm during the interview process. John W. Nicklow Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs" |
...A researcher at Southern Illinois University Carbondale...has helped make some recent discoveries that might lead to new vaccines or targeted drug therapies that would prevent food allergies from causing such harm. And her research, which centers on a new technique for studying the cells in the intestines of living mice and observations using this technique, will be shared with the scientific world community this week when it is published in the journal, “Nature.” Vjollca Konjufca, assistant professor of microbiology in the College of Science, is one of the authors of the paper titled “Goblet cells deliver luminal antigen to CD103+ dendritic cells in the small intestine.” The paper is set for publication in “Nature” on Thursday, March 15. |
The Mathematical Association of America (MAA) has announced that Professor Jerzy Kocik of the Southern Illinois University Carbondale Department of Mathematics has been awarded the 2010 Lester R.Ford Award. Established in 1964, the Lester R. Ford Awards, consisting of a citation and cash prize, are presented annually by the MAA for articles of expository excellence published in the American Mathematical Monthly. Kocik and his co-author Andrzej Solecki from Universidade Federal, Brazil, received this prestigious award in recognition of their article “Disentangling a Triangle” , which appeared as American Mathematical Monthly, vol. 116, pp. 228-237, in March 2009. The prize-winning article can be found HERE on the MAA website. The award citation from the MAA refers to the paper as “a candidate for the world’s most elegant presentation of trigonometry’s central theorems”. The full citation for the award by the MAA can be found in the attachment to this message. Kocik received an M.Sc. degree in Theoretical Physics from University of Wroclaw, Poland, in 1978, and earned a Ph.D. from the SIUC Department of Mathematics in 1989, specializing in geometric structures associated to Lie algebras. He was appointed as assistant professor of Mathematics at SIUC in 2002, and earned the rank of associate professor of Mathematics in 2008. |
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Urgency grows to restore wetlands The Calgary Herald, September 21, 2010 By Hanneke Brooymans In the checkerboard of test ponds at Syncrude's wetland research site, Mother Nature has dealt some clear checkmates. Certain moves are obvious losers, with barely a sprig of green poking out from the squares of silty water. Other experimental combinations are more successful, though it takes a scientific eye to pick out the real winners. That's because the target is the recreation of a specific kind of wetland, called a fen. A fen is a wetland that is fed by groundwater, which is a heck of a thing to recreate in a landscape that was dug up extensively and then, in some cases, filled in with tailings. Oilsands operations are increasingly striving to reach these milestones, partly because government is ordering them to do it in the approvals, but also because there is mounting pressure to improve the environmental image of oilsands development. "Reclamation is happening at a faster pace these days," said Nathan Lemphers, a technical and policy analyst with the Pembina Institute and author of a study released last week on reclamation titled Toxic Liability. "Companies are spending much more on their reclamation. If you look at Syncrude's budget over the last seven years, their annual budget on reclamation has increased seven-fold." The company says its reclamation efforts have been consistent and that it began its first reclamation project in 1983, just five years after it began production. Although it won't specify how much of the $97 million spent on reclamation last year was lavished on wetland research, it's obvious that its employees take pride in that work and the beginnings of a 52-hectare wetland, which will feature the Sandhill fen as a centrepiece. "We're learning a tremendous amount about what material we should use and what we'll get back," said Robert Vassov, Syncrude's senior reclamation scientist, as a few small ducks wheel around, scoping out the research site. The experiments have been going on for two years and involve independent scientists, such as Dale Vitt, a former University of Alberta botanist now based at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. It's an effort that became a requirement for Syncrude in 2007, when the Alberta government added more specific wetlands reclamation tasks to its approval conditions. It's not easy, though. Even the test plots that show thick cattail growth are not really a sign of success. Vitt said this is not a species that belongs in a fen. But there are four or five species that do well in some of the test plots, if a layer of mineral soil and peat is put down and if the salinity can be controlled. Tailings ponds and process water are salty, silty and tainted with toxic organic compounds, but if these factors are controlled and the fen species are planted or seeded ahead of the cattails, Vitt said the research shows that a fen can be created on a former oilsands mining site. Of course, it takes time. A fen naturally has a lot of diversity and these species don't all move in right away. But if the first few species get established, they provide cover for the other species in a fulfilment of that old saying, if you build it they will come, said Vitt. It could take a long time for something like an original fen to become established, though. "I think we have to make these initial attempts to see if these things work to the best of our ability," he said. "If you're ultracritical, you could say that these kinds of terraforming experiments, recreating ecosystems and all the processes that ecosystems have, can't be done, and I guess I would argue I'm not sure anybody's every tried this. . . . Let's try it and let's learn from our mistakes and the sooner we get the first mistakes made, the sooner we'll move on to understanding how to do it." Over at its East Mine area, the company has already landscaped hummocks of tailings and capped them with soil. The soil is covered with forest-floor plants, seeds, roots and fibres. Then that is covered with woody debris. Vassov enthusiastically reported that plants were sprouting under some of the debris already, likely because it held onto some moisture. While Syncrude and the researchers wrestle with this tricky science, expectations among environmentalists and First Nations people are high. Lemphers said 40 per cent of the oilsands minable region was once bogs and fens, and Albertans and other Canadians expect the land to be restored back to what it was before mining took place. Syncrude spokeswoman Cheryl Robb said the provincial government has been bringing in more rigorous reclamation requirements over the last few years, affecting everything from soil salvaging when it strips a mine site, to the thickness of the soil cap that it places back on a reclaimed area. This explains, in large part, why reclamation spending has increased so much, she said. "I think what you're seeing is a situation where industry has matured over the past number of decades and so has our knowledge of reclamation, and we're just updating our policies to better reflect this," said Chris Bourdeau, an Alberta Environment spokesman. The ERCB has also tried to speed up aspects of reclamation, targeting tailings ponds with a new directive last year that required companies to produce less tailings and allow these vast holding areas to be reclaimed more quickly. So far, oilsands operators have committed more than $2 billion in upgrades to comply with the directive, said the board. Tailings enclosures now cover an area of 170 square kilometres. But only Suncor has been able to come up with plans that will meet the directive's most immediate targets. In recent months, the board has announced approved tailings plans in which companies don't meet the annual reduction requirements right away, but then achieve a cumulative overall tailings reduction that equals or exceeds their directive in later years. The latest plan of this nature, for Shell's Muskeg River project, was released Monday. Pembina Institute executive director Marlo Raynolds said this is yet another sign that most oilsands companies are not serious about deploying and commercializing the best-in-class technology that could take care of, or prevent, environmental messes that could be a liability to Albertans in the future. This concern about reclaiming tailings ponds is one reason Suncor is going to great lengths later this week to make a show of exactly that. It would be the first tailings pond to be reclaimed. Raynolds said they've learned that only five per cent of the tailings in the pond had to be moved to another pond before it could be reclaimed. And though that material would fill the Toronto SkyDome six times, he acknowledged that this reclamation does represent progress. One thing all parties seem to agree on is that there needs to be more transparency about progressive reclamation to give Albertans more of a sense of how reclamation is proceeding, in all its various stages. "Right now, it's really an on/off switch," explained Greg Stringham, a vice-president of the Canadian Association of Petroleum Producers. "Either you've reclaimed and you got your certificate, which we know is a very small area, it's just (Syncrude's 104-hectare) Gateway Hill area, or it's off and you haven't reclaimed it." But everyone knows the state of reclamation throughout these mines that have been in place for 30 or more years is really all the way across the spectrum, he said. Ultimately, though, Albertans should only be reassured by the government sign-off on a reclamation certificate, said Lemphers. "If there is any lingering contamination, the responsibility to clean that up is then placed on the Crown." |
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SIUC researchers debunk ancient comet-strike theory The Carmi Times, September 9, 2010
By Tim Crosby They say diamonds are forever. But in this case, they were never there to begin with. A team of researchers led by a geology professor from Southern Illinois University Carbondale recently punched a hole in a well-known theory involving an ancient alleged comet or meteor strike wiping out a great deal of life on Earth and changing its climate. The "Younger-Dryas Impact Hypothesis" relied on various geological evidence, most of which other scientist have found lacking in recent years. The final bit of evidence left standing was the alleged existence of tiny "nanodiamonds" supposedly created by the intense force of the impact, which the theory holds happened about 12,900 years ago. But the team, including SIUC geology Professor Nicholas Pinter, the primary investigator on a three-year National Science Foundation-funded study, recently released findings that directly contradict the theory. The researchers found that what supporters of the hypothesis identified as nanodiamonds aren't actually diamonds at all, but simple carbon that is related to the very common substance graphite. "The science is now clear that this supposed impact was a non-extent event," said Pinter, who began working on the project in 2008 and collected samples in California and Arizona as part of it. "You can't have an event like this that would supposedly affect all of North America and South America" and not have it leave evidence in the geologic record. The Younger-Dryas Impact Hypothesis aimed to explain a time period following the last ice age, when ongoing warming suddenly stopped and the climate returned to a glacial period. This approximately 1,300-year period, known as Younger Dryas, saw North America experience massive extinctions, including many larger species such as mammoths, mastodons, saber-tooth tigers and others. Humans also were greatly impacted, with tools such as Clovis stone spear tips disappearing. The hypothesis, which gained popularity a few years ago, holds that a comet or meteor impact was responsible for the climate's abrupt turnaround and the subsequent effect on life forms. But the evidence for such an event has been under scrutiny the last few years, with much of it discredited, Pinter said. The final evidence its supporters pointed to were carbon spherules that contained nanodiamonds such as Ionsdaleite, a rarely observed hexagonal-shaped diamond formed by the impact. Pinter's team, which includes researchers from Washington University in St. Louis and Royal Holloway University of London, used transmission electron microscopy to examine samples from the western United States in search of the objects. Their research identified the objects as graphene and graphene/graphane oxide. They also demonstrated that previous research mislabeled those substances as hexagonal diamonds and cubic diamonds. Pinter said with the final supporting evidence of the theory now impeached, scientists can return their attention to what really did happen during that time period, and how that resulted in so much change. "This affected what is now Southern Illinois, too," Pinter said. "There were mammoths and mastodons and possibly saber tooths roaming this area 15, 000 years ago. The vegetation was completely different, more a spruce-dominated land. But now we can get back to asking important questions about when and why this changed." The journal "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences" is publishing the findings under the title, "No evidence of nanodiamonds in Younger-Dryas sediments to support an impact event." |
Plan for Mississippi near Herculaneum aims to improve river ecology St. Louis Post-Dispatch, August 26, 2010 By Greg Jonsson An Army Corps of Engineers plan for seven miles of the Mississippi River near Herculaneum seeks to improve the river ecology by creating small islands and side channels at the edges of the waterway. Under the plan, currently out for public review, the corps would build a number of U-shaped rock structures in the river. It also would shorten some of the current stone dikes that poke into the water and cut notches in others. The proposed changes would help create small islands and side channels through sedimentation at the edges of the Mississippi without changing the navigation channel. The islands, the resulting increase in shoreline, and greater variety in depth and speed of the water would improve the habitat for fish, birds and other wildlife, according to the corps. The plan was developed in conjunction with the Missouri Department of Conservation, the Illinois Department of Natural Resources and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The current structures, dating to the 1970s, do a fine job of keeping a navigation channel clear of sedimentation so barges can use the waterway, said Dawn Lamm, a hydraulic engineer for the corps and manager of the project near Herculaneum. But they also have created a shoreline that is ecologically dull, with little variation, she said. Jefferson County is considering putting a commercial port somewhere near Herculaneum to serve barge traffic. Some officials involved in that process were at a public hearing on the corps' proposed plan Wednesday night and said they wanted to learn more about the plan and whether it would affect possible port sites. Lamm said the areas affected probably wouldn't make good port sites anyway. They are areas where sediment already builds up behind dikes, making them poor choices for a port, she said. Nicholas Pinter, a geologist at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, said he is concerned the new U-shaped structures in the water, called chevrons, could slow the flow of water and cause flooding to be worse when river levels are high. The corps said other academics have not found that to be a problem in their studies of such structures. The plan would cost about $6 million and could be done by September 2013 if approved and funded. The corps is taking comments on the plan until Sept. 7. Link to Original |
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