Author: Margaret Allen

Senior research writer, SMU Public Affairs

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Culture, Society & Family Feature Health & Medicine Researcher news SMU In The News Student researchers

SAPIENS: Why Aid Remains Out of Reach for Some Rohingya Refugees

Even with the right to health care secured, medical assistance is elusive for urban refugees in India.

The anthropology publication SAPIENS has published an article by SMU doctoral candidate Ashvina Patel.

SAPIENS is an editorially independent publication of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Inc., which is dedicated to popularizing anthropology to a broad audience.

The article, “Why Aid Remains Out of Reach for Some Rohingya Refugees,” published May 17, 2018.

The article resulted from Patel’s 11-month stay in New Delhi, India, in which she interviewed residents of three urban refugee settlements. The purpose was to understand how issues of geopolitics and domestic policy inform various types of human insecurity for refugees.

Patel is currently a visiting student fellow at Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, where she is developing further publications on Rohingya refugee displacement.

She is a doctoral candidate in SMU’s Department of Anthropology. Patel holds an M.A. degree in Cultural Anthropology from SMU and an M.A. in Religion from University of Hawaii, Manoa. As a doctoral student, her research focuses on issues of human insecurity among Rohingya refugees in the context of American resettlement as well as within New Delhi, India as urban refugees. Her research work focuses specifically on defining the subjective experience of human insecurity and how various forms of insecurity are informed by statelessness.

Patel is a student of SMU anthropology professor Caroline Brettell, an internationally recognized immigration expert and Ruth Collins Altshuler Professor and Director of the Interdisciplinary Institute. Brettell is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

A private operating foundation, Wenner-Gren is dedicated to the advancement of anthropology throughout the world. Located in New York City, it is one of the major funding sources for international anthropological research and is actively engaged with the anthropological community through its varied grant, fellowship, networking, conference and symposia programs.

It founded and continues to publish the international journal Current Anthropology, and disseminates the results of its symposia through open-access supplementary issues of this journal. The Foundation works to support all branches of anthropology and closely related disciplines concerned with human biological and cultural origins, development, and variation.

Read the full article.

EXCERPT:

From the field notes
of SMU PhD candidate Ashvina Patel
Ameena (a pseudonym) is a 25-year-old Rohingya refugee in New Delhi, India, who is seven months pregnant with twins. Her face is gaunt. Often there isn’t enough food at home for her family of five. Nestled among other shanty houses, her home is made of bamboo with scrap boards as paneling; a tattered piece of cloth serves as the front door. Recently, the monsoon rains caused her to slip and fall. Now one of the babies in her womb is not moving. She knows she needs to see a doctor, but she cannot afford one.

When Ameena fled acts of genocide perpetrated by her own government of Myanmar in 2012, she and her husband came to New Delhi. They both suffer from debilitating deformities due to polio, and they heard that the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) office in New Delhi was helping Rohingya refugees. The UNHCR partners with the Indian government to provide free aid to help people obtain an education, a livelihood, and health care.

But as Ameena and others would learn, being offered access to aid isn’t always enough. Barriers to procuring those free resources often leave urban refugees to fend for themselves; many find they have to negotiate a system that inadvertently creates obstacles to reaching that aid.

Having spent 11 months with the Rohingya community in India from 2015 to 2017, I repeatedly saw how aid missed its intended target. As the UNHCR creates solutions to challenges that refugees face, these solutions can also serve as a catalyst for new obstacles or deepen already existing insecurities by creating additional barriers that are financial, linguistic, cultural, or exploitative. The UNHCR does a lot of good, but the organization could do a better job addressing challenges refugees face in accessing the services to which they are permitted.

Read the full article.

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SMU physicist and her students join national laboratories, other universities in high-stakes hunt for elusive dark matter

The future SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment will hunt for weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), hypothetical components of dark matter. If a WIMP (white trace) strikes an atom inside the experiment's detector crystals (gray), it will cause the crystal lattice to vibrate (blue). The collision will also send electrons (red) through the crystal that enhance the vibrations. (Greg Stewart/SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory)

“One of our major concerns is background particles that can mimic the dark matter signature in our detectors.” — Jodi Cooley

SMU physicist Jodi Cooley is a member of the international scientific team that will use a powerful new tool to understand one of the biggest mysteries of modern physics.

The U.S. Department of Energy has approved funding and start of construction for SuperCDMS SNOLAB, a $34 million experiment designed to detect dark matter.

SuperCDMS will begin operations in the early 2020s to hunt for hypothetical dark matter particles called weakly interacting massive particles, or WIMPs.

“Understanding the nature of dark matter is one of the most important scientific puzzles in particle astrophysics today,” said Cooley, an associate professor of experimental particle physics. “The experiment will have unprecedented sensitivity to dark matter particles that are hypothesized to have very low mass and interact very rarely. So they are extremely challenging to detect. This challenge has required us to develop cutting edge detectors.”

Cooley is one of 111 scientists from 26 institutions in the SuperCDMS collaboration. SMU graduate students on the experiment include Matt Stein (Ph.D. ’18) and Dan Jardin; and also previously Hang Qiu (Ph.D. ’17).

Physicists are searching for dark matter because although it makes up the bulk of the universe it remains a mystery. They theorize that dark matter could be composed of dark matter particles, with WIMPs a top contender for the title.

If dark matter WIMP particles exist, they would barely interact with their environment and fly right through regular matter. However, every so often, they could collide with an atom of our visible world, and dark matter researchers are looking for these rare interactions.

The SuperCDMS experiment will be the world’s most sensitive for detecting the relatively light WIMPs.

Cooley and her students in the SMU Department of Physics have been working with Washington-based Pacific Northwest National Laboratory on the challenge of background control and material selection for the experiment’s WIMP detectors.

Understanding background signals in the experiment is a major challenge for the detection of the faint WIMP signals.

“One of our major concerns is background particles that can mimic the dark matter signature in our detectors,” Cooley said. “As such, the experiment is constructed from radiopure materials that are carefully characterized through a screening and assay before they are selected.”

The SMU research team also has performed simulations of background particles in the detectors.

“Doing this helps inform the design of the experiment shield,” Cooley said. “We want to select the right materials to use in construction of the experiment. For example, materials that are too high in radioactivity will produce background particles that might produce fake dark matter signals in our detectors. We are extremely careful to use materials that block background particles. We also take great care that the material we use to hold the detectors in place — copper — is very radiopure.”

The experiment will be assembled and operated within the existing Canadian laboratory SNOLAB – 6,800 feet underground inside a nickel mine near the city of Sudbury. That’s the deepest underground laboratory in North America.

The experiment’s detectors will be protected from high-energy particles, called cosmic radiation, which can create the unwanted background signals that Cooley’s team wants to prevent.

SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be 50 times more sensitive than predecessor
Scientists know that visible matter in the universe accounts for only 15 percent of all matter. The rest is the mysterious substance called dark matter.

Due to its gravitational pull on regular matter, dark matter is a key driver for the evolution of the universe, affecting the formation of galaxies like our Milky Way. It therefore is fundamental to our very own existence.

The SuperCDMS SNOLAB experiment will be at least 50 times more sensitive than its predecessor, exploring WIMP properties that can’t be probed by other experiments.

The search will be done using silicon and germanium crystals, in which the collisions would trigger tiny vibrations. However, to measure the atomic jiggles, the crystals need to be cooled to less than minus 459.6 degrees Fahrenheit — a fraction of a degree above absolute zero temperature.

The ultra-cold conditions give the experiment its name: Cryogenic Dark Matter Search, or CDMS. The prefix “Super” indicates an increased sensitivity compared to previous versions of the experiment.

Experiment will measure “fingerprints” left by dark matter
The collisions would also produce pairs of electrons and electron deficiencies that move through the crystals, triggering additional atomic vibrations that amplify the signal from the dark matter collision. The experiment will be able to measure these “fingerprints” left by dark matter with sophisticated superconducting electronics.

Besides Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, two other Department of Energy national labs are involved in the project.

SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in California is managing the construction project. SLAC will provide the experiment’s centerpiece of initially four detector towers, each containing six crystals in the shape of oversized hockey pucks. SLAC built and tested a detector prototype. The first tower could be sent to SNOLAB by the end of 2018.

Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory is working on the experiment’s intricate shielding and cryogenics infrastructure.

“Our experiment will be the world’s most sensitive for relatively light WIMPs,” said Richard Partridge, head of the SuperCDMS group at the Kavli Institute for Particle Astrophysics and Cosmology, a joint institute of SLAC and Stanford University. “This unparalleled sensitivity will create exciting opportunities to explore new territory in dark matter research.”

Close-knit network of strong partners is crucial to success
Besides SMU, a number of U.S. and Canadian universities also play key roles in the experiment, working on tasks ranging from detector fabrication and testing to data analysis and simulation. The largest international contribution comes from Canada and includes the research infrastructure at SNOLAB.

“We’re fortunate to have a close-knit network of strong collaboration partners, which is crucial for our success,” said Project Director Blas Cabrera from KIPAC. “The same is true for the outstanding support we’re receiving from the funding agencies in the U.S. and Canada.”

Funding is from the DOE Office of Science, $19 million, the National Science Foundation, $12 million, and the Canada Foundation for Innovation, $3 million.

SuperCDMS to search for dark matter in entirely new region
“Together we’re now ready to build an experiment that will search for dark matter particles that interact with normal matter in an entirely new region,” said SuperCDMS spokesperson Dan Bauer, Fermilab.

SuperCDMS SNOLAB will be the latest in a series of increasingly sensitive dark matter experiments. The most recent version, located at the Soudan Mine in Minnesota, completed operations in 2015.

”The project has incorporated lessons learned from previous CDMS experiments to significantly improve the experimental infrastructure and detector designs for the experiment,” said SLAC’s Ken Fouts, project manager for SuperCDMS SNOLAB. “The combination of design improvements, the deep location and the infrastructure support provided by SNOLAB will allow the experiment to reach its full potential in the search for low-mass dark matter.” — SLAC National Laboratory; and Margaret Allen, SMU

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WFAA Verify: Is West Texas sinking?

A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”

WFAA-TV Channel 8’s Verify journalist David Schechter covered the phenomenon of the ground sinking at alarming rates in West Texas, according to the research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences.

The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that discovered decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.

Schechter’s WFAA ABC report, “Verify: Is West Texas sinking?” aired April 18, 2018.

Lu and Kim reported their findings in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, in the article “Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.”

The researchers analyzed satellite radar images that were made public by the European Space Agency, and supplemented that with oil activity data from the Railroad Commission of Texas.

The study is among the first of its kind to identify small-scale deformation signals over a vast region by drawing from big data sets spanning a number of years and then adding supplementary information.

The research is supported by the NASA Earth Surface and Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at SMU.

An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

Watch the WFAA Verify news segment.

EXCERPT:

By David Schechter
WFAA-TV Verify
A new research report, from Southern Methodist University and funded by NASA, found a “…large swath of West Texas oil patch is heaving and sinking at alarming rates.”

To find out if West Texas is sinking, first I’m going to the guy who wrote the report, Dr. Zhong Lu. He’s a geophysicist who studies the earth using satellites.

By shooting a radar beam from space — like a measuring stick — a satellite can calculate elevation changes down to the centimeter. Lu did that over a 4000 square mile area.

“This area is sinking at half meter per year,” Dr. Lu says.

That’s more than a foot-and-a-half. Lu says, that’s alarming because that much change to the earth’s surface might normally take millions of years.

One of the images in his reports shows an area of sinking earth, near Wink, TX from 2011. Five years later, the satellite shows the sunken area had spread almost 240%.

“In this area that you are studying, is oil and gas the cause of the sinking?” I ask.

“Related to the oil and gas activities,” he says.

“Oil and gas activity is causing the sinking in West Texas?” I clarify.

“Yes,” he says.

Watch the WFAA Verify news segment.

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SMU students share their research at SMU Research Day 2018

SMU Research Day 2018 featured posters and abstracts from 160 student entrants who have participated this academic year in faculty-led research, pursued student-led projects, or collaborated on team projects with graduate students and faculty scientists.

SMU strongly encourages undergraduate students to pursue research projects as an important component of their academic careers, while mentored or working alongside SMU graduate students and faculty.

Students attack challenging real-world problems, from understanding the world’s newest particle, the Higgs Boson, or preparing mosasaur fossil bones discovered in Angola, to hunting for new chemical compounds that can fight cancer using SMU’s high performance ManeFrame supercomputer.

A highlight for student researchers is SMU Research Day, organized and sponsored by the Office of Research and Graduate Studies and which was held this year on March 28-29 in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center.

The event gives students the opportunity to foster communication between students in different disciplines, present their work in a professional setting, and share the outstanding research conducted at SMU.

Find out the winners of the poster session from the SMU Office of Graduate Studies.

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The Guardian: Texas sinkholes — oil and gas drilling increases threat, scientists warn

Ground rising and falling in region that has been ‘punctured like a pin cushion’ since the 1940s, new study finds.

The Guardian and other news outlets covered the West Texas sinkhole and ground movement research of SMU geophysicists Zhong Lu, professor, Shuler-Foscue Chair, and Jin-Woo Kim research scientist, both in the Roy M. Huffington Department of Earth Sciences at SMU.

The Dedman College researchers are co-authors of a new analysis using satellite radar images that shows decades of oil production activity in West Texas have destabilized localities in an area of about 4,000 square miles populated by small towns, roadways and a vast network of oil and gas pipelines and storage tanks.

An earlier study by the researchers revealed significant ground movement of two giant sinkholes near Wink, Texas. The SMU geophysicists found that the movement suggests the two existing holes are expanding, and new ones are forming as nearby subsidence occurs at an alarming rate.

The Guardian article by journalist Tom Dart was published March 27, 2018, “Texas sinkholes: oil and gas drilling increases threat, scientists warn.”

Other coverage includes articles by Forbes, Tech Times, Phys.org, Ecowatch, Fox San Antonio, The Dallas Morning News and the Texas Tribune.

Others include EarthSky.org, Live Science, KERA News, San Antonio Express, Houston Chronicle, Science Daily, The Energy Mix, Digital Journal, Homeland Security News Wire and the Science Bulletin.

Lu is world-renowned for leading scientists in InSAR applications, short for a technique called interferometric synthetic aperture radar, to detect surface changes that aren’t visible to the naked eye. Lu is a member of the Science Definition Team for the dedicated U.S. and Indian NASA-ISRO InSAR mission, set for launch in 2020 to study hazards and global environmental change.

InSAR accesses a series of images captured by a read-out radar instrument mounted on the orbiting satellite Sentinel-1A. Sentinel-1A was launched in April 2014 as part of the European Union’s Copernicus program.

Lu and Kim reported their latest findings in the Nature publication Scientific Reports, in the article “Association between localized geohazards in West Texas and human activities, recognized by Sentinel-1A/B satellite radar imagery.”

Lu and Kim reported the earlier findings in the scientific journal Remote Sensing, in the article “Ongoing deformation of sinkholes in Wink, Texas, observed by time-series Sentinel-1A SAR Interferometry.”

The research is supported by the U.S. Geological Survey Land Remote Sensing Program, the NASA Earth Surface & Interior Program, and the Shuler-Foscue Endowment at Southern Methodist University.

Read the full story.

EXCERPT:

By Tom Dart
The Guardian
Oil and gas activity is contributing to alarming land movements and a rising threat of sinkholes across a huge swath of west Texas, a new study suggests.

According to geophysicists from Southern Methodist University, the ground is rising and falling in a region that has been “punctured like a pin cushion with oil wells and injection wells since the 1940s”.

There were nearly 297,000 oil wells in Texas as of last month, according to the state regulator. Many are in the Permian Basin, described in a Bloomberg article last September as the “world’s hottest oil patch”.

But the Southern Methodist report warns of unstable land and the threat of sinkholes.

“These hazards represent a danger to residents, roads, railroads, levees, dams, and oil and gas pipelines, as well as potential pollution of ground water,” Zhong Lu, a professor, said in a statement.

Wink – a tiny town 400 miles west of Dallas best known as the childhood home of the singer Roy Orbison – attracted national headlines in 2016 when the same scientists warned that the land between two expanding sinkholes a mile apart was deteriorating, risking the formation of more sinkholes or even the creation of a colossal single hole.

Injection of wastewater and carbon dioxide increases pore pressure in rocks, a likely cause of uplift. Lu told the Guardian that cracks and corrosion from ageing wells may help explain the sinking.

A “subsidence bowl” near one of the Wink sinkholes has sunk at a rate of more than 15.5in a year, probably as a result of water leaks through abandoned wells causing salt layers to dissolve, the report found. Elsewhere, a lake formed after 2003 as a result of sinking ground and rising water.

Read the full story.