June 20, 2023

M.S. in Geology candidate Nolan Gamet will present a final oral defense on Thursday (June 22) from 10 a.m. to noon in Dow 610.
Virtual attendance is also invited via Zoom. 

Gamet is advised by James DeGraff, with Chad Deering, William Rose and Jeremy Shannon as committee members.

Gamet's defense is titled "Structural Analysis and Interpretation of the Deformation Along the Keweenaw Fault System from Lake Linden to Mohawk, Michigan."

From the abstract:
The Keweenaw fault is likely the most significant fault associated with the Midcontinent Rift System, with an estimated reverse slip of ~10 km that places Portage Lake Volcanics (~1.1 Ga) over much younger Jacobsville Sandstone (~1.0 Ga). Published bedrock geology maps with cross sections from the 1950s show the fault as a single continuous trace that is locally associated with smaller cross faults and splays. This M.S. thesis presents a structural analysis and interpretation of the Keweenaw fault system between Lake Linden and Mohawk, MI, which includes data collected from well-known localities such as Houghton-Douglass Falls, the St. Louis ravine, the Natural Wall ravine, and the anomalous rhyolite body near Copper City. These data were used to revise existing bedrock geology maps, construct new cross-sections, and analyze fold geometry and fault slip behavior to infer aspects of the tectonic regime that caused the deformation.

New field mapping has refined the trace geometry of the Keweenaw fault (KF) and smaller associated faults by shifting the main fault’s position laterally as much as 150m, revising intersections between several splay faults and the main fault, and suggesting the existence of several footwall splays not previously recognized. Orientation analysis of Jacobsville Sandstone strata in the footwall of the fault system defines fold axes with plunge directions changing from southwest in the south to northeast in the north. The style of folding also changes along the fault from broad syncline-anticline pairs in the southwest to tightly folded anticlines with overturned bedding to the northeast. Fault-slip analyses reveal a bimodal distribution strike-slip and reverse slip along the fault system that collectively define a 1:1 ratio and a nearly north-south maximum tectonic shortening direction of 2°-182°. The NS-trending shortening direction computed from fault-slip analysis creates a paradox yet to be explained. However, fold axis trends in the current area indicate shortening along an ESE-trending line, which is consistent with recent results for the fault system northeast of this study area and with Grenville orogenic compression being the primary cause of slip along the Keweenaw fault system.

All are welcome to attend.

Angie Carter (SS) is the co-author of an article published in the Journal of Rural Studies.

The article is titled "It doesn't bother me: an intersectional analysis of discrimination among white women farmers in the US Corn Belt."

The article identifies how white women negotiate gender discrimination in agriculture by leveraging settler colonialism and racial land legacies through their connections to labor, land legacy and men.

Carly Nichols of the University of Iowa is also a co-author of the article.

Sarah Hoy and Rolf Peterson (CFRES) were quoted by Great Lakes Now, North Dakota’s Bismarck Tribune and Washington’s KAPP/KVEW TV, and John Vucetich (CFRES) was quoted by Grand Rapids’ WOOD TV8 in further coverage of the 64th Isle Royale Winter Study. Hoy, Peterson and Vucetich were also mentioned by WNMU-FM as the study’s leaders. The June 14 release of the 2022-2023 annual report was covered by Michigan Tech News.

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Robert Nemiroff (Physics) was quoted by India’s Times Network in a story about a time-lapse video of Earth at night released by NASA. The footage was recorded from the International Space Station in 2017.

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The Daily Mining Gazette published an article written by Ph.D. student Tom Panella (forest science), Tara Bal and Sigrid Resh (CFRES/ESC), and undergraduate student Erin Mauk (wildlife ecology and conservation) about the invasive spongy moth, which has spread throughout the state. The article reviewed the moth’s impacts and shared how to identify it, and also how to support trees with signs of spongy moth defoliation.

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Detroit’s Hometown Life mentioned Michigan Tech in a story about a newly opened esports lounge in Farmington Hills. MTU was listed among other state universities where esports is offered by the athletic department.

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California’s Sacramento Bee referenced Michigan Tech’s Earthquake Magnitude Scale in a story about a 4.4-magnitude earthquake off the state’s northern coast.

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Business Wire mentioned Michigan Tech in a story about Jim Moake ’92 (B.S. Business Administration and Management) being named the chief financial officer at Covenant Physician Partners of Nashville, Tennessee.

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The Daily Mining Gazette profiled Michigan Tech alum Dan Crane, who runs Crane Berry Farm in Chassell with his wife Mary.

Retirement Party for Nancy Byers Sprague

There will be a second retirement party on June 30 for Nancy Byers Sprague after 45 years of service to MTU. The second party is for those who missed her first party on May 12 and for anyone who wants to party again.

All are invited to come to the Canterbury House at 1405 E. Houghton Ave. on June 30 from 4-8 p.m. Refreshments and snacks will be available. Limited parking is available at the house. Additional parking will be available at Portage Lake United Church, or on campus. We will also recognize Nancy's 70th birthday (June 1) and Nancy and Dianne's 49th anniversary (June 30).

Please RSVP by Friday (June 23) to dsprague@mtu.edu if you plan to attend.

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GLRC Invited Campus Talk with Mohammed Rashid

Please join the Great Lakes Research Center (GLRC) tomorrow (June 21) from 3-4 p.m. in GLRC 202 for an invited campus talk by Mohammed Rashid titled "Electrical States Synchronization Using Consensus Averaging and EM-EP Based Channel Estimation for Distributed Phased Array."

From the abstract:
A distributed phased array is a promising antenna technology for distributed radars and wireless communication systems which is made up of several small and low-cost antenna nodes spatially distributed and coordinated at the wavelength level to achieve the coherent characteristics of the single-platform phased array. Each node in a distributed array has its local oscillator that drifts randomly in frequency and phase in the free-running state which introduces a decoherence between the nodes across the array. Hence, electrical states (i.e., frequency and phase) synchronization between the nodes in a distributed array is essential to support the coherent beamforming operation. In this talk, first I will present a message passing based average consensus algorithm in which the nodes iteratively exchange their electrical state information with their neighbors through a local broadcast of signals, and update them using consensus averaging to synchronize the array to a smaller residual phase error compared to other algorithms in the literature. Next, the downlink channel estimation at the beamforming destination is another significant challenge, particularly in wireless communication applications, wherein the imperfect channel estimates at the target user directly impact the achievable data rates. To that end, I will present a Bayesian compressive sensing approach in which the clustered sparse structure of the channel in the angular domain is exploited to estimate the channel with a small pilot overhead. To capture the clustered structure, I employ a conditionally independent identically distributed Bernoulli-Gaussian prior on the sparse vector representing the channel, and a Markov prior on its support vector. A novel expectation propagation (EP) algorithm is developed to approximate the intractable joint distribution of the sparse vector and its support with a distribution from an exponential family. The approximate distribution is then used for direct estimation of the channel. The model parameters for the EP algorithm are estimated using the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm. The combination of EM and EP is referred to as the EM-EP algorithm which outperforms the existing algorithms in the literature based on the approximate message passing and variational Bayesian approaches.

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PLGC Junior Tournament

Tuesday, June 20, 1:30 p.m. | Portage Lake Golf Course

PLGC Junior Tournament.

Junior Mountain Biking Camp Summer 2023

June 20, all day | Recreational Forest and Tech Trails, Tech Trails

Ride through beautiful scenery on well-maintained trails of the local area, including the Michigan Tech Trails, Maasto Hiihto/Churning Rapids, and the Copper Harbor MTB...