University of Arkansas

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The Graduate School

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Graduate School News Archive

UA Researchers Create Biodiesel Fuel from Chicken Fat
-- Posted by tfisher on Tuesday, November 29 2005

In the future, fat shaved off chicken breasts and other parts may power automobiles that emit less pollution.

Chemical engineering researchers associated with the Mack Blackwell Transportation Center at the University of Arkansas have developed an optimized method of converting chicken fat into biodiesel fuel. The novel project could lead to using chicken fat -- a plentiful, accessible and low-cost feed stock -- as an inexpensive supplement to petroleum-based diesel fuel.

"We're trying to expand the petroleum base," said Brian Mattingly, a graduate student in the UA Department of Chemical Engineering. "Five to 20 percent blending of biodiesel into petroleum-based diesel significantly reduces our dependence on foreign oil, and we're using a renewable resource. These are just a few of biodiesel's benefits."

For more information, go to http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/5890.htm

Two UA Grad Students Selected as Members of the Ivory-Billed Woodpecker Team
-- Posted by tfisher on Tuesday, November 15 2005

Two graduate students in the Fulbright College department of biological sciences, Jason Luscier and Amy Clifton, have been chosen as members of the ivory-billed woodpecker recovery team. Clifton will join the team for two weeks in December, while Luscier goes in March. The search has involved more than 50 people since 2004, when a kayaker caught sight of an ivory-billed woodpecker in the Cache River National Wildlife Refuge, an encounter that led to an extensive scientific search for the bird. Most had long given up hope for the ivory-bill, which had lost its habitat to intensive logging. But in Arkansas' Mississippi Delta, a swath of the Big Woods remains. The effort is being led by The Nature Conservancy and the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology. Researchers have collected evidence they believe confirms the existence of the magnificent ivory-bill. The bird has been spotted more than a dozen times by a team of experts and searchers. Seven credible sightings, along with other evidence - including video and possible recordings of the bird's distinctive double knock - have convinced scientists that in the woods of this swampy refuge, the ivory-bill woodpecker survives. To read more about the effort, go to http://www.birds.cornell.edu/ivory/

Simulations Show Liquid Water Could Exist on Mars
-- Posted by tfisher on Tuesday, November 8 2005

University of Arkansas researchers have become the first scientists to show that liquid water could exist for considerable times on the surface of Mars.
Julie Chittenden, a graduate student with the Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences, and Derek Sears, director of the Space Center and the W.M. Keck Professor of Planetary Sciences, will report their findings in an upcoming issue of the Geophysical Research Letters.
"These experiments will help us understand how water behaves on Mars," Chittenden said.

Researchers have debated whether or not liquid water could exist on the surface of Mars because of the low temperatures and pressures found on the planet. Based on previous experiments and hypotheses, scientists have speculated that pure water on the planet's surface would evaporate from solid to gas, bypassing the liquid phase, at the low pressures found on Mars - 7 millibars as opposed to about 1,013 millibars on Earth. However, the planet's surface sports features like gullies and channels that look as though they might have been created by the movement of liquid. Terrestrial experiments designed to simulate Mars-like conditions have been performed to help answer this question of whether or not liquid water exists on Mars, but until this point they have only been done with pure water at high pressures.
To read the full release, please go to http://dailyheadlines.uark.edu/5717.htm

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