Posts Tagged ‘Boise’

Good-win for Idaho Science

Thursday, January 14th, 2010
Peter Goodwin was named the new director of Idaho EPSCoR.

Peter Goodwin was named the new director of Idaho EPSCoR.

Speaking about a ton of acronyms (last post), here’s another one for you, EPSCoR, which stands for Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research. It’s a national program that many states highlight. It’s intended purpose is to help states that have historically received a very low percentage of funding from federal agencies (NIH, NSF, DOE, etc.) build research infrastructure, hire new faculty, educate students and collaborate to make them more competitive.

And it works.

During the past decade, Idaho has more than tripled it’s percentage share of NSF grant dollars, receiving the most it ever has from the agency last year, more than $21 million. A few years ago, NSF EPSCoR landed a 5-year, $15 million whopper of an award to build infrastructure related to hydroclimatology. Additionally, a similar program sponsored by NIH gave the state $16 million over five years just last year.

The reason EPSCoR is in the Idaho news today is that they just appointed a new director - Peter Goodwin.

Goodwin is an excellent choice for the position and one hell of a nice guy. I met him while I was visiting the University of Idaho’s campus in Boise a couple of months ago. He gave me a tour of the center he founded, the Center for Ecohydraulics Research. The tour included a gigantic flume that mimics the conditions of river beds to better understand how surrounding environmental changes might affect them.

The flume models the real environment of a riverbed.

The flume models the real environment of a riverbed.

It’s also being used to help design a white water kayaking recreational park in downtown Boise.

For more information, check out the full press release, or click on any of the numerous links I’ve provided throughout this post.

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Posted in General, Research and Extension Centers | No Comments »

Designing a Better Building

Tuesday, December 22nd, 2009

My final stop in Boise was the Integrated Design Lab, which is actually located several blocks northwest of the Water Center in a historic building just around the corner from an amazing French restaurant called Le Cafe De Paris. (French tuna sandwich and pumpkin soup… yums!)

The IDL is all about designing and building structures that are greener, more energy efficient, smarter and more comfortable to work in. They take into account design features ranging from the shape, size and orientation of windows to provide the optimum amount of natural light to creating naturally flowing air currents to keep the rooms cool and ventilated without necessarily having to turn on any air conditioning units.

Exterior view of the "cloudy sky" box, as I like to call it.To achieve this, they have two very cool modeling tools in their workshop. The first is a giant box completely filled with mirrors and a few lights that can be adjusted to different levels of lighting. The result is that the box creates the same conditions as a cloudy day, where it is lighter overhead but becomes darker as you go down to the horizon.

To test designs, a technician will build their concept model in the center of the box. Then, small cameras are pointed into the model and photos are taken at various light levels as well as for various window orientations and designs. The photos are then analyzed on a computer program to find the optimum design.

Similarly, sitting just a few feet from this “cloudy day” box is a platform that rotates on all three axis. A theater spotlight is bounced off of an overhead mirror to simulate a sunny day. The platform can then be rotated to simulate different times of year and different times of day; basically any angle of direct sunlight imaginable. Photos are again taken and analyzed as described for the box.The rotating platform that can mimmic any sun angle.

The result is a wide suite of options that can be presented to the customer. An example is pictured below, which was from a building being modeled for a project in conjunction with CTA Architects and Engineers of Boise, one of the many local collaborations and projects the IDL is involved in.

But Kevin Van Den Wymelenberg, director of the IDL, is taking customer service to a whole new level.

Kevin currently is working on a research project for an integrated automated lighting system.

An example of a photo taken inside a model and the resulting light data and graph.Imagine, if you will, an office where there are light sensors connected to the lighting system that adjust automatically - not just to the ambient conditions, but to the individual’s ideal working conditions. Blinds that open and close automatically depending on the outside conditions and the levels of glare produced from with windows.

These are just a few of the possibilities for creating an optimum work enviornment while saving as much energy as possible that Kevin is working on. Coming soon to an office near you…

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Posted in Architecture, Graduate Research, Research and Extension Centers | No Comments »

Flume U

Monday, December 21st, 2009
The flume models the real environment of a riverbed.

The flume models the real environment of a riverbed.

My second stop during my visit to the University of Idaho’s main structure in Boise took me to what I would consider the facility’s pride and joy - the water flume.

The flume looks like a cross between a giant, mechanized bed of a dump truck and a slip-and-slide. The main feature is a ramp with walls extending nearly 70-feet long and measuring 6 -feet wide. One end of the flume can be lowered or raised up to the ceiling to give the flume a different degree of elevation; up to 11 degrees.

The purpose of the flume is to study how waters run in river beds. Scientists fill the device with pebbles and rocks measuring up to 2.5 inches in diameter, raise the flume’s degree of incline to match the conditions of the river bed and run a whole bunch of water over the simulated riverbed.

As this is happening, a motorized sensor sits on railings over the stream of water. It shoots up and down the entire length of the flume, all the while taking detailed measurements with lasers of up to six separate parameters. The result is a detailed look at how the water is flowing over the rocks, how the sediment is traveling with the water and the overall complex system of a riverbed.

The flume is one of the largest, most versatile, most impressive of its kind in the entire world.

So what can a scientist do with such a flume? Besides studying what the affects of a flooding of the Boise River would be and designing a whitewater recreation park for the city, Elowyn Yager, assistant professor at the Center for Ecohydraulic Research (CER), which is the name of the center that runs the flume, studies fluvial geomorphology. Just in case you’re not sure, that is the science of rivers in the landscape. She studies how rivers transport sediment in order to predict how environmental changes such as fires, logging and landslides will affect mountain ecosystems.

However, there are a ton of people who want to use the flume. It never sits idle. The center has a research team from Great Britain coming over the summer. Additionally, students from Nepal, Costa Rica, Chile, Italy, Australia, Germany, Bangladesh and Austria have all utilized the facility.

And to take it a step further, the director of CER, Peter Goodwyn, wants to link the computers to a world wide computing system, so researchers from around the world can receive data and run experiments with the flume from anywhere in the world.

As you can tell, I was very impressed with the flume, and in the near future, I think the whole state - even the whole country - will be as well.

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Posted in Geography, Research and Extension Centers, The Great Outdoors | 1 Comment »

The University of Idaho in Boise

Friday, December 18th, 2009
The new, imposing University of Idaho building in Boise.

The new, imposing University of Idaho building in Boise.

The final research and extension center I visited on my trip to southern Idaho last week was the new, gorgeous facility located in downtown Boise. It’s going to take me several days to get through all of the interesting machines I saw and brilliant people I met, so stick with me.

The Boise Center is located just southeast of central downtown Boise. The building itself is imposing; consisting of lots of windows, soaring ceilings, smart paint designs and a ton of research equipment.

The first lab I visited was is managed by Judy Steciak, associate professor of mechanical engineering, whose Energy and Efficiency Research Group (EERG) gets to set off miniature explosions in the laboratory every single day.

Don’t worry, when I say miniature, I mean very, very tiny.

The research group takes new biofuels in very, very small quantities, and ignites it under a very specific set of conditions. By doing this, the group can learn the exact temperature at which new fuels become vaporized. This is important because if it is not hot enough, it will not ignite. However, get the fuel too hot, and it results in large losses and inefficiencies.

In short, the group is looking for the ideal conditions for the combustion of new biofuels. This will help maximize them should a manufacturing company decide to build an engine to use them, or if someone wants to tweak their biodiesel engine to run on something slight different.

Additionally, the research helps determine which of the many, many new fuels (did you know there are 10 types of biodiesel???) is best for moving into the future of greener, cleaner engines.

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Posted in Engineering, Research and Extension Centers | No Comments »