Multimedia Reporting (Bradford-Noland)

The University of Kansas Aerospace Engineering Department is developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to be flown in Greenland and Antarctica. The Meridian will have a wingspan of 26.4 feet, and will be used for global warming-related research in coordination with the department’s Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets.

UAV Illustration
Courtesy: Rick Hale

The Meridian will carry a 100-pound ground penetrating radar system that tests the thickness of the polar ice sheets in the area. The UAV’s longest missions in Antarctica would be eight hours, covering about 1,000 miles. During flight, the radar system continually sends signals down through the ice, and records its depth along the way.

"Researchers are trying to study the flow of the ice sheets with global warming and see why some ice sheets seem to be flowing faster than others,” said Kai Siegele, graduate research assistant. By doing this aerial remote sensing, they're able to tell how fast the ice sheets are moving and hopefully discover why."

Current research for the center has been done by heavier radar systems in cold-weather ground vehicles and larger, piloted airplanes. Dr. David Downing, KU aerospace engineering professor said that a great advantage of an unmanned aircraft is that it can fly the exact pattern twice with much better accuracy than a person could.

“As a pilot, you’ve got to know where you are, one advantage of the autopilot system is that it can use GPS points to fly from coordinate to coordinate,” Downing said.

Dr. Richard Hale, KU aerospace engineering professor and co-head of the Meridian project explained that this is imperative because the radar system can only cover a strip of land at a time. Once it covers a strip, the plane will then turn and pass along another parallel track, much like a lawnmower would.

“We can overlay these images to get full, high-resolution imagery of the under surface of the ice,” Hale said.

Hale said that there are other advantages in using an unmanned air vehicle to do the job. The smaller plane means weight is drastically decreased, and fuel cost will go down.

“The bigger, piloted planes currently used in the project use over 10 times more fuel than our model,” Hale said.

Another big concern for the researchers is pilot and crew safety. Hale said the Meridian’s planned eight-hour radar missions; 1,000 feet above the ground, in dangerously cold weather can be too much for even an experienced pilot.

"An engine could fail, you could have bad weather all of the sudden and the plane could go down," Siegele said. "The risks could be injury, death and being stranded out on the ice."

The Meridian project started in 2004 with a $19 million grant from the National Science Foundation. The grant ends in 2009, but Hale and his team remain hopeful that they will be granted the possible five-year extension.

“We’ve planned this as a 10 year project,” Hale said. “We’re only a year and a half in, so hopefully, we’ve still got about eight and a half years to work on the project.”

If the team gets the grant extension, they will continue to refine their UAV, and set up for large-scale production of the aircraft. Siegele said that the center would eventually want to have more than one Meridian in the air, so they can do research in many places at once. He added that with the grant extension, the Meridian might also find a home in other workshops.

"If it's successful, there are possibilities of building the Meridian for other science
payloads," Siegele said. "Scientists in other communities have expressed interest in purchasing one to conduct their experiments."

Aerospace engineering students in 12 different classes worked on the project this semester. Hale’s Aerospace Materials and Processes class fabricated one of the Meridian’s wings. Other classes are examining engine efficiency and testing to find the optimal thickness of the airplane’s skin.

“By integrating this project into so many classes, our students can have some great hands-on experience with the research,” Hale said.

The latest project test was to fly a Piper Cub model airplane, affixed with the V-tail proposed for the Meridian. Bill Donovan, graduate research assistant said that the two surfaces of the V-tail make it more efficient and cost effective than the standard tail affixed to most aircraft, which have a vertical fin with a horizontal surface on either side.

Bill Donovan, graduate research assistant, prepares the V-Cub
Photo courtesy: Rick Hale

“The V-tail creates less drag, it’s lighter, and has fewer actuators,” Donovan said.

The actuators are the movable parts on each tailfin that steer the aircraft. Hale said that a small motor called a “servo” is positioned inside the tail to move each actuator. He added that because there are only two actuators on a V-tail, the cost would drop significantly.

“Another advantage is that there will only need to be two servo’s as opposed to three,” Hale said. “This is important when you realize that the servo’s cost about $10,000 a piece.”

The next step for the “V-Cub” is to install and test the $20,000 Piccolo autopilot system that will be used in the Meridian. The system would sit inside the cockpit of the Cub, and replace its current radio control system.

“This is the same system used by NASA, industry and hobby-grade UAV’s,” Hale said.

The Meridian and its radar system are designed with mission frequency in mind. The 110-pound radar system will store its data on two replaceable hard drives, which will be situated for easy access.

“We’ll be able to bring the plane in, pull the hard drives out, put new ones in, and go right back out,” Hale said.

The fully loaded Meridian UAV will have a 26.4-foot wingspan and weigh just over 1000 pounds, with almost 300 pounds of jet fuel. A full fuel tank gives the Meridian a range of 1,116 miles, or 13 hours. Dr. Hale said the Meridian’s longest missions in Antarctica, would be about eight hours, and would cover about 1,000 miles.

“This isn’t me standing in a field somewhere watching my little remote control airplane; this thing is going to be out in some very extreme conditions,” said Dennis Lane, Environmental Engineering professor. “This plane is going to travel great distances on its own, with just a monitor and an operator at the controls, far away.”

CReSIS researchers will use a hand-held controller for take-off and landing, but will use satellites and GPS to communicate with, and track the Meridian after it gets over the horizon.

Hale said that because there aren’t many satellites over Antarctica, the plane could lose contact with the operator for up to a few minutes at a time. The team is developing a flight management system, so the plane wouldn’t lose control in case of a communication blackout.

“The airplane has to know if it should continue the current flight plan, circle the area until it regains contact, or just turn around and head home,” Hale said.

Another obstacle the design team faces is the possibility of ice building up on the wing.

"It doesn't take a whole lot of ice to change the shape of a wing this size," Hale said. "When the wing changes shape, it loses lift, and just does a nosedive."

The team is exploring some different options to rectify the problem. Siegele said that most commercial planes spray a de-icing chemical onto the wings, but because of environmental restrictions in Antarctica, engineers are leaning towards an internal heater on the wing's leading edge.

This week, Hale and Donovan will take a three-week trip to Antarctica to talk to current CReSIS pilots and test a small, radio-controlled airplane to test takeoff and landing in the extreme cold conditions.

The team plans to have a finished prototype in late 2007, and be flight testing in the U.S. by early 2008. The prototype will then venture to colder weather conditions for testing in Greenland later that year.

KU is the leading researcher in the CReSIS project. Other partner universities include Elizabeth City State University, Haskell Indian Nations University, The Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University and The University of Maine.

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A University of Kansas alumnus is developing new technologies that could revolutionize heartbeats.

Current artificial pacemakers, installed in 4 million people worldwide, use a wire that leads from a transmitter in the chest, through a vein and into the heart. The wire delivers an electric pulse that pumps the heart as fast as the body requires.

But cardiologist and electrophysiologist Debra Echt says that there are a number of possible complications the current technology’s lead wire can introduce.

Echt lists problems such as blood clots in the lungs and perforation in the heart or tearing of the vein.

KU alumnus Rick Riley, co-founder, president and CEO of Sunnyvale, Calif.-based EBR Systems has worked to develop a new pacemaker that would have a wireless receiver inside the heart. The receiver, just bigger than a grain of rice, receives ultrasound waves from the transmitter, and converts them to deliver the same electric pulse.

In October 2005, Riley and his team tested their new device in 24 patients in Hong Kong and Auckland, New Zealand.

“We temporarily placed the receiver in a total of 80 locations in 24 different hearts, and each time, it paced the heart perfectly,” Riley said.

Normally, a group of cells in the heart act as a natural pacemaker, adjusting your heart rate higher or lower to supply blood to the muscles as needed.

“As you get older, sometimes your natural pacemaker will start to wear out, slowing your heart rate down to around 30 beats per minute,” said Dr. Allen Gillis, family practice physician. “This is known as a heart block, and at this point, the patient needs an artificial pacemaker.”

Since the mid 1960’s, pacemakers have consisted of the battery powered pulse generator, which rests just under the skin of the chest and connects to a lead wire.

The lead wire must penetrate a vein, and eventually lead into the right side of the heart. When implanted, the wire will deliver an electric impulse to the right ventricle, contracting the muscle and pushing blood into the lungs for oxygen collection.

Studies have shown that it’s actually better for the heart to have the electric pulse in the left ventricle, where the heart pushes the blood through the body.

“If you pace on the right side too much, you can run into heart failure, and that’s definitely not what we want to see,” said Dr. Patrick Allen, internal specialist.

But the lead wire for an artificial pacemaker can’t go into the left ventricle, because it could form clots that could damage other organs in the body. It must also cross a heart valve, where leaking could occur.

“When a lead goes across the valve, it can’t close completely and it causes the valve to leak,” Echt said. “Since the left side of the heart provides the major pumping to the body, leaking significantly impairs the heart pumping action.”

An advantage of EBR Systems’ new mechanism is that it’s wireless. The transmitter still sits under the skin of the chest, but instead of sending electrical impulses through a wire, it sends ultrasound waves to the tiny receiver inside the left ventricle.

The receiver then uses piezoelectricity, where special crystals convert the mechanical ultrasound wave into a “spark” that stimulates the heart muscle.

“It’s the same basic principle as the starter on your gas grill. You push the button, a mechanical contact [or wave] hits a piezoelectric material, and generates a spark,” Riley said.

Because there is no wire to act as antenna, patients with the new pacemaker could do more of the everyday things, from which they would otherwise have to stay away.

“I can’t go around anything with a strong electromagnetic field,” said Roger Gossard, current pacemaker patient. “I couldn’t use an arc welder or stand around a microwave for too long. I can’t go through metal detectors or get wanded at the airport.”

With the wireless technology, electromagnetic fields are no concern, but there are other uses for ultrasound that could potentially interfere with the signal. Other uses include diagnostic ultrasound, for seeing pictures of what’s inside the body, and therapeutic ultrasound, which uses the waves to heat muscles in the body for rehabilitation.

Riley says they’ve found a way around these potential interferences by using a much lower frequency.

“While diagnostic ultrasound operates from two to five megahertz and therapeutic ultrasound goes from 10 to 20, our system will operate around one megahertz,” Riley said.

Riley graduated from KU in 1977 with a degree in computer science and earned a graduate degree from Arizona State in industrial engineering in 1979.

He started working with pacemakers for Minneapolis based Medtronic in 1982, helping to develop the first microprocessor for an artificial pacemaker, and working on the implantable defibrillator.

With 20 years of combined heart-research and development experience from Medtronic and San Jose-based Cardiac Pathways, Riley broke off to found EBR Systems in 2002.

“We started EBR with one vision,” Riley said. “We wanted to develop a wireless pacemaker.”

Riley and his team realized much of that goal in the October 2005 tests in Hong Kong and Auckland, with a 100 percent success rate.

The team had to leave the country to test the new technology on humans, because the FDA hasn’t yet approved the system. Riley said without FDA approval, human testing within the U.S. is much more complicated. But he said the FDA needs human tests before the new technology could be considered for approval.

“We had to be careful of where and who we picked for the clinical application, because this research will go to the FDA,” Riley said.

Dr. C.P. Lau, Electrophysiologist at the University of Hong Kong and Dr. Warren Smith, Electrophysiologist at the University of Auckland performed the surgeries in their respective countries.

Riley said that because the tests went so well, once the results were back, excited investors started pouring in.

“The tests were completed in mid-October, and by mid-November, we had already raised $21 million.”

The tests in Hong Kong and Auckland were a great success and proved for the first time that a wireless pacemaker could work. Those tests were only for short-term application, though. Now Riley and his team are working to further develop their device to be implanted long-term.

With a finished product in the works, Riley reflects on the long journey it has taken him to get where he is.

“Software systems just weren’t for me,” Riley said. “I’ve found that your major isn’t what defines you, because in life, you will always pursue the goals that make you happy.”

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Long black sleeves engulf the instructor’s arms up to his elbows. Connected to the sleeves is a box, reflective on the outside, but pitch black on the inside. Here his unseen hands are toiling away, loading the 16mm film into the German camera’s film cartridge.

Loading the film is a difficult process, because the instructor must do it all by touch. He feeds the film head into the feed slot, making sure to engage the sprocket wheels, then pulls the film through, just above the pressure plate. Complete darkness is essential to this process, because if any amount of light hits the film, it will be exposed, and rendered worthless.

Loading the 16mm film for students in his Intermediate Film Production class, Matt Jacobson, associate professor of film and video production at the University of Kansas, knows this process well.

Jacobson is a practicing cinematographer with almost 20 years of industry experience. While a director sets up staging and acting, the cinematographer decides the composition of the shot, with variables like lighting, lens and camera position.

Jacobson is currently working with associate film professor and award-winning director Kevin Willmott on “Bunker Hill,” a movie about life gone mad in a small Kansas town after a terrorist attack wipes out all U.S. technology. The crew shot “Bunker Hill” in four weeks, finishing up earlier this month. With the release date set for 2007, the two filmmakers are working in post production and pick-up shooting.

Willmott and Jacobson collaborated their efforts in the past, to produce the 2004 film “CSA: Confederate States of America,” which appeared in the 2004 Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah.
“He’s always bringing something to the table,” Willmott said of Jacobson. “He always adds to my vision in what I’m trying to do as a director.”

Jacobson is an artist with a knack for teaching. Through his ongoing industry experience, Jacobson can keep his students updated with the current technology, helping them succeed in the film industry.

He also helps to put KU’s film department on the map, continually working on award-winning movies that appear in film festivals like Sundance and CineVegas.

“Professor Jacobson is one of the most respected film professors in the KU film department, because he’s got so much real-world Hollywood experience, but he also loves to teach, which makes him a really effective professor,” said University of Kansas film student Micah Brown.

Jacobson got his start in Hollywood, after graduating with a Master of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California, joining alumni such as George Lucas and director Jay Roach, director of “Meet the Fockers” and “Austin Powers.”

Starting out as an electrician in1993, Jacobson worked his way up to the ranks of camera assistant, and key grip, eventually landing a job in 1997 as sole cinematographer for a feature-length film called “Bob’s Video.”

While working in Hollywood, Jacobson got a call from Alan Bloom, a film professor at California State University, Los Angeles, where Jacobson earned his undergraduate degree.

The professor couldn’t be at class one day and asked Jacobson if he could fill in. It was from that experience that Jacobson learned he loved teaching about films as much as he loved making them.

Both Jacobson and Willmott describe the scene of the “CSA” screening at the Sundance Film Festival as one of their most memorable moments in filmmaking.

“When we screened it for the first time, being part of that audience and seeing the audience reaction, I thought that was something really impressive,” Jacobson said.

Thanks to university support, it wasn’t just the director and cinematographer who could feel that sense of pride, but also the 20 KU film students who were in attendance.

“I had been to film festivals before, Kevin’s been to film festivals before, but bringing along all of our students that for the first time they get experience, that was something pretty special,” Jacobson said.

Bringing students to the Sundance Film Festival is just an example of how Jacobson is always looking for ways to include his students in productions.

Before wrapping production on the “Bunker Hill” set in Nortonville, Kan., Jacobson was able to take his Intermediate Film Production class along to act as production assistants for a day.

“Not only do they get a chance to see large scale lighting set ups, large scale crews working together, they also get a chance to have their first screen credit before they even left school,” Jacobson said.

Senior film student Eli Rosenberg was amazed that Jacobson found time in the rigorous production schedule to talk to students about their experiences.

“Professor Jacobson is the director of photography and he’s very busy, but he kept taking time aside
to teach all the students that were there with him about the process of filmmaking,” Rosenberg said.

With the scheduled release of “Bunker Hill” coming next year, Jacobson will be in postproduction for the next several months. But his work in film production won’t slow Jacobson down enough to keep him from taking the time to share his production knowledge with film students, enabling them with the skills to succeed in Hollywood.

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The festival will be on Eighth street between Massachusetts and New Hampshire, from 5:30 to 10:30 p.m., and will feature a stage with two bands, food vendors and a beer garden. The block will be closed from 1 p.m. Friday until after midnight for cleanup.

Festival planners designed the $40,000 project to attract people to downtown. The festival’s originally planned location, the 600 block of Massachusetts street, made owners of some area businesses feel that the increased congestion would actually deter people who would usually come to shop and dine on a Friday evening.

Bob Schumm, owner of Buffalo Bob’s Smokehouse and Mass Street Deli, estimated that his sales drop by 50 percent each time the flow of traffic is disrupted to this magnitude.

“People will change their traffic patterns,” Schumm said. “We’ve got regular customers that come here and they see that and they say well, we’re not going to go in today, we’re gonna drive somewhere else.”

Judy Billings, executive vice president at the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce, said festival supporters weren’t worried about the traffic being a hindrance to their turnout.

“Would you rather drive and park in front of a shop, or would you want to walk a little bit, but there’s something happening when you get there,” Billings said.

Organizers hope the festival will bring an additional 2,800 people downtown, but Schumm said this crowd isn’t necessarily the crowd on which many Massachusetts street businesses rely.

“This is a very viable downtown,” Schumm said. “But when you close the main avenue of being able to drive up in front of somebody’s store to run in and get a hammer or nails or a haircut, they go somewhere else, it’s just that simple.”

Billings said the chamber isn’t aiming the project at those regulars, but at people who wouldn’t usually come to Massachusetts street.

“We’d really like to see some new people downtown,” Billings said. “We want to provide something to all people around town.”

Festival organizers had originally planned the event for the 600 block of Massachusetts Street to accommodate a larger crowd. But Schumm and others argued that closing the street at such a busy intersection would be the worst thing to do.

“Having it in the 600 block would have necessitated shutting down practically the entire street,” Schumm said. “It’s just like a stream, you put a dam in it somewhere, and it pushes the water somewhere else. It’s the same way with people’s perception of whether the street’s open or not.”

The manager of Quinton’s Bar and Deli, 615 Massachusetts St. said he was upset with the festival happening on their block because of outdoor alcohol sales. The chamber, in association with Quinton’s competitor, Freestate Brewing Co., would be selling alcohol on the street, but people wouldn’t be able to buy beer at Quinton’s and take it outside.

“Basically, we would have lost money in sales and just served as a bathroom for the crowd outside, who’s got the option of us or the porta-potty in the alley.” said Greg Mann, Quinton’s manager.

The move off Massachusetts street was a compromise for the opposition, who wanted the festival
moved off the street altogether.

Schumm said he is glad the festival will take place, and that it will now be on a side street. But with three parks in the downtown area, the festival could draw a crowd and no street would necessarily need to be closed.

Festival supporters said taking the Get Downtown Festival off Massachusetts Street would defeat the project’s purpose, and this venue could provide people who want to be downtown with a place to go.

“We looked at the dates when people would be in town to get as much draw as we could,” said Chuck Magerl, owner of Freestate Brewing Co. “It’s good to get as many people downtown as we can.”

“On homecoming weekend, there are a lot of people in town,” Billings said. “There are so many that restaurants can’t accommodate everybody, so rather than sending people away from a restaurant, we wanted to provide them with something to do either while they’re waiting to get in, or after they’ve eaten so they don’t leave downtown.”

Jennifer Sanner, Sr. Vice President of Communications for the KU Alumni Association, estimates at least several thousand extra people to be in town for Homecoming weekend.

Though opposition from some downtown businesses still remains, the chamber is confident about the turnout, expecting the capacity 2,800 crowd for the Get Downtown Festival’s maiden voyage.

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A delegation of 10 Lawrence community leaders will be in Washington D.C. next Monday to meet with staffs of Reps. James Ryun and Dennis Moore and of Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts about several issues pertinent to the Lawrence community.

"Throughout the years our office has had an excellent, productive relationship with Lawrence, Douglas County, and KU," said Howard Bauleke, chief of staff for Rep. Moore. "Meetings like these give us a great opportunity to talk about legislative priorities, and what we can do at the federal level to make sure those priorities are being considered in the legislative process."

The delegation will consist of Mayor Mike Amyx, Vice Mayor Sue Hack, Lawrence City Commissioners Dennis Highberger, David Schauner, Mike Rundle and City Manager Dave Corliss. County Commissioner Bob Johnson will be representing Douglas County. Lawrence Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Lavern Squier and current chair Pat Slavin will be representing the Chamber of Commerce. David Johnson, CEO of Bert Nash Mental Health Center will also attend.

The delegation members plan to request more federal funding for projects such as highway and road maintenance, the Community Development Block Grant program. They also plan to discuss lobbying the Census Bureau about the alleged Lawrence population drop in 2005 and discuss issues like a sales tax on e-commerce, that would affect people nationwide.

Mayor Amyx said almost all of the issues discussed can be seen as potential tax savings. “We look forward to see how we can participate in our tax dollars coming back to our community.”

The delegation will be requesting federal money to pay for renovations at intersections on Kansas Highway 10 at the former Farmland site and the East Hills Business Park.

“It is the federal government’s responsibility to fund the maintenance of highways, so this is something we just need to let them know about,” Corliss said.

The Census Bureau estimated a drop in the Lawrence population in 2005 by 27 people. But utility connection and building permit numbers were on the rise. If the government sees the population as not growing, federal funding will slow down as well.

“We want to appeal the Census Bureau to revise their methods in counting the population,” Corliss said.

The Community Development Block Grant program, introduced to Lawrence in 1975, together with the HOME program provide money for energy efficiency, emergency and weatherization programs, for low and moderate income homeowners, as well as first time home buyers in the community.

Officials inspect the low-income resident’s house, and determine the extent of renovations that need to be done.

Funding for the Community Development Block Grant program was $816,981 in the 2006 fiscal year, a 13.8% decrease since its 2001 allocation. The delegates hope to be successful in getting that funding back up in Lawrence.

“The cuts in CDBG funding are a really important issue for us on this trip,” Highberger said. “It affects so many people in the community.”

The delegation also hopes to talk about national issues such as a sales tax on e-commerce.

City Manager Dave Corliss said that sales tax is important because it pays for things like police salaries and road construction projects. But, because sales tax rates are different for every state, arguments arise as to what sales tax needs to be charged to the consumer.

The delegation will suggest that a sales tax on e-commerce be enforced and collected by the purchaser’s state. Therefore, if you live in Kansas, and you buy something from a company in Arizona, Kansas would enforce and collect the sales tax for that purchase.

“They make it sound really complicated, but in all actuality, it really is an easy solution,” Corliss said.

Vice Mayor Sue Hack said the city commission usually travels to Washington D.C. to speak with congressmen in March for the League of Cities meeting, but city commissions from all around Kansas are there too, always asking for the same thing.

“If we could get out of that cycle a little and go in on our own, it will be much more effective,” Hack said.

Other issues to be discussed include promoting continued federal support for the Lawrence Transit System, Lawrence Municipal Airport and Haskell Indian Nations University. The delegation will also be asking for congressional support in providing research grants for The University of Kansas.

The delegation members will leave Sunday, Oct. 15, meet with Reps. Ryun and Moore’s staffs Monday morning, and Sens. Brownback and Roberts staffs in the afternoon. They will be back in time for the city commission meeting on Tuesday, Oct. 17.

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