It seems simple enough, but try to build a robot that can do what most of us take for
granted at birthday parties. Or worse, try to build that robot with teammates who are half
a world – and seven time zones – away.
That's precisely what four pairs of Union College students have been doing this
year with their counterparts at Middle East Technical University in Ankara, Turkey. And
this Sunday, the Union students will travel to meet the Turkish students they've
known for 16 weeks only through their design sessions over the Internet. The teams will
enter their robots in an international contest to be broadcast on Turkish television.
The students demonstrated their flame-extinguishing vehicles at a sendoff party on
Tuesday.
Each will traverse an obstacle course in search of a flame. Once it finds one, it must
extinguish it. Each robot is equipped with a flame-detection sensor with a microprocessor
that will trigger an extinguishing fan. Each team's design is unique.
“The toughest part is not the technical side, but communicating effectively with
the students at METU,” says Peter Flynn, a senior mechanical engineer.
Now in its third year, the International Virtual Design Studio is the brainchild of Ron
Bucinell, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, who co-directs the project with
Cherrice Traver, associate professor of electrical engineering/computer science.
“It is important to educate engineers who can make decisions with a global
perspective, who have the breadth of knowledge to understand the social and ethical
implications of what they are doing,” Bucinell says.
Traveling to METU this weekend are Peter Flynn, Philip Haynes, Aaron Pincus, David
Poindexter, Bill Desrochers, Dan Feldman, Bianca Prumo and Barry Baker.
Union College faculty, staff, students and alumni who have created their own
personal Web Pages can register them to link from the official Union College Web Site.
Some mud stashed away in the back of
a refrigerator in the geology department may begin to answer a number of questions
scientists are asking about El Niño.
Donald T. Rodbell, assistant professor of geology, reports in the Jan. 22 issue of Science
on a 30-foot-long column of sediment he and a fellow researcher obtained in 1993 from a
high-elevation lake in the southern Ecuadoran Andes.
Noting that more work needs to be done to duplicate the findings, Rodbell writes that
this sample suggests that during the past 5,000 years, El Niño occurred every two to
eight years, the same frequency we see in modern times. The sample also suggests that El
Niño was weak or non-existent between 5,000 and 12,000 years ago.
Rodbell and his student, Jeremy Newman '97, in 1996 began to take a serious look
at the sample that had been sitting in their lab cooler for several years. What they found
in the core is a data-rich natural archive, the first continuous record of El Niño events
dating back more than 5,000 years.
“We didn't know exactly what we had,” says Rodbell. “When we took
this core, we thought the light-colored striations from landscape and flood events were
very pronounced and unusual. We called them 'zebra stripes.' At the time, we
were more interested in climate change associated with the last ice age, but in the back
of my mind I wondered if these patterns were somehow connected to El Niño.”
Rodbell is lead author of the Science article. His co-authors are Newman;
Geoffrey Seltzer of Syracuse University; David Anderson of the National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration; Mark Abbott of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and
David Enfield of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
Their study, while preliminary, has generated excitement among scientists worldwide who
are trying to unlock the mysteries of El Niño. “Based on this work, we realized that
this one lake, while interesting because it may have provided the longest El Niño record
ever found, is only one sample,” Rodbell says. “We want to go in and compare it
with samples from other lakes in the area.”
Rodbell was recently awarded a two-year grant of $90,000 from the National Science
Foundation to investigate the climatic record preserved in sediment cores from other
high-elevation lakes in southern Ecuador.
The core sample contains hundreds of layers of sediment deposited over a period of
about 15,000 years. About midway through the 30-foot core (representing a period of time
beginning about 5,000 years ago) there are a series of light-colored sediment bands that
occur approximately every 10 years or less. The bands contain the type of debris —
mostly inorganic material washed from the slopes of nearby mountains — which would
flow into the lake only during periods of heavy rainfall and flooding — conditions
likely triggered by ancient El Niño events, Rodbell says.
“The question many scientists are asking is, 'What will happen to El Niño as
the global climate gets warmer,'” Rodbell says. “The computer models are
good, but they are limited by our understanding of how El Niño works. El Niño may be
driven by a number of factors other than global climate.”
Schenectady, N.Y. (Jan. 18, 1999) – Some mud stashed away in the back of a refrigerator at Union College may begin to answer to a number of questions scientists are asking about El Niño.
Donald T. Rodbell, assistant professor of geology at Union, reports in the Jan. 22 issue of Science on a 30-foot-long column of sediment he and a fellow researcher obtained in 1993 from a high-elevation lake in the southern Ecuadoran Andes.
Noting that more work needs to be done to duplicate the findings, Rodbell writes that this sample suggests that during the past 5,000 years, El Niño occurred every two to eight years, the same frequency we see in modern times. The sample also suggests that El Niño was weak or non-existent between 5,000 and 12,000 years ago.
Rodbell and his student, Jeremy Newman, in 1996 began to take a serious look at the sample that had been sitting in their lab cooler for several years. What they found in the core is a data-rich natural archive, the first continuous record of El Niño events dating back more than 5,000 years.
“We didn't know exactly what we had,” says Rodbell. “When we took this core, we thought the light-colored striations from landscape and flood events were very pronounced and unusual. We called them 'zebra stripes.' At the time, we were more interested in climate change associated with the last ice age, but in the back of my mind I wondered if these patterns were somehow connected to El Niño.
Rodbell is lead author of the Science article. His co-authors are Newman; Geoffrey Seltzer of Syracuse University; David Anderson of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration; Mark Abbott of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst; and David Enfield of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory.
Their study, while preliminary, has generated excitement among scientists worldwide who are trying to unlock the mysteries of El Niño. “Based on this work, we realized that this one lake, while interesting because it may have provided the longest El Niño record ever found, is only one sample,” Rodbell says. “We want to go in and compare it with samples from other lakes in the area.”
Rodbell was recently awarded a two-year grant of $90,000 from the National Science Foundation to investigate the climatic record preserved in sediment cores from other high-elevation lakes in southern Ecuador. The initial core suggests that lakes in this area may provide a natural archive of El Niño events covering the last 15,000 years, the longest continuous record of El Niño activity ever discovered.
Rodbell and Seltzer obtained the sediment core sample from Lake Pallcacocha in southern Ecuador. After initial analysis, the core went back to the refrigerator, where it stayed for three years until the scientists pulled it out for a closer look. Newman and Rodbell adapted medical imaging software to quantify shifts in the patterns of layers.
The core sample contains hundreds of layers of sediment deposited over a period of about 15,000 years. About midway through the 30-foot core (representing a period of time beginning about 5,000 years ago) there are a series of light-colored sediment bands that occur approximately every 10 years or less. The bands contain the type of debris — mostly inorganic material washed from the slopes of nearby mountains — which would flow into the lake only during periods of heavy rainfall and flooding — conditions likely triggered by ancient El Niño events, Rodbell says.
Characterized by warm ocean currents that begin off of the western South American coast, El Niño can affect weather systems across both North and South America — from tumultuous rainfall in northern Peru and southern Ecuador to unusually warm and dry conditions in the northeastern United States and western tropical Pacific. Until now, scientists did not have a clear understanding of when these events first began. Written records and anecdotal observations of El Niño events go back only several centuries.
“The question many scientists are asking is, 'What will happen to El Niño as the global climate gets warmer,'” Rodbell says. “The computer models are good, but they are limited by our understanding of how El Niño works. El Niño may be driven by a number of factors other than global climate.”
Contact information:
Donald T. Rodbell, Department of Geology, Union College
(518) 388-6034
rodbelld@union.edu
Charlie Casey, director of the news bureau, Union College
(518) 388-6090
caseyc@alice.union.edu
