Darren Clabo, a scientist at the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology in Rapid City, is working with a national team to create the Fire Risk Estimation (known as FiRE) 2 tool, which uses satellite technology to alert fire managers when fuels are abnormally dry. It analyzes drought conditions, high-resolution fuel conditions, and precipitation conditions to produce a fire-danger assessment map that land managers and firefighters can monitor daily. (Rapid City Journal)
The Smithfield Foods meatpacking plant in Sioux Falls was fined more than $53,000 by the South Dakota Department of Environment and Natural Resources for violating its surface water discharge permit. The plant allowed too much ammonia to be discharged into the Big Sioux River and had two daily maximum fecal coliform violations and one daily maximum total suspended solids violation. (Argus Leader)
Sydney Bormann, a human biology major at South Dakota State University, received a summer American Society of Microbiology Undergraduate Research Fellowship to support her research on gut microbiota, with the goal of using gut bacteria to fight the growth of Salmonella. (Mitchell Republic)
Kory Anderson rebuilt an original Case 150 steam engine, the world’s largest steam engine, from the original boiler and debuted it at an Andover show. The tractor is 15 feet wide, 14 feet tall, and about 28 feet long, and it weighs about 75,000 pounds fully loaded. “The road locomotive was basically lost in history. I mean, none had survived over the last 100 years. All the nine that were built were eventually scrapped and so it was kind of lost in history until we recreated it and brought it back to life,” he said. (Rapid City Journal)
The University of South Dakota and the South Dakota School of Mines & Technology will soon offer an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering. (University of South Dakota)
The first of two large arrays of powerful light sensors that will be used in dark matter research arrived at the Sanford Underground Research Facility from Brown University. The equipment will be used to detect interactions of weakly interacting massive particles, thought to be a particle of dark matter. This detector will be the most sensitive ever built, 100 times more sensitive than the previous equipment used. (Brown University)
Two University of South Dakota physics professors, Guojian Wang and Dongming Mei, have been awarded a patent for a method of growing high-purity germanium crystals, which can be used in radiation or dark matter detectors. Their method has the potential to be used in smaller laboratory settings, making it more accessible to researchers. (University of South Dakota)
The Davis-Bahcall Scholar Program, a summer program in physics and engineering for high school seniors and college freshmen, is seeking applicants. The deadline is January 11, 2019. (South Dakota Department of Education)
SoDak Does Science 