| U of M Alumni Association | U of M Twin Cities |
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5/6/2009
“If you look at how people die, outdoor urban air pollution is on the top 15 list,” says Julian Marshall, assistant professor of environmental engineering at the University of Minnesota. “It’s one of the major causes of death and diseases globally.” Marshall, recently named 2009 Minnesota Young Civil Engineer of the Year and a 2009–11 McKnight Land-Grant Professor, is working on several projects related to improving air quality and minimizing people’s exposure to pollution. In one study, he is using computer modeling and air quality data from Los Angeles to track emissions and the distribution of exposure among the population. “It’s a model, which means you can pose hypothetical questions,” Marshall explains. For example, what would happen if we were to reduce by 20 percent the concentration of air pollutants in the Twin Cities? According to Marshall’s estimations: We’d have 180 fewer deaths per year. Marshall and other air quality researchers tend to follow two main pollutants: ground-level ozone (formed when nitrogen oxide and volatile organic compounds, like ingredients in some household products, react chemically in sunlight) and particulate matter (small droplets of solids and liquids emitted from, say, motor vehicles and power plants). In another study, Marshall is looking at wood smoke emissions from people’s fireplaces. “Wood smoke [has a high exposure potential because it] happens in residential neighborhoods, near people, and it’s more likely emitted on a cold winter night when the air is relatively stagnant,” says Marshall. The difference between wood smoke and emissions from power plants, for instance, “is more than just several folds,” he says, because a power plant tends to be in an area that’s farther away from people and has a tall stack, making them less of a threat to human health. In many places around the world, Marshall says pollution data isn’t sufficient because the collection process is expensive and time-consuming. In some countries, the information just isn’t accurate. “I spent a summer in Jakarta, Indonesia, several years ago, and there was a World Health Organization report that listed the city as one of the top three worst cities in terms of air pollution,” Marshall says. “Of course, [city officials] weren’t happy with that. As a result, they took their monitoring stations that measure air pollution from downtown, where concentrations were high, out to the distant suburbs, where the concentrations were lower. This ‘ostrich approach’ to air pollution got the city off the bad actors list.” To get a better, more precise view of pollution on the earth’s surface, Marshall and his students—two undergraduates and a graduate student—have been collecting information from NASA satellites and comparing it with measurements taken at ground level. “We know that people are all not breathing the same amount of pollutants,” Marshall says. “Typically, in the United States, it’s nonwhite, lower-income individuals who are on average exposed to higher air pollution. So, we would like our emission reduction strategies in all our research projects to help improve that case, [to address disparities in exposures and] to prevent environmental injustice as we see it.” —Pauline Oo Long Live Journalism The University of Minnesota School of Journalism and Mass Communication is using a $238,000 grant from the Minnesota Job Skills Program to help the staffs at the Duluth News Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspapers adapt to and thrive in an increasingly Internet-based industry. “The intention of this grant is to help the workforce in these news organizations figure out what journalism is going to look like going forward,” says Kathleen Hansen, director of the University’s Minnesota Journalism Center. “The print product is not going to exist in its current form for very much longer. We see this happening all over the country, news organizations shutting down or printing only three days a week.” But Hansen emphasizes that the project is not about saving a particular newspaper. “It’s about making sure that communities still have vibrant, well-financed journalism. A particular channel of delivery is going through a lot of changes, but journalism is more important than ever. . . . This isn’t the school of newspapers, it’s the school of journalism.” —P.O. Java for a Good Cause University Dining Services has partnered with Urban Ventures, a nonprofit in Minneapolis that serves at-risk youth, to open the CityKid Java Café in the Carlson School of Management. All profits from the sale of coffee, bought at or above the fair industry cost and grown using sustainable farming practices, fund Urban Ventures athletic programming and learning labs. Unsold food each day goes to the organization’s People’s Exchange program, which helps feed more than 400 people daily. The café employs University students interested in nonprofit work and youths from Urban Ventures, who earn a paycheck and learn job skills. “I like working in this environment because I can see what it’s like to be a college student,” says David Gholar, a junior at Roosevelt High School. “I’ve noticed it gets really crazy here during exam week.” Pictured left to right are Zulianna Speltz, 16, from Minneapolis South High School; Markette Kuykendall, 17, from Minnesota Transitions Schools, and Kellie McAlister, 21, a junior at the Carlson School of Management. —P.O. Rehabilitating Students After the Sister Kenny Research Center at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis bought a Nintendo Wii video game system to use in rehabilitation therapy for patients recovering from surgery, strokes, and broken bones, it needed a way—other than anecdotal evidence—to measure the effectiveness of the treatment. (The Wii simulates athletic activities, such as tennis or bowling, and users swing the racquet or roll the ball by manipulating a motion-sensitive, hand-held device.) Lars Oddsson, center director, took the challenge to University of Minnesota mechanical engineering professor William Durfee, who made it a student project. In spring 2008, a team of four students came up with the Wearable, Wireless, Web-connected Activity Monitor, aka 3WAM, a monitoring device that allows physical therapists to track a patient’s function before and after the Wii rehabilitation from a remote location. “We’re happy we have a prototype that works,” Oddsson says. “And it might be something that we incorporate into [other rehabilitative devices we create] because it’s intended for patients to wear in their home so clinicians can see that they’re adhering to some training program.” Since then, two other groups of mechanical engineering students have collaborated with Oddsson and his research team, and prototypes for a couple more devices have been built. The Individual Digit Extensor Glove, or IDEG, allows patients to extend their fingers when a stroke diminishes their ability to unfurl their hands. The Sister Kenny Home Therapy system, nicknamed SKOTEE, is a robot that reminds patients to do their exercises. Oddsson says Sister Kenny patients are not the only ones who benefit from these projects. “The students get experience that has some functional, not just theoretical, outcome.” —P.O. Life Imitates Art What do you get when you cross a flower and an artist? In this case, a new installation at the Weisman Art Museum. Internationally recognized artist Eduardo Kac and University of Minnesota plant biologist Neil Olszewski worked for several years to create a transgenic petunia by expressing Kac’s DNA on the red veins of the plant’s pink flowers. Kac calls this new work of bio-art Edunia, inspected here by University student Erika Gratz. Kac is perhaps best known for his creation in 2000 of a transgenic rabbit whose fur glowed fluorescent green because of infused jellyfish genes. Whether the creation of this “plantimal” is unnatural or demonstrates the similarity of all living things is in the eye of the beholder. Edunia will be on display at the Weisman Art Museum through June 21 and then will be destroyed. For more information, go to www.weisman.umn.edu. | |||||||||||||||
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