Trans World Radio - Culvert Design

Trans World Radio (TWR) is a mission organization focused on broadcasting the Gospel around the world. TWR now serves 190 countries by transmitting in 275 languages, using radio to deliver the message to as many people as possible. The organization’s West Africa Transmitter Site in Benin currently has accessibility problems due to high streamflows and saturated ground conditions during the rainy season. The site also needs a secure perimeter to reduce trespassing and theft. To address these issues, our client, Garth Kennedy, Director of the West Africa Transmitter Station, has asked the team to design two culverts, one at the upstream property boundary and one at the downstream boundary. Culverts are advantageous for this scenario because they can act as a bridge, while the pipe size can be restricted to inhibit trespassing. Once the culverts are built, the fence and perimeter road can be extended over them. For both sides of the property, the team has designed a series of U-shaped, pre-cast concrete box culverts. The team calculated the design flows based on rainfall data and the topography of the site to determine the size and number of box sections. The team has also designed the culverts and the supporting concrete structures to bear the load of vehicles and the machinery on site. TWR plans to construct the pre-cast culverts on-site, and then build the supporting structures and install the culverts during their dry season.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1017/thumbnail.jp

Land Development - Tree 4 Hope

The Land Development Team has partnered with Tree 4 Hope and Hope Academy in Santa Lucía Milpas Altas, Guatemala to improve the outdoor facilities of the school. Jenn and David Hope-Tringali are the client/partner representatives of the school for this project. The goal of the project is to provide design and construction drawings for three main elements of the proposed land development: (1) a parking lot for buses and school vehicles that enter the site, (2) a single sports court that can accommodate basketball and soccer, and (3) a playground that is directed towards themes associated with STEAM (science, technology, engineering, art, and math). The team has completed project drawings to allow construction by local personnel, or by student or church mission teams when travel is allowed to resume post-pandemic.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2021/1007/thumbnail.jp

Wear Testing of a Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling System for Water Access in West Africa

The Mechanized Percussion Well Drilling (MPWD) Collaboratory project is assisting in the development of a mechanized well drilling system for drilling shallow water wells in West Africa. Our client, Mr. Joseph Longenecker with Open Door Development (ODD), desires to make water wells accessible to all in this region, but has experienced difficulty drilling through hard soil layers. To overcome this problem, the MPWD team has worked closely with Mr. Joseph Longenecker to develop a mechanized percussion well drilling rig using a rubber friction wheel drive system that is capable of drilling through these harder layers. Currently, the MPWD team is working to provide recommendations to improve the useful service life of our client’s new, mechanized rig design. The MPWD team’s most recent work includes the design and fabrication of a testing rig to simulate the operation of our client’s full-size rig. The testing rig will allow our team to conduct fatigue testing on a model of the driveline system to analyze the wear patterns on the rubber friction wheel and to estimate its expected service life. The team has also performed a series of finite element analyses on the mast design of our client\u27s rig to evaluate working stresses under static loading and buckling, along with fatigue analysis, to confirm safe operation of the rig and to identify any elements that might require upgrades. Funding for this work provided by The Collaboratory for Strategic Partnerships and Applied Research.https://mosaic.messiah.edu/engr2022/1010/thumbnail.jp

Transmission of Chronic Wasting Disease Identifies a Prion Strain Causing Cachexia and Heart Infection in Hamsters

Chronic wasting disease (CWD) is an emerging prion disease of free-ranging and captive cervids in North America. In this study we established a rodent model for CWD in Syrian golden hamsters that resemble key features of the disease in cervids including cachexia and infection of cardiac muscle. Following one to three serial passages of CWD from white-tailed deer into transgenic mice expressing the hamster prion protein gene, CWD was subsequently passaged into Syrian golden hamsters. In one passage line there were preclinical changes in locomotor activity and a loss of body mass prior to onset of subtle neurological symptoms around 340 days. The clinical symptoms included a prominent wasting disease, similar to cachexia, with a prolonged duration. Other features of CWD in hamsters that were similar to cervid CWD included the brain distribution of the disease-specific isoform of the prion protein, PrPSc, prion infection of the central and peripheral neuroendocrine system, and PrPSc deposition in cardiac muscle. There was also prominent PrPSc deposition in the nasal mucosa on the edge of the olfactory sensory epithelium with the lumen of the nasal airway that could have implications for CWD shedding into nasal secretions and disease transmission. Since the mechanism of wasting disease in prion diseases is unknown this hamster CWD model could provide a means to investigate the physiological basis of cachexia, which we propose is due to a prion-induced endocrinopathy. This prion disease phenotype has not been described in hamsters and we designate it as the ‘wasting’ or WST strain of hamster CWD

Agricultural Adaptation to a Changing Climate: Economic and Environmental Implications Vary by U.S. Region

Global climate models predict increases over time in average temperature worldwide, with significant impacts on local patterns of temperature and precipitation. The extent to which such changes present a risk to food supplies, farmer livelihoods, and rural communities depends in part on the direction, magnitude, and rate of such changes, but equally importantly on the ability of the agricultural sector to adapt to changing patterns of yield and productivity, production cost, and resource availability. Study findings suggest that, while impacts are highly sensitive to uncertain climate projections, farmers have considerable fl exibility to adapt to changes in local weather, resource conditions, and price signals by adjusting crops, rotations, and production practices. Such adaptation, using existing crop production technologies, can partially mitigate the impacts of climate change on national agricultural markets. Adaptive redistribution of production, however, may have signifi cant implications for both regional land use and environmental quality