Study and investigation are what is underway for this year’s annual Undergraduate Exposition. The theme is “Creating the Future: Exploration and Entrepreneurship @ Michigan Tech.” Students will present their Senior Design projects along with Undergraduate Research and Enterprise Team projects. A distinguished panel of judges made up of University faculty members and corporate representatives will critique the projects in three categories: abstracts, posters and presentations. Student participants from all engineering and science disciplines will compete for a wide range of cash prizes.

The goal of the Undergraduate Exposition is to provide an opportunity for students to present their research, design and independent study projects. Students will gain professional experience and build their resumes through direct exposure to real world problems and competitiveness. The Expo will not only serve as a means of showcasing the hard work of many of Michigan Tech's talented students, but also the quality of education that is afforded to Michigan Tech students because of the generous donations made by members of industry.

There have been several improvements made to this year’s competition. The Exposition has been expanded to include Senior Design and Enterprise Team projects. Projects will be judged within their respective classes - Undergraduate Research, Senior Design and Enterprise. Undergraduate Research participants will compete in three (3) categories - abstract, poster and presentation. The Enterprise teams will compete in the poster and presentation portion of the competition. Finally, Senior Design teams will compete amongst themselves for the best poster.

Many of the Enterprise Team projects to be displayed are sponsored by industry. Through sponsorship, industry is able to link up with the fresh, new engineering talent at Michigan Tech and contribute significantly to their education and the mission of the University. Members of industry and various academic department advisory boards will be on campus to view the various projects. The projects and posters will also be available for viewing by the campus and community throughout the day.

The Expo is a combined effort of the Department of Educational Opportunity and the College of Engineering. If you are curious as to how you can participate in next year’s Expo or would simply like more information surrounding the event, please contact Mary Raber at (906) 487-2005 or mraber@mtu.edu or Kevin J. Walker at (906) 487-2920 or kjwalker@mtu.edu . You may also contact Mary Raber utilizing the preceding information if you are interested in Michigan Tech’s Enterprise program. Enjoy your day as you witness America’s premier engineering students create the future.

This study addressed the bat species that occur in area copper mine shafts at the Quincy Mine in Hancock, Michigan. A comparison was made between composition, age, and sex distribution of the populations at the two mines. The study was completed to determine which species occur in local mines. This question is important for local and regional conservation and protection of native species.

Previously, little was known about the inhabitants of the mines and spring swarming and staging behaviors. The strongest limitation placed on this study was time, as it depended upon the emergence of the bats and the length of time allotted for this proposed research. This study was based on the hypothesis that species composition is quite similar in the two mine systems, with similar demographics for age and sex distribution. Bats were captured using mist-net techniques for five weeks following spring emergence from the mines. The bats were identified in the field and measurements were taken of the forearm, inner ear, calcar, and weight. The animals were also sexed and rough age estimates (first year young and adults) were taken. The bats were subsequently released.

Results thus far have indicated that at least three different species are utilizing the south mine shaft and one species is using the north mine shaft. All of the individuals that have been captured are male and adult. We predict that females will emerge later in the season as the temperatures continue to warm up and the insect population increases. This will provide enough forage for pregnant females that must consume large quantities of food to bear healthy young.

Recent research has concluded that Uranium is present in the aquifers of Keweenaw, Houghton, Baraga, Ontonagon, and Gogebic counties. The Western Upper Peninsula District Health Department has issued a drinking water advisory for these areas. Uranium is a radioactive element that could be harmful to humans and the ecosystem. It would be helpful to know what areas contain Uranium in the rock layers, the concentration of Uranium in these waters, and what the people can do to lessen their chances of ingesting the radioactive Uranium.

Ingesting water contaminated with uranium can result in kidney damage and may slightly increase the risk of cancer. The EPA maximum concentration level for Uranium in drinking water is 30 micrograms per liter. The private wells do not have to follow this guideline; however, a family concerned about uranium in their well water will have to pay money to have a water sample sent to a laboratory to get analyzed. It would therefore be beneficial to obtain the ability to test for Uranium concentrations in the area.

The Uranium deposits of the area are suspected to be of the supergene type. This means that the Uranium in igneous rocks was dissolved and transported to environments with reducing conditions. The Uranium appears to have been deposited in the Jacobsville sandstone. This sandstone is a 3000-foot sequence of quartzose, sandstone, silt stone, shale, and conglomerate.

There were two major areas of this project: reading and interpreting, and lab work and analysis. First, an understanding of why Uranium occurs naturally had to be obtained. From this information, an idea of where uranium concentrations are likely to be high was determined. The objective of the lab work is to develop a technique to measure Uranium levels in water. The University currently has no established way to measure Uranium levels in water. Using information provided by the EPA, a laboratory experiment was set up to examine the Uranium levels in water samples from the area. The lab results will then be analyzed and patterns in Uranium concentration can be determined which will then help locate areas where uranium concentrations are likely to be high.

Thus far, the initial lab work is still in progress. The procedure and methods of the lab experiment are still under development. Lab results have shown that the Uranium can be extracted, purified, and measured at very low concentrations reproducibly. The lab procedure needs to be altered to be more time efficient. Once the methods are established, water samples from the area will be analyzed and further conclusions about the Uranium concentration in the drinking water of Houghton, Baraga, Ontonagon, and Keweenaw counties can be developed.

Watershed studies involve copious amounts of spatially referenced data. These data come from a wide variety of sources and in a wide variety of formats. Watershed delineation, defining the boundary of a watershed, is an essential first step to any water quantity or quality study. Geographical information systems (GIS) are recently being considered as a tool for producing timely and accurate watershed delineations. GIS provides a method for the storage, management and quick retrieval of the data and offers the advantage of being compatible with modeling software used to model the hydrologic and hydrogeologic systems under study. This research project involves developing a protocol for employing GIS in the water-resource management assessments of the Keweenaw Bay Indian Community (KBIC). A GIS project is being developed for the analysis of the spatial hydrology of the local watersheds, determination of geographical implications of development near sensitive watershed features, and projections of the future conditions of the water supplies within the tribal boundary.

GIS combines spatial data and geographic locations in forms that can be processed analytically to calculate other information. For example, land-use and vegetation maps can be combined with climatic data (precipitation and temperature) to estimate the spatial variations in evapotranspiration. One of the primary operations of this project is delineating the watersheds within the tribal boundaries from digital elevation models (DEMs), a task that was formerly, and laboriously accomplished by manual tracings of topographic contour lines. Recent developments in GIS software extensions have reduced this task that previously took days to accomplish to less than an hour. Earlier versions of automatic delineating programs even required at least a few days to process the DEMs. Three different software extensions of ArcView, HYDRO 1.0, HYDRO 1.1 and CRWR-PrePro were tested to process the DEM, and delineate the Zeba Creek watershed in L’Anse Michigan. From the DEM input, each extension produced a flow direction and flow accumulation grid with which to perform the delineation. The neighboring cell that represents the direction of steepest decent from one cell determines flow direction. Flow accumulation is the sum of cells representing the drainage area. Inconsistencies within the DEM low relief topography and topographic lows with no outlet, were error sources for the HYDRO 1.0 and 1.1 extensions, resulting in inaccurate boundary delineations. The most recently developed CRWR-PrePro extension, not yet available commercially, integrates a digitized stream network into the DEM, thereby increasing the parametric inputs for performing the delineation and its accuracy without compromising time effectiveness. The CRWR resulted in a more accurate boundary delineation, but also required editing the stream input prior to processing which increased the amount of time for task completion.

The compatibility of this data is currently being tested with the Groundwater Modeling System (GMS) version 3.1 software. Once the GIS for the KBIC is complete, this data will be used, maintained and updated for the purpose of modeling and analyzing the hydrogeologic and hydrologic characteristics of their local watersheds. It will provide a valuable resource to the KBIC for sustainable water resource considerations in future community planning and development.