Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Sustainable Critical Minerals: Mining, Production, And Legacy, Joel G. Burken, Heileen Hsu-Kim, Mariam Al-Lami, Hunter W. Schroer, Scott Banta, Om Parkash Dhankher, Kwame Awuah-Offei, Lana Alagha

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Hold Paramount The Health, Safety, And Welfare Of The Public And The Planet, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Triangulating Primary Sources, Professional Judgement, And Llm-Generated Summaries: Educating Nurses In An Ai-First World, Sarah Oerther, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

A Transdisciplinary Approach To Advancing Water Security And Public Health: The “Nurse + Engineer” Model For Achieving Sustainability In Wash Systems Using Community-Based Participatory Research, Daniel B. Oerther, Sarah Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Human health is linked to the health of the environment, a concept referred to as planetary health. As environmental challenges become increasingly complex, single-disciplinary approaches are insufficient to achieve sustainable solutions. This article presents a transdisciplinary framework, termed the "Nurse + Engineer" model, as a novel methodology for addressing complex problems at the nexus of environmental engineering and public health. The model integrates the technical design and systems-level thinking of environmental engineering with the community-based, patient-centered care of nursing. This work details the key lessons learned from the retrospective application of this framework to a series of multi-year, community-based participatory …

Environmental Engineers Develop Solutions To Problems Of Planetary Health: The Legacy Of Professor P. Aarne Vesilind, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The principal ethical obligation of the engineering profession, to "hold paramount the health, safety, and welfare of the public," has been challenged for decades. Professor P. Aarne Vesilind identified two primary deficiencies: an anthropocentric bias that values nature only instrumentally and the use of non-mandatory, aspirational language for environmental protection, which resulted in the exclusion of enforceable environmental canons. This paper argues that two recent developments provide a comprehensive response to Vesilind's recommendations for engineering ethics. First, the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics has redefined environmental engineering as "developing solutions to problems of planetary health." Second, Oerther proposed a …

Metagenomic Polymorphic Toxin Effector And Immunity Profiling Predicts Microbiome Development And Disease-Related Dysbiosis, Hunter W. Schroer, Francesco Beghini, Juan Antonio Raygoza Garay, Nicholas A. Christakis, Dustin E. Bosch

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Bacteria use antagonistic interbacterial weapons, such as polymorphic toxin secretion systems (TSS), to compete for niches in the human gut microbiome. We hypothesized that TSS influence gut microbiome development and disease-related dysbiosis. We developed a bioinformatic marker gene approach (PolyProf) to quantify TSS including ~200 effector and immunity genes and applied it to ~15,000 publicly available human metagenomes. PolyProf alpha and beta diversity readily distinguished 12 different human disease states and enabled the construction of highly accurate linear regression classifier machine learning models. Elastic net machine learning models integrating bacterial taxonomy with PolyProf had strong predictive value for 12 disease …

Draft Genome Sequences Of Four Phosphate-Solubilizing Microbes Of The Family Burkholderiaceae Isolated From Tailings From The Former Pea Ridge Mine In Washington County, Mo, Usa, Prince Oppong Amoh, Abiodun E. Idowu, Elizabeth R. Grube, Melanie R. Mormile, Hunter W. Schroer

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

We present draft genome sequences of four Gram-negative phosphate-solubilizing microbes isolated from Pea Ridge Mine tailings in Missouri, USA. Belonging to the family Burkholderiaceae, these isolates exhibit a phosphate-mineral-dissolving phenotype in liquid and solid cultures. Genome sizes span 5.6–9.7 Mb, with GC contents of 61.6%–67.0%.

Treatment Intensification Of Digester Dewatering Sidestreams Via Pilot- And Demonstration-Scale Revolving Algal Biofilms At Municipal Water Resource Recovery Facilities, Audrey E. Kocher, Hunter W. Schroer, Christopher A. Marks, Craig L. Just

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

As water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs) pursue decarbonization, the treatment of concentrated side streams from anaerobic digestion offers a critical opportunity to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. This study evaluated the intensification potential of revolving algal biofilms (RAB) for side stream nutrient removal via partial nitrification at pilot- and demonstration-scales. RAB systems were deployed at municipal WRRFs in Boulder and Iowa City, treating real dewatering side streams across a range of ammonium (NH4⁺–N) surface area loading rates (SALR) reaching up to 196 g N m^–2d^–2. The results demonstrated that RAB systems can …

Hydraulic Connectivity And Hydrochemistry Influence Microbial Community Structure In Agriculturally Affected Alluvial Aquifers In The Midwestern United States, Hunter W. Schroer, Kendra Markland, Fangqiong Ling, Craig L. Just

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Alluvial aquifers can provide ecosystem services and drinking water but much remains unknown about human effects on aquifer microbiomes. Therefore, we used amplicon sequencing and hydro chemical characterization to pair microbial communities with environmental conditions across 37 alluvial aquifer wells. The study region spanned eastern Iowa and southern Minnesota (USA) and contained a combination of drinking water and monitoring wells. In terms of microbial ecology, dominant phyla across the wells included Proteobacteria, Bacteroidota, Patescibacteria, Planctomycetota, and Nitrospirota. Tritium, an indicator of infiltration and surface water influence, was the highest correlated variable with the Shannon index (α-diversity) by the Spearman rank …

Every Publication Needs An Author Verified Tl;Dr Statement, Sarah Oerther, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Wildfires On The Mental And Physical Health Of School-Age Children In North America: A Scoping Review, Sarah Oerther, Sarah Manspeaker, Alison Wix, Daniel Oerther, Carmen Marsit

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Background: Wildfires are occurring more often and with greater intensity, leading to longer and harsher fire seasons. As a result, children are more frequently exposed to wildfire smoke, which increases their risk of mental and physical health effects. Purpose: The purpose of our scoping review is to explore the current literature on what is known about the direct and indirect impacts of wildfires on the mental and physical health of school-age children in North America (5 to 18-year-olds). Methods: A health sciences librarian-assisted literature search, with input from the research team, was performed. Results: A total of 16 studies were …

Examining The Oxidation States Of Metals In Aerosols Emitted By Electronic Cigarettes, Kashala Fabrice Kapiamba, Stephen Yaw Owusu, Yangtao Wu, Yue-Wern Huang, Yi Jiang, Yang Wang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Electronic cigarettes (ECs) emit many toxic substances, including metals, that can pose a threat to users and the environment. The toxicity of the emitted metals depends on their oxidation states. Hence, this study examines the oxidation states of metals observed in EC aerosols. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy analysis of the filters that collected EC aerosols identified the oxidation states of five primary metals (based on surface sample analysis), including chromium(III) (close to 100%) under low power setting while a noticeable amount of chromium(VI) (15%) at higher power settings of the EC, and copper(II) (100%), zinc(II) (100%), nickel(II) (100%), lead(II) (65%), and …

Phytoremediation Of Nonpoint Source Pollution, Tylor Cheatham

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Stormwater can bring high concentrations of nutrients into urban ponds resulting in eutrophic conditions and subsequent algal blooms. These 91 blooms can lead to hypoxic water that will ultimately cause fish deaths and loss of recreation. Often, the majority of urban stormwater flows into local ponds through an inlet, which provides a target area for nutrient removal methods. One method being explored by researchers is the use of floating treatment wetlands (FTWs). FTWs are floating mats with plants anchored to them, allowing the roots to be suspended in the water column for nutrient removal. Our previous research focused on optimizing …

Water Quality Profiles In Two Rolla Ponds: Implications For Nutrient Management, Tylor Cheatham

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems is a growing global issue due to anthropogenic inputs. One of the main issues associated with eutrophication is fish death. Eutrophic waters can lead to algal blooms, resulting in hypoxic conditions where there is not enough oxygen to support the oxygen-breathing organisms like fish. This can happen in lakes or where rivers meet the ocean. These hypoxic conditions are a concern for lake managers and people who make a living fishing in waters that are now experiencing fish death. One method to target the oxygen levels in lakes is adding aerators. Because of how dynamic ecosystems …

Analysis Of 1,4 Dioxane In Plants, Briannah Spisak

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Missouri S& T collaborates with University of Iowa on projects to identify the presence of 1,4 Dioxane in tree core samples. The research group will replicate the situation in smaller reactors on campus. The following materials will be used: conetainers, willow cuttings, biochar, and perlite. The plants will be dosed with 1,4-Dioxane and analyzed with Gas ChromatographyMass Spectrometry (GCMS). Plant growth and health will be monitored and related to growth conditions and pollutant exposure. Larger mesocosms will be dosed over the summer and will have in-planta analysis as well. To replicate the field site, exact biochar and perlite from the …

Floating Treatment Wetlands For Zinc Phytoremediation, Grace Duong

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Stormwater pollution from urban and mining areas can pose challenges to downstream waters because of zinc contamination. Floating treatment wetlands (FTWs) have demonstrated the ability to mitigate nutrient and metal contamination. To investigate the effectiveness of native Missouri plants in FTWs, fourteen 10-liter mesocosms were constructed, dosed with nutrients, and placed in a greenhouse. Four mesocosms acted as controls, five contained pickerelweed, and five contained palm sedge. After one week of acclimation, mesocosms were dosed with ZnCl2 in concentrations of 0, 5, and 10 mg/L of zinc. Objectives of this study include characterizing zinc immobilization and assessing both pickerelweed and …

Amendments For Enhanced Remediation Of 1.4 Dioxane And Advances In Application Of Phytoforensics, Kaylee Denbo, Briannah Spisak, Joel Gerard Burken

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Missouri S& T collaborates with University of Iowa on projects to identify the presence of 1,4 Dioxane in tree core samples. The research group will replicate the situation in smaller reactors on campus. The following materials will be used: conetainers, willow cuttings, biochar, and perlite. The plants will be dosed with 1,4-Dioxane and analyzed with Gas ChromatographyMass Spectrometry (GCMS). Plant growth and health will be monitored and related to growth conditions and pollutant exposure. Larger mesocosms will be dosed over the summer and will have in-planta analysis as well. To replicate the field site, exact biochar and perlite from the …

Bioaerosol Size As A Potential Determinant Of Airborne E. Coli Viability Under Ultraviolet Germicidal Irradiation And Ozone Disinfection, Weixing Hao, Yue-Wern Huang, Yang Wang

Biological Sciences Faculty Research & Creative Works

Ultraviolet germicidal irradiation (UVGI) and ozone disinfection are crucial methods for mitigating the airborne transmission of pathogenic microorganisms in high-risk settings, particularly with the emergence of respiratory viral pathogens such as SARS-CoV-2 and avian influenza viruses. This study quantitatively investigates the influence of UVGI and ozone on the viability of E. coli in bioaerosols, with a particular focus on how E. coli viability depends on the size of the bioaerosols, a critical factor that determines deposition patterns within the human respiratory system and the evolution of bioaerosols in indoor environments. This study used a controlled small-scale laboratory chamber where E. …

Wearable Mxene-Graphene Sensing Of Influenza And Sars-Cov-2 Virus In Air And Breath: From Lab To Clinic, Yanxiao Li, Zhekun Peng, Jiaoli Li, Congjie Wei, Shangbin Liu, Weixing Hao, Huanyu Cheng, Casey Burton, Yang Wang, Yue-Wern Huang, Chang Soo Kim, Fang Yao Stephen Hou, Donghyun (Bill) Kim, Chenglin Wu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The rapidly expanding severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and its variants demand a continuous monitoring method through portable and wearable devices. Utilizing the rich surface chemistry and high chemical-to-electrical signal conversion of 2D MXene-graphene heterostructure thin films, a field-effect-transistor (FET) sensor, which has a flexible substrate to be assembled onto the mask and combines with a Bluetooth system for wireless transmission is developed, to detect the influenza and SARS-CoV-2 viruses in air and breath. At first, the developed sensors are examined in the laboratory through direct contact with sensing targets in solution form. The results show a low …

Advancing Occupational Health In Mining: Investigating Low-Cost Sensors Suitability For Improved Coal Dust Exposure Monitoring, Mirza Muhammad Zaid, Nana Amoah, Ashish Kakoria, Yang Wang, Guang Xu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Exposure to coal dust in underground coal mines poses significant health risks to workers, including the development of diseases such as coal workers' pneumoconiosis and silicosis. Current available methods for monitoring coal dust exposure are expensive and time-consuming, necessitating the exploration of alternative approaches. Low-cost light scattering particulate matter sensors offer a promising solution, and its development in recent years has demonstrated some success in air quality monitoring However, its application in sensing coal particles is limited partially due to that the operating condition in a mine is different than the atmosphere. Thus, the objective of this paper is to …

Development Of A Particulate Matter Sensor Network For Air Quality Monitoring In Indoor Settings And In Mines, Abdulrahman Bani

Masters Theses

"The importance of indoor air quality (IAQ), especially concerning particulate matter (PM), has become increasingly recognized due to its substantial impact on public health. Individuals spend a significant portion of their time indoors, where PM concentrations can exceed that of outdoors, leading to potential adverse health effects ranging from immediate irritation to long-term respiratory and cardiovascular diseases. The dynamic nature of indoor environments, combined with the diversity of PM sources, presents considerable challenges for effective IAQ monitoring and management. Traditional approaches to IAQ assessment often fall short, lacking the granularity and immediacy required to address these challenges adequately.

This abstract …

A Network Of Low-Cost Multi-Pollutant Air Quality Sensors For Evaluating Fine-Scale Exposure Disparity In Twin Cities, Mn, P M Varuni Abhayaratne

Masters Theses

"Poor air quality is detrimental to health and is a leading environmental risk factor for early death globally. The massive scale of urbanization and population growth has led urban air quality to become a global concern as the release of air pollutants into the atmosphere continues to increase. Air quality has traditionally been monitored using reference-grade monitoring stations that are expensive and sparsely distributed. Low-cost sensors can complement existing regulatory networks to provide more spatial detail, capturing fine-scale variations. This study investigates spatiotemporal pollutant patterns, exposure disparities and environmental justice using data collected from a two-year (2019-2021) deployment of a …

Rapid-Throughput Analysis Of 1,4-Dioxane In Plants By Centrifugal Sampling And Phytoforensic Analysis For Site Delineation And Assessing Enhanced Rhizodegradation, Anthony Eberechukwu Oha

Masters Theses

"Owing to its broad use and environmental persistence, 1,4-dioxane (dioxane) poses a notable threat to public health and is recalcitrant to traditional remedial systems. Dioxane moves readily in an aqueous environment and is an emerging contaminant in drinking water, surface water, groundwater, and wastewater. The extent of dioxane in the biosphere is also difficult to delineate, particularly in the subsurface. Phytoremediation has demonstrated the potential for dioxane groundwater remediation. Recent findings indicate that plant-microbial symbiosis may be more advantageous for limiting potential transport and transfer into plant tissues and the atmosphere. Bioaugmentation of the rhizosphere paired with soil amendments has …

Wind Flow Characteristics Of Multi-Vortex Tornadoes And Their Wind Effects On Residential Houses, Yi Zhao

Doctoral Dissertations

"Tornadoes strike the USA very frequently, with an average of 1200 reports per year, and the average annual tornado-induced property loss has reached $10B. The devastation from recent tornadoes have prompted a renewed interest in better understanding tornado dynamics, their interactions with the built environment, and the performance of civil structures during tornadoes. In the past, the wind effects caused by single-vortex tornadoes have been widely studied, while the multi-vortex tornadoes were rarely considered. In fact, many previous deadly, costly tornadoes involved multiple vortices. Therefore, it is important to understand the wind flow characteristics of multi-vortex tornadoes in order to …

Ds-Menet For The Classification Of Citrus Disease, Xuyao Liu, Yaowen Hu, Guoxiong Zhou, Weiwei Cai, Mingfang He, Jialei Zhan, Yahui Hu, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Affected by various environmental factors, citrus will frequently suffer from diseases during the growth process, which has brought huge obstacles to the development of agriculture. This paper proposes a new method for identifying and classifying citrus diseases. Firstly, this paper designs an image enhancement method based on the MSRCR algorithm and homomorphic filtering algorithm optimized by Laplacian (HFLF-MS) to highlight the disease characteristics of citrus. Secondly, we designed a new neural network DS-MENet based on the DenseNet-121 backbone structure. In DS-MENet, the regular convolution in Dense Block is replaced with depthwise separable convolution, which reduces the network parameters. The ReMish …

Mdam-Drnet: Dual Channel Residual Network With Multi-Directional Attention Mechanism In Strawberry Leaf Diseases Detection, Tingjing Liao, Ruoli Yang, Peirui Zhao, Wenhua Zhou, Mingfang He, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The growth of strawberry plants is affected by a variety of strawberry leaf diseases. Yet, due to the complexity of these diseases' spots in terms of color and texture, their manual identification requires much time and energy. Developing a more efficient identification method could be imperative for improving the yield and quality of strawberry crops. To that end, here we proposed a detection framework for strawberry leaf diseases based on a dual-channel residual network with a multi-directional attention mechanism (MDAM-DRNet). (1) In order to fully extract the color features from images of diseased strawberry leaves, this paper constructed a color …

Assessing Phenotypic Response Of Plants Irrigated With Municipal Solid Waste Landfill Leachate Using Computer Visualization, Rahel Pommerenke

Masters Theses

"Most solid waste collected in the US is disposed of in sanitary landfills, which have a lingering legacy of unintended negative impacts on the environment. Landfill design and operation are expensive, prone to multiple failure modes, and often do not address human and ecological risks presented by contaminants of emerging concern. A notable and common failure mechanism is leachate production. Moisture in the waste mixes with infiltrating water to form wastewater that must be collected and treated prior to discharge. Recycling leachate at landfills by recirculating it onto vegetated landfill covers relies on the evapotranspiration potential of plants to reduce …

Ecological Restoration Of Lead/Zinc/Copper Mine Tailings: Phytomanagement And Amendment Strategies To Enhance Substrate Functionality And Biomass Production, Mariam K. Al-Lami

Doctoral Dissertations

“The extreme physiochemical characteristics of mine tailings inhibit microbial processes and natural plant growth. Consequently, vast and numerous tailings sites remain barren for decades and highly susceptible to wind and water erosion. Phytostabilization is a cost-effective and ecologically productive remediation approach; however, tailings revegetation is generally challenging and must often be assisted with appropriate soil amendments. Amendments applied individually in greenhouse studies discussed herein revealed notable improvement in bioenergy crops growth only with biosolids treatments. Recalcitrant carbon amendments (biochar and humus) showed notable impact only on tailings physichochemical and hydraulic properties. Nevertheless, biosolids may not support sustained vegetation due to …

Mrda-Mgfsnet: Network Based On A Multi-Rate Dilated Attention Mechanism And Multi-Granularity Feature Sharer For Image-Based Butterflies Fine-Grained Classification, Maopeng Li, Guoxiong Zhou, Weiwei Cai, Jiayong Li, Mingxuan Li, Mingfang He, Yahui Hu, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Aiming at solving the problems of high background complexity of some butterfly images and the difficulty in identifying them caused by their small inter-class variance, we propose a new fine-grained butterfly classification architecture, called Network based on Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism and Multi-granularity Feature Sharer (MRDA-MGFSNet). First, in this network, in order to effectively identify similar patterns between butterflies and suppress the information that is similar to the butterfly's features in the background but is invalid, a Multi-rate Dilated Attention Mechanism (MRDA) with a symmetrical structure which assigns different weights to channel and spatial features is designed. Second, fusing the …

Credibility And Divination In The Age Of Reason, Jessi Schoolcraft

Undergraduate Research Conference at Missouri S&T

Credibility is vital for comprehending the world around us. This is as true today as it was in the 18th century when Diderot and d'Alembert were producing France's first Encyclopédie. Translating articles from this body of knowledge provides insight into public perceptions of credibility. Designed to collect and share knowledge, the Encyclopédie required extensive collaboration among experts and editors. Article topics ranged from philosophy to the arts to physical science. What made these articles credible? Was it the oversight of well-known editors, the use of already verified sources, or the seal of approval from the State? Or was it a …