In this Green Power Challenge, only 54 schools were purchasing enough green power to qualify. (Photo courtesy of NREL)
Colleges and universities have been competing to see who can buy the most green energy. Rebecca Williams has this year’s results:
Transcript
Colleges and universities have been competing to see who can buy the most green energy. Rebecca Williams has this year’s results:
The Environmental Protection Agency puts on what it calls a “green power challenge” among colleges each year – who’s using more renewable power such as solar, wind, and geothermal.
This year, the Ivy League beat out the Big Ten to come in first.
The University of Pennsylvania was the top winner.
Blaine Collison directs EPA’s Green Power Partnership. He says colleges and universities can have a lot of influence with utility companies.
“If every school in America were to stand up tomorrow and say ‘we want to be 50% green powered by the end of next year’, the supply side of the market would say, ‘great, let’s talk about how to do that.’”
But in this competition, there’s a lot of room at the top. Only 54 schools were purchasing enough green power to qualify for the challenge.
Several universities are testing out the new Kindle DX, hoping to save money and paper on printing (Photo source: K.lee at Wikimedia Commons)
This fall, six colleges and
universities are throwing out
a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca
Williams reports they’re testing
out the idea of students using
electronic readers for some
classes instead of textbooks:
Transcript
This fall, six colleges and universities are throwing out a lot of their textbooks. Rebecca Williams reports they’re testing out the idea of students using electronic readers for some classes instead of textbooks:
The schools are Case Western, Arizona State, Reed College, Pace University, The University of Virginia’s business school and Princeton.
They’re all testing out the new Kindle DX – it’s got a large screen that the text of textbooks will be loaded into.
Cass Cliatt is with Princeton. She says the University prints out 50 million sheets of paper a year – even though a lot of course material is online these days.
“So the irony is that the availability of digitized text has lead to an actual increase in printing because people don’t like to read a lot of text on computer screens.”
But she says these are different. The new Kindles let you highlight stuff and take notes the way you might in an actual textbook. So in theory, students won’t need to print.
Cliatt says they’ll be testing that theory to see if universities can save paper and money on printing.
An EPA scientist testing online sensors for water distribution systems (Photo courtesy of the US Office of Management and Budget)
The recession is hitting more than banks and homes these days. State budget cuts and no increases from the federal government are straining research labs and scientists. Adam Allington reports the effects might not be as obvious or immediate as the house foreclosures and the credit crisis, the effect on science jobs and innovation might be just as bad:
Transcript
The recession is hitting more than banks and homes these days. State budget cuts and no increases from the federal government are straining research labs and scientists. Adam Allington reports the effects might not be as obvious or immediate as the house foreclosures and the credit crisis, the effect on science jobs and innovation might be just as bad:
At first glance there’s not much in Dale Dorsett’s lab beyond the usual – you know, grad students in white lab coats, centrifuges, test tubes.
Even though his lab is relatively small, his costs are not.
He takes me toward a locked room in the back of the lab containing a single microscope.
“It’s a laser scanning confocal microscope, which is essential for part of our work. That cost – $350,000 – now you know why we keep it locked.”
Dale is a molecular biologist at St. Louis University. He studies a genetic disorder that affects about one in ten-thousand humans.
Well, that is, when he can.
These days Dorsett says he spends more of his time filling out grant applications than he does on his research.
And he’s not the only one in this pickle. Winning grants for research is getting tough.
“The problem becomes when it gets so competitive that even really deserving projects, or very productive scientists who are doing really good work can’t get funded and that’s the situation we’re in right now.”
Funding from organizations like the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation has been slipping for years. It’s a big problem.
It used to be about 30% of grant applications were successful. Now, that success rate has slipped into the teens.
And even those researchers who do get funded say grant preference is often given to projects that produce immediate results – which just isn’t the way most science works.
“I’m conservative because otherwise the lab would go under.”
Kristen Kroll runs a lab studying stem cells at Washington University.
“I would love to be more aggressive about what we go after, which connections we try to make to other models. I think I’ve curbed what we could be doing to a point where what we are doing is sustainable in the current funding climate.”
Kroll says there is such a back log of quality grant applications on file at the NIH and NSF, grant reviewers aren’t even separating wheat from chaff any more they’re separating wheat from wheat. So a lot of good research just doesn’t happen.
And in a world economy the U.S. isn’t the only player in the market for innovation. Other countries could gain an advantage in science.
James McCarter is the Chief Scientist for Divergence, a St. Louis-based biotech company.
“The emergence of India and China, in addition to Japan and Korea and Europe. There are sizeable countries out there now that are serious in these spaces and are making serious investments and have the talent.”
Now,you might be thinking, won’t that big stimulus package send wave of cash into the coffers of government research agencies – problem solved right?
Not so much. While a billion dollar shot in arm might be welcome news for some labs, many advisors worry that the long-term effect might actually exacerbate the funding crisis.
John Russell is the Associate Dean for Graduate Studies at Washington University. He says, a big pile of cash all at once does nothing for ongoing research that can take years to complete.
“One of the concerns about a big bubble is that if it’s just a bubble is that it takes five years to train somebody so it needs to be more spread out I think to be effective.”
Russell warns universities considering a building and spending spree to plan carefully, so current projects don’t reach beyond future budget realities.
The stimulus money is a one-time thing, which concerns some researchers
(Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
The government’s stimulus package is pouring billions of dollars into research for health, energy, and basic science. Rebecca Williams reports the new money will be helpful, but it’s not clear whether it’ll last:
Transcript
The government’s stimulus package is pouring billions of dollars into research for health, energy, and basic science. Rebecca Williams reports the new money will be helpful, but it’s not clear whether it’ll last:
There’s 10 billion dollars for health care research, 3 billion for other science funding, and that’s just the beginning.
Sam Rankin says it’s a positive change. He chairs the Coalition for National Science Funding.
“This administration and the current Speaker of the House have been very adamant about how important science is and that they want to fund science because they realize it’s an economic driver.”
There’s a catch. The stimulus money is a one-time thing.
But this week, President Barack Obama indicated his budget will mean steady money for health care and energy technology.
“We will invest 15 billion dollars a year to develop technologies like wind power and solar power, advanced biofuels, clean coal, and more efficient cars and trucks built right here in America.”
That makes scientists hopeful, but we won’t know the details of the budget until sometime in April.
(Photo courtesy of National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences)
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the
United States. Researchers today have access to tools and techniques that
have accelerated the pace of discovery to new highs. But as record numbers
of PhD’s graduate, many young scientists are finding a job market that is not
ready to absorb them. Adam Allington traces the supply and demand for
young scientists in a faltering economy:
Transcript
It’s the best of times and the worst of times to start a science career in the
United States. Researchers today have access to tools and techniques that
have accelerated the pace of discovery to new highs. But as record numbers
of PhD’s graduate, many young scientists are finding a job market that is not
ready to absorb them. Adam Allington traces the supply and demand for
young scientists in a faltering economy:
Briana Gross is in her second year of a post-doctoral fellowship at
Washington University, she’s studying genetic adaptations of wild rice.
She’s been applying for college faculty jobs for the past two years. This
year she says she’s gone all-out.
“I’ve applied for I think 36-38 jobs, 3-4 of those positions have been cancelled
completely due to hiring freezes. I’ve had two interviews.”
These days there’s a glut of qualified talent. Between too many doctoral
grads and cutbacks, it’s tough to find a position.
One recent job interview did little to bolster Gross’s confidence for the
future.
“While I was waiting to meet with the dean, one of the financial administrators came buy
and kind of joked about how I couldn’t possibly be interviewing for a position because
there was no money available to hire anyone at the university. So, if that’s happening
this year, next year is going to be really rough.”
So, how’d we end up with too many scientists for the jobs out there? Well,
the answer goes back to an event scientists simply call “the doubling.”
In 1998, President Clinton doubled budget for the National Institutes of
Health, which had the effect of drawing in all kinds of new talent and
investment for science and research.
The problem came later when that funding went flat – precisely at the same
time all those new PhD’s were entering the job market.
“You know, its like you push a bunch of people into the pipeline and then there’s been
chocking off of the U.S. pipeline.”
Kristen Kroll is a professor of developmental biology at Washington
University; she employs two post-docs in her lab.
“What we’ve done is we’ve convinced a whole generation of U.S. post-docs and graduate
students not to go into academic science.”
Young PhD’s see the uphill battle for jobs and scarce grant money and
wonder if its worth the struggle.
And it’s not just post-docs who are feeling the pressure these days—junior
faculty are spending more of their time in the lecture hall and less time in the
lab.
David Duvernell teaches biology at Southern Illinois University at
Edwardsville.
“We try to maintain an active research program at SIUE, at the same time we’re teaching
our 2 or 3 courses a semester.”
Duvernell says SIUE enrollment in freshman-level biology courses has
nearly doubled, but state support has not.
“And where the students are losing out is that then we have less time to spend in research
labs, where we train students individually and give them an experience that will
ultimately make them employable and competitive for graduate and professional
programs.”
University administrators point that historically only about 30% of all post-
docs land a faculty job, with the rest going into the private sector. Except
these the private sector is shedding jobs even faster than the universities.
Jared Strasburg is a 4th-year post-doc from Indiana University. He says if he
hasn’t found a faculty job by August, he’ll have to consider something else.
“Academia is long hours, it’s a lot of work, But, I never felt like if I put in those hours
and worked really hard that I wouldn’t be capable of getting a position and getting
funding necessary to do the work that I was interested in. Needless to say now that
proposition looks a lot more tenuous.”
In recent years some universities have taken steps to curb the number of
graduating PhD’s.
But as the number of unemployed post-graduates rises, some say the whole
system for training scientists needs to be updated to jive with the modern
economy.
As fewer and fewer scientists actually work in universities, some say more
focus needs to be placed on careers outside of academia.
European consumers have been quicker to adopt new technologies, like hybrids and efficient diesel cars. Energy Discovery -Innovation Institutes might change that. (Photo by Michael Pereckas, Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:
Transcript
Making the shift from fossil fuels to cleaner energy will be a long-term, expensive effort. But, there is the opportunity for jobs, energy independence and reducing the greenhouse gases that cause climate change. This week a report from the Brookings Institution proposes a way to help get us there: Energy Discovery-Innovation Institutes. These institutes would take a big picture view of the change and help researchers and businesses avoid pitfalls and false starts along the way. Lester Graham spoke with a supporter of the idea, Gary Was. He’s the Director the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University of Michigan:
Gary Was: Energy is a very complex topic. It’s a social issue as much as it is a
technological issue. In addition to the technological challenges of coming up with
new energy sources and proving energy efficiency, we also have a lot of social issues
involved as well. The business sector is heavily involved. Economics is a big issue.
Social behavior and social preferences are big factors in our energy use patterns and
our habits.
Lester Graham: Give me an example of that.
Was: Well, one example is plug-in hybrid electrics. There’s a lot of questions to
how these plug-in hybrids are going to function, and whether they’ll be successful. A
lot of that depends upon people’s preferences. The idea of plugging in, when you
can plug in, how long you have to plug in, how complicated or how difficult it is –
can make a big difference. We’ve seen examples of that with diesel. In Europe, half
the cars are diesel powered. We have the same technology here. There are no diesel
powered cars here. It’s a social issue, not a technological issue.
Graham: Steven Chu, the new Energy Secretary, has spent a good deal of his career
in research. What do you expect his reaction will be to your suggestion of tying
together this energy research?
Was: I think it will be quite positive. Dr. Chu has a background both in the
academic setting as well as in the National Laboratories, and I think he appreciates
well the capabilities of each institution. The meat of this whole proposal, and of this
whole concept, is that the National Laboratories alone, or universities alone, or
industry alone – the three principal research institutions in the US – really aren’t
prepared to handle a challenge of this breadth, and depth, and complexity. And that
we need a new paradigm. We need a new way to be able to take basic science,
accelerate it into development, and push it through technology, transfer it to the
private sector. None of these institutions alone can do that really highly successfully.
Graham: What is this going to do require? Is this government money to get this
launched? Is this going to be another scientific layer of bureaucracy when we get
finished? How do you handle this to make sure it’s effective?
Was: One of the problems we have with energy in the country is that, overall,
regardless of these institutes, this institute concept, its terribly underfunded – in terms
of its comparison to the impact on the economy. The energy business is a 1.5 trillion
dollar business in the US. It’s comparable to healthcare. In healthcare, there is
approximately ten times the amount of federal funds going into research than there is
in energy. So in comparison to the impacts on our lives, it’s underfunded by almost
a factor of ten.
Graham: If we’re to invest in these kinds of institutes, and invest in more research
into energy and how we use it, what kind of return might we see on our tax dollars
that we shovel over to you guys?
Was: Well, that’s a very good question. These discovery institutes, these will be
regionally situated, and each one might be on the order of 200 million dollars a year
funding, and so the entire price tag would be maybe 5 billion dollars. So what do
you get for 5 billion dollars? We expect that the transformation will be much more
rapid, it will be with fewer false starts, and left turns, or dead ends, and it will be
much more efficient than we’re able to do right now. Right now, the system is such
that technology advancements tend to sort of diffuse through society in an uncharted
and undirected way. The objective here is to sharpen that diffusion so that we can
pull these technologies out, translate them into useful products much more quickly.
Graham: Gary Was is the director of the Phoenix Energy Institute at the University
of Michigan. Thanks for coming in.
Several Midwest universities will be part of a controversial
effort to improve the recycling of nuclear waste. The Great Lakes
Radio Consortium’s Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Transcript
Several Midwest universities will be part of a controversial effort to
improve the recycling of nuclear waste. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s
Chuck Quirmbach reports:
Spent nuclear fuel is piling up at many commercial nuclear power plants around the nation.
Scientists know how to re-process and re-use the fuel. but that’s currently not done
in the U.S. nuclear industry.
Michael Corradini is an Engineering Physics Professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
He says the re-use of nuclear waste can be improved… and he contends this is the moment to do
it.
“And with the need for energy… particularly electrical energy… this is a way to more efficiently
deal with our spent fuel.”
Wisconsin and other Big Ten universities with nuclear engineering programs will team up with
the University of Chicago for a recycling project at the Argonne National Lab in Illinois. But an
anti-nuclear group contends that trying to recycle more nuclear waste makes it more likely some
spent fuel will be made into bombs. The university scientists say safeguards will be taken to
prevent that from happening.
22 colleges and universities around the country, including three in the Great Lakes region, will be sharing $22 million in grants to help address hazardous waste problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
Transcript
Twenty-two colleges and universities around the country, including 3 in the Great Lakes region, will be sharing twenty two million dollars in grants to help address hazardous waste problems. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Jonathan Ahl reports:
The U-S EPA is providing the funding for a variety of research projects. Some of the funding will go toward finding better ways to dispose of hazardous waste, both in groundwater and soil. Other projects will focus on ways to find more effective and efficient ways to remove hazardous waste from sediment and at mining sites.
Nearly a third of the total funding will go to outreach programs to help people in low-income communities. The money will be used to help them take an active role in cleaning up waste sites, and to prevent the addition of any more problem areas in their communities.
Purdue University will head up the grant projects in the Midwest. Michigan State University and Central State University in Ohio will also be involved.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Jonathan Ahl.
Landscape Manager Jeff Culbertson sprays a Scots pine with thief repellant containing fox urine. The smell isn't too noticeable outdoors... but when a thief drags a conifer indoors, the repellant heats up and makes for a memorable Christmas. Photo by Nanci Ann McIntosh, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
Evergreen trees grace forests, campuses, and lawns around the region. Much to the dismay of landscapers and gardeners, some of those trees disappear this time of year, stolen by someone who may not quite get the idea of Christmas cheer. But some universities have found a way to fight tree rustlers. It involves a foul-smelling concoction that makes thieves regret taking a tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the recipe for this nasty, yet effective repellant:
Transcript
Evergreen trees grace forests, campuses, and lawns around the region. And much to the dismay of landscapers and gardeners, some of those trees disappear this time of year, stolen by someone who may not quite get the idea of Christmas cheer. But some universities have found a way to fight tree-rustlers. It involves a foul-smelling concoction that makes thieves regret taking a tree. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Rebecca Williams has the recipe for this nasty, yet effective repellant:
About fifteen years ago, landscape managers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln had a big problem. Tree thieves were cutting down the best conifers on campus. And the landscapers were getting calls from local residents, whose trees were also disappearing. Dennis Adams is a forester at the University of Nebraska.
“It’d be, you know, trees that have good Christmas tree form, so blue spruce, concolor fir, some of the pines – white pine, scotch pine.”
Some thieves were easy to track. Jeff Culbertson is a landscape manager at the university. He says students were stealing trees during Thanksgiving break… and they weren’t always perfect criminals…
“We’ve had instances where the students, I guess didn’t do a good job or didn’t think anybody cared, but you could find the dragged marks of the tree through the snow to their fraternity or dormitory or something like that so in those cases I think it was pretty easy for them to figure out where the tree went.”
Campus trees are worth hundreds of dollars, so the university was eager to find a solution. Dennis Adams discovered a solution… literally. He found the recipe in an old magazine… 1 part glycerine, 10 parts water, and 2 parts… fox urine.
Jeff Culbertson says the fox urine makes Christmas tree thieves think twice…
“It doesn’t really smell like skunk. Maybe like an extremely strong cat urine sort of smell. Or dog, something that’s very concentrated. But you know normally you’re not going to smell that. So it’s pretty pungent.”
Culbertson says since the University of Nebraska began spraying conifers in the 80s, they haven’t lost many trees. He sprays 50 to 100 Christmas-tree size evergreens each year. He used to wear a plastic spray suit, but now he just keeps the wind at his back.
“When I do the fox urine, I don’t have many volunteers that want to help me with that. So I take on upon myself to do it. They mostly stand away from me, and they probably don’t talk to me too much that day either.”
Culbertson says there is one problem with this technique… when it’s cold out, you don’t notice the smell. So he started adding a dye… he sprays blue or red stripes on the trees where he sprays the fox urine. He says it makes the trees that much less attractive, and serves as a warning. And each year, the university lets the local papers know they’re spraying fox urine again.
But if a thief still chops down a tree and drags it into his house … Culbertson says he won’t likely do it again.
“It would be a smell that you’d have a hard time getting rid of.”
Culbertson recommends the method to anyone with a lot of trees to protect. He says the repellant is pretty affordable, and normally wears off after the Christmas season. Most of the supplies, sometimes even fox urine, can be bought at a garden store.
“I use a small, 3 gallon bottle sprayer, typical sort of garden sprayer people would purchase at the hardware store, garden center… And I try to use hot water. The glycerin is very syrupy kind of like corn syrup. So it helps to loosen it up, heat it up and make it less thick. I mix it up, take it out, and just spray the trees by hand.”
Both Jeff Culbertson and Dennis Adams think thieves are just looking for a cheap tree. But Adams still finds the thefts a little unbelievable.
“I think people have to be pretty desperate to steal a tree for Christmas. That seems like it’s kind of in the anti-Christmas spirit to steal.” (Laughs)
Other campus managers, meanwhile…have cooked up their own people repellant. The University of Idaho adds a few ounces of skunk scent. It makes their mix even more memorable.
For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Rebecca Williams.
Great Lakes residents use more than two million tires a year, and many of them end up in a landfill. But one Illinois school has found an unusual way to use some of those tires. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman has more:
Transcript
Great Lakes residents use more than two million tires a year, and many of them end up in a landfill. But one Illinois school has found an unusual way to use some of those tires. And they’re saving on hospital costs as well. The Great Lakes Radio Consortium’s Chris Lehman has more.
(natural sound football practice, fade under quickly)
From beer cans to soda bottles, there are plenty of items that can be recycled at a typical football game. But at the 31-thousand seat Huskie Stadium at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, Illinois, what is perhaps the largest recycling effort is in the field itself. More than 18-thousand ground-up tires are underneath the new surface of the playing field . . .mixed with sand; they provide a soft but durable base for all types of athletic events. The fake grass on top is similar to Astroturf, but project manager Norm Jenkins says this surface is better. He says the most important advantage is safety.
“It’s well documented over the last few years since these fields have been installed that the injury frequency goes way down in terms of ankle and knee injuries on this surface as opposed to the old Astroturf carpet. So it really simulates grass in that way. The other big advantage to this in our judgment is the appearance. Because really, as you sit in the stands at a Huskie football game–and even from the sidelines when you stand on that stuff–you’re convinced that the surface is grass. It looks, it appears just like a pristine grass playing surface”
The artificial turf at NIU is a brand called Field Turf. Jim Petrucelli is Vice-President of Turf USA, a Pittsburgh-based distributor of Field Turf. He says the scrap tires for the product are first washed with a high-pressure cleaning system similar to a car wash. But the tires aren’t run through grinder blades. That process is called ambient grinding because it takes place at room temperature. It tends to produce longer, rougher particles.
Instead, Petrucelli says the company cryogenically freezes the tires to temperatures below negative 80 degrees Fahrenheit.
“And then they drop them onto a hammer-mill. And the hammer-mill shatters them into pieces. And those pieces tend to have much flatter sides on them . . . that works much better in our system to prevent the rubber from migrating through the sand that it’s mixed with.”
Field Turf is used at several universities in the Great Lakes region, including the University of Cincinnati, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania, and at a University of Michigan field house. It’s also in use at dozens of high schools and public recreation facilities across the region, and has been installed in places as far away as Botswana and New Zealand.
Petrucelli says that at more than eight dollars a square foot, Field Turf is the Cadillac of artificial turf products. At Northern Illinois University, nearly one-third of the cost of installing the Field Turf was recovered through a variety of money-saving measures. The largest of these was a 200-thousand dollar grant from the Illinois Department of Commerce and Community Affairs. The money was awarded to the school for its use of the tires, which came from a salvage yard near Chicago. Robert Albanese is NIU’s Associate Vice President of Finance and Facilities.
“Every time you purchase a new tire there’s a fee that goes along with it. It goes to this fund for recycling the tires. And this process will only work, is if we use those recycled materials on the other end. And this is probably one of the bigger uses for recycled rubber that we’ve seen in the state of Illinois.”
NIU Director of Recycling Mary Crocker says the use of old tires in the Field Turf project wasn’t just about saving money.
“We’re interested in keeping the tires out the landfills. So this is probably the most comprehensive recycling program that you can find, where virtually everything has to do with recycling.”
(More football sound under)
The old Astroturf, which was removed to make way for the Field Turf, was also recycled. The university sold it for use as a soccer field overseas, earning an additional 29 thousand dollars for the school. For the Great Lakes Radio Consortium, I’m Chris Lehman.
In this Green Power Challenge, only 54 schools were purchasing enough green power to qualify. (Photo courtesy of NREL)
