All News Archives – Page 178

Culture, Society & Family Student researchers

Chimú pottery: Peru’s conquering Inca left mark

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date March 6, 2009

Amanda Aland, an SMU archaeology graduate student in Dedman College, and a team of students working under her direction in Peru, in 2008 unearthed evidence that the Incas left their mark after conquering the Chimú empire in the 15th century.

Now Aland has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student fellowship to conduct further archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

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In March 2009, Aland will return to a site on Peru’s northern coast, called Santa Rita B, where she spent several months last year excavating with the support of a National Science Foundation grant.

Slideshow: Aland’s Peru field work

“We found Chimú pottery and architecture that show Inca influences,” she says, in addition to centuries-old animal matter and human remains.

During her 10-month Fulbright fellowship, Aland hopes to learn the extent of the Incas’ influence on the Chimú people through further excavation and laboratory analysis of her findings.

“We want to piece together how the two empires interacted,” she says. “Did they go to war, or make peace living under new rules? We always can learn from the past.”

Aland, a Dallas native, earned a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of Southern California in 2004. At SMU, where she earned a Master’s degree in anthropology in 2006, she has studied archaeological theory, methods and grant writing while directing summer field research in Peru.

“Amanda is developing important new perspectives on the expansion of the Inca empire,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Aland’s dissertation adviser. “Peru’s north coast was an important provincial region, but one that is still not well understood by archaeologists. Her research stands to make a valuable contribution.”

Aland is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and one of 40 SMU students who have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan

Tags Alan Covey, Amanda Aland, Dedman College, SMU Department of Anthropology

Plants & Animals Researcher news

Discovery News: Surprise! Not all stegosaurs had short necks

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 26, 2009

Vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, is quoted in Discovery News online in the February 25 story “Long-Necked Stegosaur Defies Reputation.”

Jacobs is known for his work documenting changes in fossil mammals in Pakistan, which helps scholars correlate climatic changes with evolutionary changes seen in animals, and which helps calibrate the rate of DNA evolution in mammals. He’s also credited for discovery of what’s now known as “Malawisaurus,” a plant-eating dinosaur that lived in Malawi, Africa, 115 million years ago.

Excerpt

By Jennifer Viegas
Discovery News

The classic image of a stegosaur calls to mind a grazing beast with short legs and a short neck, but a newly discovered species from Portugal was found to have one of the longest necks ever recorded for a dinosaur, relative to overall body size, according to a new study.

“Miragaia longicollum,” meaning “long-necked wonderful goddess of the Earth,” had more neck vertebrae than almost any other dinosaur, tying the record previously set by three Chinese sauropods, the study found.

Octavio Mateus, who led the research, told Discovery News that the new species and other stegosaurs were four-legged plant eaters “with a row of plates and spines along the body from the neck to the tail.” One swift swing of the tail could jab the sharp spines into would-be attackers. …

Louis Jacobs, director of the Shuler Museum of Paleontology at Southern Methodist University, told Discovery News that the new study “is quite interesting because it shows a body form, and by inference, an ecological diversity among stegosaurs that was not suspected before.”

Read the full story

Tags Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs, Shuler Museum of Paleontology

Earth & Climate Energy & Matter Health & Medicine Technology

Barnett gas-drilling boom pollutes Dallas-Fort Worth air

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 11, 2009

The first comprehensive analysis of air emissions associated with natural gas and oil production in the Barnett Shale finds that those emissions might be a significant contributor to smog formation in the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

The emissions are comparable to the combined emissions in the Dallas-Fort Worth area from all cars and trucks. State regulators for years have targeted cars and trucks as a major source of smog in the D-FW area.

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The study, “Emissions from Natural Gas Production in the Barnett Shale Area and Opportunities for Cost-Effective Improvements,” was written by Al Armendariz. He is a research associate professor in the department of environmental and civil engineering in the Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University.

The report takes into consideration the emissions of smog-forming compounds, such as nitrogen oxides and volatile organic compounds. In addition, it also looks at air-toxic chemicals and greenhouse gases.

The study found that emissions of carbon dioxide and two other major greenhouse gases underlying climate change were estimated to be roughly equivalent to the impact of two 750-megawatt coal plants.

“It’s true that Barnett Shale oil and gas activities are producing significant air emissions, but there’s good news as well,” Armendariz said. “There are off-the-shelf technologies that can greatly reduce these emissions and improve the D-FW area’s air quality.”

Experts say cost-effective control strategies are readily available and can substantially reduce emissions from production in the massive Barnett Shale, a 5,000-square-mile geologic formation.

“These controls can in many cases, reduce costs for oil and gas operators after short payback periods,” said Ramon Alvarez, senior scientist with Environmental Defense Fund, which commissioned the study. “Such controls are already used by some producers, but not universally.”

The City of Fort Worth recently adopted an ordinance requiring the use of “green completions” to capture the greenhouse gas methane and volatile organic compounds during well completions. That is one of the controls recommended in the report for areas throughout the Barnett Shale area.

Natural gas production in the Barnett Shale region of Texas has increased rapidly since 1999, where as of June 2008 there are now more than 7,700 oil and gas wells producing and permits issued to drill another 4,700.

In 2008, the Barnett Shale was responsible for 21 percent of the state’s natural gas production. Unlike most historical drilling for oil in Texas, this activity is taking place in and around a heavily developed and populated area.

Natural gas is a critical feedstock to many chemical production processes. It has many environmental benefits over coal as a fuel for electricity generation, including lower emissions of sulfur, metal compounds and carbon dioxide. Nevertheless, oil and gas production from the Barnett Shale can impact local air quality and release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, according to the Armendariz study.

The report examines each step of the gas production process, from well drilling and completion, to gas processing and transmission. It concludes that peak summertime emissions of smog-forming emissions from production activities in the Barnett Shale are about the same as the emissions from all the cars and trucks on the road in the D-FW area. Barnett Shale emissions total 307 tons per day, while cars and trucks total 273 tons per day.

SMU’s Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering, founded in 1925, is one of the oldest engineering schools in the Southwest. The school offers eight undergraduate and 29 graduate programs, including both master’s and doctorate levels.

Tags Al Armendariz, Lyle School of Engineering

Fossils & Ruins Plants & Animals Researcher news

National Geographic: Rare fossil of pregnant whale is missing-link

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date February 3, 2009

Vertebrate paleontologist Louis L. Jacobs, a professor in Dedman College‘s Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, is quoted in the February 3 online story “Early whales gave birth on land, fossils reveal” by National Geographic News Service.

Excerpt

By Tasha Eichenseher
National Geographic News

It’s an evolutionary discovery Darwin himself would have been proud of.

Forty-seven million years ago primitive whales gave birth on land, according to a study published this week that analyzes the fossil of a pregnant whale found in the Pakistani desert.

It is the first fetal fossil from the group of ancient amphibious whales called “Archaeoceti,” as well as the first from an extinct species called “Maiacetus inuus.”

When the fossil was discovered, nine years ago, University of Michigan paleontologist Philip Gingerich was thrown off by the jumble of adult and fetal-size bones.

“The first thing we found

[were] small teeth, then ribs going the wrong way,” Gingerich said. Later, “it was just astonishing to realize why the specimen in the field was so confusing.”

The head-first position of the fetus was especially telling.

Land mammals are generally born head first, and marine mammals are born tail first. …

Whales’ slow transition from land to sea is documented in other fossils, but this is the most complete to fill a gap during this time period…..

“This is a big discovery because it tells us about life history, or the way early whales lived their lives, [which is something] that is difficult to learn from fossils,” Gingerich said.

The most famous other seafaring animals to be found fossilized with a complete fetus were ichthyosaurs, a reptile group that lived roughly 245 to 100 million years ago.

“Not since have we seen fossils of marine-dwelling vertebrates that tell us so much about the biology of evolving an ocean dwelling way of life from a terrestrial ancestor,” said Louis Jacobs, a vertebrate paleontologist at Southern Methodist University in Texas.

“It is a missing link of the most informative sort,” Jacobs added.

“Charles Darwin would delight.”
Read the full story

Tags Huffington Department of Earth Sciences, Louis L. Jacobs

Researcher news Technology

SMU engineering to collaborate on US DOD research

Post author By Margaret Allen
Post date January 27, 2009

The Bobby B. Lyle School of Engineering at Southern Methodist University will serve as a designated research collaborator in the Systems Engineering Research Center, or SERC, the first University Affiliated Research Center funded by the Department of Defense to focus on challenging systems engineering issues facing the defense department and related defense industries.

SMU Lyle School of Engineering, with Jerrell Stracener as lead senior researcher, will participate as part of a prestigious consortium of 18-leading collaborator universities and research centers throughout the United States, led by Stevens Institute of Technology, with the University of Southern California serving as its principal collaborator.

“This award is a major recognition of Stevens Institute of Technology’s leadership, consolidated during the last decade, in the field of Complex Systems Engineering,” said Dinesh Verma, dean of Stevens’ School of Systems & Enterprises, and executive director of the Systems Engineering Research Center.

SERC will be responsible for systems engineering research that supports the development, integration, testing and sustainability of complex defense systems, enterprises and services. SERC will serve as the systems engineering research engine for the Department of Defense and intelligence community. It will also offer systems engineering programs and workshops for Department of Defense and intelligence community employees and contractors.

“As a key partner in this national consortium, we are pleased to have the opportunity to expand our contributions to this country in systems engineering education and research through the linkage of the Lyle Systems Engineering Program with SMU’s Caruth Institute for Engineering Education and its one of a kind Lockheed Martin Skunk Works&reg Lab,” said Geoffrey Orsak, dean of the Lyle School of Engineering.

SMU Lyle School of Engineering’s Systems Engineering Program has long been recognized for providing work-place relevant education and research to the nation’s aerospace and defense community, both industry and government.

The SEP was developed and continues to evolve under the leadership of Stracener, SEP founding director, in partnership with government agencies and aerospace and defense companies.

The Lyle School of Engineering’s system engineering research program is being driven by needs of aerospace and defense systems developers, including Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Bell Helicopter, Elbit Systems and L-3 Communications. A doctoral program is being expanded in response to needs of the United States aerospace and defense sector, both industry and government.

Tags Geoffrey Orsak, Jerrell Stracener, Lyle School of Engineering