EPICS Lakota: Promoting Food Sovereignty on Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

EPICS Team Lakota was started as a way for students to help promote food sovereignty and combat loss of cultural knowledge as felt by the residents of Pine Ridge Reservation, which is located in one of the poorest counties in the United States and is a food desert. In partnership with EPICS students at Oglala Lakota College (OLC) and South Dakota School of Mines (SDSM), students at Purdue came up with the idea of putting up a greenhouse on the Rapid City Campus of OLC. This greenhouse was meant not as a direct solution to food scarcity, but as a blueprint to be implemented across the reservation in the future. The greenhouse will be a resource for students, teachers, residents, and community elders to come together and preserve the knowledge of culturally significant plants and herbs, as well as a place to learn how to grow the fresh produce that is so hard to find on the reservation. Students at all schools worked together to figure out the optimal size and construction of the greenhouse, and also worked with residents to determine what should be grown and how to meet the needs of each plant. Consideration was given to the sustainability of the project as this was important to the Lakota stakeholders, including ways to lighten the load on any water and electric utilities. The greenhouse was also designed to be ADA accessible, so that community elders and all who needed such accommodations would have no trouble taking part. Throughout the project, students kept in contact with each other and the affected community. This continuous communication both aided and impeded the progress of the project. Care was taken at each point in the project to make sure that the final deliverable was the most effective it could be. This paper will explore the successes of the project and how the students addressed concerns as they arose.

An avian femur from the Late Cretaceous of Vega Island, Antarctic Peninsula: removing the record of cursorial landbirds from the Mesozoic of Antarctica

In 2006, a partial avian femur (South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM) 78247) from the Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Sandwich Bluff Member of the López de Bertodano Formation of Sandwich Bluff on Vega Island of the northern Antarctic Peninsula was briefly reported as that of a cariamiform—a clade that includes extant and volant South American species and many extinct flightless and cursorial species. Although other authors have since rejected this taxonomic assignment, SDSM 78247 had never been the subject of a detailed description, hindering a definitive assessment of its affinities. Here we provide the first comprehensive description, illustration, and comparative study of this specimen. Comparison of characters that may be assessed in this femur with those of avian taxa scored in published character matrices refutes the inclusion of SDSM 78247 within Cariamiformes, instead supporting its assignment to a new, as-yet unnamed large-bodied species within the genus Vegavis, and therefore its referral to a clade of semiaquatic anseriforms. Important character states diagnostic of Vegavis + Polarornis include strong craniocaudal bowing of the femoral shaft, the presence of a distinct fossa just proximal to the fibular trochlea, and the broad and flat shape of the patellar sulcus. Referral to Vegavis is based on the presence of a distinctive proximocaudal fossa and distolateral scar. This genus was previously known only from Vegavis iaai, a smaller-bodied taxon from the same locality and stratigraphic unit. Our reassignment of SDSM 78247 to Vegavis sp. removes the record of cariamiform landbirds from the Antarctic Cretaceous.

Normalized Hail Particle Size Distributions from the T-28 Storm-Penetrating Aircraft

Hail and graupel are linked to lightning production and are important components of cloud evolution. Hail can also cause significant damage when it precipitates to the surface. The accurate prediction of the amount and location of hail and graupel and the effects on the other hydrometeor species depends upon the size distribution assumed. Here, we use ~310 km of in situ observations from flights of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology T-28 storm-penetrating aircraft to constrain the representation of the particle size distribution (PSD) of hail. The maximum ~1-km hail water content encountered was 9 g m−3. Optical probe PSD measurements are normalized using two-moment normalization relations to obtain an underlying exponential shape. By linking the two normalizing moments through a power law, a parameterization of the hail PSD is provided based on the hail water content only. Preliminary numerical weather simulations indicate that the new parameterization produces increased radar reflectivity relative to commonly used PSD representations.

Increasing Student Awareness of Non-Traditional Career Paths in Mechanical Engineering

This paper reports the effect of the curriculum changes in the Mechanical Engineering (ME) department at the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology (SDSM&T) in two freshman courses. Besides introducing fundamental concepts and principles for mechanical engineering, these courses utilize guest speaker sections to introduce career opportunities, and integrate marketing and corporate policy into engineering design projects. An engineering motivation survey and a career awareness questionnaire were developed and employed to better understand the impact of the new curriculum on students’ attitudes toward and desire to persist in Mechanical Engineering. Freshmen students’ intrinsic and extrinsic motivations and career awareness were assessed in pre- and post-tests at the beginning and the end of a semester. The results obtained showed that the introduction of the non-traditional career paths into the two courses students’ perceptions of the career options that ME graduates can pursue and showcased alternatives that proved to be more attractive to under-represented (female) students. Although the students spent less time in traditional engineering topics, their engineering self-efficacy was not diminished, and in fact, the students’ intrinsic motivation was significantly improved. Additionally, students perceived stronger inclusion in the ME program.