Plane facts

Is the airline you fly all it's cracked up to be? Or should they crack
down on some of their older planes?

Two University of Cincinnati researchers are proving that metal
fatigue inside planes can cause damage that's not visible to the
naked eye. The research team has developed a new test that can find even extremely tiny cracks before the damage becomes hazardous.

Peter Nagy, UC associate professor of aerospace engineering, and graduate student Zhongyu Yan can spot defects as small as half a millimeter in length in aluminum and titanium, metals commonly used for airplane fuselages and engines, by combining laser heating and ultrasonic inspection methods.

The researchers' dual approach also measures the severity of the damage. The earlier a problem is detected, the fewer equipment failures should occur. And the safer your flight should be.

Nagy wins Roy Sharpe Prize (2008)

'Weightless Wonder'

UC aerospace engineering students Paul Zomkowski and Zoe Ruedele float through a wild ride in March aboard NASA's "Weightless Wonder," a zero-gravity training jet designed to simulate going into orbit.

The University of Cincinnati was among 48 schools in the country that earned a spot in the two-week Reduced Gravity Student Flight Opportunities Program in Houston.

For several UC students, it was an opportunity to test their project, a control system that might be used for maneuvering "nanosatellites" in orbit.Often, equipment that works fine under normal conditions on Earth, fails in zero G. Though data analysis had not been finalized before "Horizons" deadline, early indications were positive for the UC team.

Their experiment ran smoothly, and still the test was an unforgettable experience that occurred 24,000 feet above the Gulf of Mexico. NASA's KC-135A (also known as the "Vomit Comet") plunged through a series of 32 parabolic arcs, free-falling thousands of feet, each time giving passengers 25 seconds of total weightlessness.

Microgravity University

Another gold star for CITE

Good work! Alice Sneed, intern teacher in the UC's acclaimed Cincinnati Initiative for Teacher Education (CITE), acknowledges the efforts of her first-grade pupils at Cincinnati Public's Chase Elementary School.

A fifth-year paid teaching internship is one of the distinctive elements of CITE, which was in the national spotlight again in January after being showcased for university administrators at the National Conference on Teacher Quality in Washington, D.C. CITE was one of 36 outstanding programs presenting at the conference, at the invitation of U.S. Secretary of Education Richard Riley.

'Beyond ready' to teach: The Cincinnati Initiative for Teacher Education
on edutopia.org (2008)

Stitch in time

If designs intended to forecast fashion are placed in a retrospective exhibit, does that make the exhibitors fashionably late? Two UC students, an alumna and a faculty member should know, since their inclusion in the Ohio Arts Council's "Reality and Interpretation: 20th Century Clothing and Illustration."

Works showing at the Riffe Gallery in Columbus through July 9 include the following:

• A piece of wearable art that earned Jason Evege a trip to the 1998 Young Fashion Designers Competition. Last November, the fashion design senior again represented the U.S., winning an honorable mention at the World Fashion Contest in Gifu, Japan, where he was one of 50 finalists among more than 9,000 student and professional entries.
• Illustrations forecasting fashion trends by Margie Voelker-Ferrier [at right], chair of UC's fashion design program.
• A knitted evening gown designed by Stacey Udstuen, who programmed its complicated stitches on a computer for her senior collection last year.
• A strapless, studded, beaded black satin evening gown designed by graduate student Arin Clement.

DAAP fashion design program

No matter how complex the world grows, one thing never changes: our dependence upon water. Simple, clean drinking water. We can't survive without it.

And that is what makes professor Makram Suidan's work so vital. The UC environmental engineer is using bacteria to turn the latest, high-profile threat to the nation's drinking water into simple and safe carbon dioxide and water.

In the lab, Suidan and his colleagues from the Environmental Protection Agency, which is funding the work, have successfully degraded MTBE, a suspected mutagen associated with gasoline production. Next is finding out how to translate the success in the lab, one of the few in the nation with a major MTBE focus, into usable, large-scale applications.

Suidan earns Distinguished Research Professor title (2006)

Suidan wins 2008 Rieveschl Award

Taking the heat

Although the best students are those with a burning desire for their studies, most don't have to stoke the flames by literally throwing themselves into the fire. But that's precisely the point of the new internship for UC's fire science technology program, the largest of the country's six university-based programs and the only one to offer both associate and baccalaureate degrees.

The College of Applied Science began the rare internship two years ago as a pilot program. This academic year, 25 students have made runs with local fire departments to realistically grasp all aspects of the profession. As program director Patrick Reynods explains, "There's a lot of tedium punctuated by a few minutes of life-and-death decision making."

UC program outline of Fire and Safety Technology

"The economics of a one-year program can be compelling," wrote "Forbes." "Our survey of Cincinnati's first graduating class shows that typical graduates from 1995 repaid their cost of going to school in just 2.6 years and doubled their pre-MBA salary four years later. In contrast, the median payback period for the two-year schools we surveyed was 4.1 years."

According to the magazine's Feb. 7 edition, business schools around the country are increasingly offering the one-year MBA alternative. UC switched to the one-year program exclusively in 1995.

Forbes.com article on one-year programs

Of mice and men

In the world of genetics, it may never rise to the celebrity status of "Dolly," the cloned sheep, but scientists at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine have successfully engineered a mouse that is genetically resistant to asthma.

UC professors Dennis McGraw and Stephen Liggett set out to alter the genetic structure of a mouse so that it would not experience the closing of the airways when introduced to asthma-causing vapors. Their success marked the first step toward a potential gene-based therapy in humans. Asthma affects an estimated 15 million people in the United States alone.