Virginia Tech clinches prime 3 locations at NASA problem; extra …

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Virginia Tech clinches prime 3 locations at NASA problem

After a yearlong effort to discover using city air mobility and regional air mobility automobiles inside a firefighting state of affairs, three Virginia Tech capstone design groups swept the highest three spots at this 12 months’s NASA Aeronautics College Design Problem, the college introduced this week.

The annual design competitors, sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Analysis Mission Directorate, offers pupil groups the chance to unravel a number of the largest technical challenges going through the aviation group at the moment.

Virginia Tech groups have introduced house prime honors 11 occasions over the previous decade. Clinching the highest three spots in a single 12 months is unprecedented. 

Professor Pradeep Raj mentioned he incorporates the design problem into the classroom, partly as a result of the missions and technical challenges are sometimes system-centric versus specializing in a single car. 

“I’ve discovered that this strategy tends to broaden the scope and broadens the design house for the scholars,” Raj mentioned in a information launch. “Designing an operational fleet actually opens up the chances for several types of automobiles, various sizes, propulsion programs, and it challenges the scholars to analyze the general operational features extra carefully for the fleet to efficiently full their mission.”

The undergraduate curriculum inside Virginia Tech’s Kevin T. Crofton Division of Aerospace and Ocean Engineering leads as much as a yearlong capstone design expertise within the senior 12 months. Aerospace engineering design programs use the group design course of to each higher simulate the best way design is completed in the true world and promote the advantages of collaborative studying. 

Raj and Professor of Follow Wm. Michael Butler collectively served as the college instructors and advisors for the air car design observe throughout the capstone design course for the 2021-22 educational 12 months.

Eight air car groups have been suggested by Raj and Butler. Three groups finally submitted their written proposals to NASA, and out of roughly a dozen college groups collaborating, all three Virginia Tech groups rose to the highest of the pack. 

Scholar groups have been requested to design a collection of automobiles that may collectively ship 3,000 gallons of water to a fireplace location in a single go. The automobiles wanted to have the ability to collect water from native water sources, reminiscent of lakes, rivers or oceans, which require vertical quick takeoff and touchdown operations. At the moment, helicopters are used to achieve these small water sources. 

Current graduate Colin Fischer served as crew lead for H2AERO, the crew that took house first-place honors.

H2AERO’s fleet design centered on maximizing water supply and minimizing take-off distance whereas sustaining vitality utilization, value and noise requirements acceptable for Regional Air Mobility. The plane’s very quick or vertical takeoff and touchdown capabilities enable it to bridge the hole between the U.S. Forest Service’s typical take-off and touchdown fixed-wing plane and vertical takeoff and touchdown helicopters. The fleet of 4 plane can entry small our bodies of water by way of their distinctive scoop tube and excessive lift-producing distributed electrical propulsion gadgets, delivering 750 gallons of water per car and three,000 gallons per go.

Staff IRIS, led by current graduate Ben Judelson, designed an aerial firefighting system composed of 1 remotely piloted lead aircraft and eight manned water tankers.

The Firefighting Gobbler, led by Michael Deitch, proposed “The Flock,” an aerial firefighting system comprising six very quick or vertical takeoff and landings succesful plane that met necessities in an environmentally pleasant and cost-efficient method. 

The three Virginia Tech groups have been invited to go to NASA Langley Analysis Heart in Hampton in October to share their work in particular person.

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MECC receives federal grant to launch well being info know-how information analytics certificates program

Mountain Empire Neighborhood School has obtained a $887,676 U.S. Division of Well being and Human Providers grant by way of the Well being Assets and Providers Administration to create and ship a profession research certificates program in well being info know-how information analytics, the college introduced this week.

This system is designed for well being professionals to develop well being care enterprise information administration expertise by way of database administration, change and mission administration methods. Well being IT information analysts work in hospitals, clinics, insurance coverage firms, medical analysis, consulting corporations and different health-related services.

The info analyst program, which is ready to start this fall, runs for 2 semesters. Its purpose is to supply superior information and mission administration coaching for well being info administration graduates in order that they might advance their careers and make room for entry-level staff to enter the trade.

MECC is the one group school in Virginia to obtain the HHS award, which is a part of almost $60 million federal funding to develop the well being care workforce and enhance entry to high quality well being care in rural communities, together with almost $46 million in funding from the American Rescue Plan.

The grant will fund school prices, curriculum growth and scholarships for college kids for 3 years.

For extra info on this system, contact Nora Blankenbecler at 276-523-9054 or at nblankenbecler@mecc.edu. Extra program info is obtainable online.

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Virginia Tech and Zimbabwean groups lead discovery and naming of Africa’s oldest recognized dinosaur

A global crew of paleontologists led by Virginia Tech has found and named a brand new, early dinosaur, the college introduced Wednesday.

The largely intact skeleton was discovered by a graduate pupil within the Virginia Tech Division of Geosciences and different paleontologists over the course of two digs, in 2017 and 2019. 

The findings of this new sauropodomorph — a long-necked dinosaur — newly named Mbiresaurus raathi have been printed Wednesday within the journal Nature. The skeleton is, to this point, the oldest dinosaur skeleton ever present in Africa. The animal is estimated to have been 6 ft lengthy with an extended tail. It weighed wherever from 20 kilos to 65 kilos. The skeleton, lacking solely a number of the hand and parts of the cranium, was present in northern Zimbabwe.

From the crew’s findings, Mbiresaurus stood on two legs and its head was comparatively small, like its dinosaur family. It sported small, serrated, triangle-shaped tooth, suggesting that it was an herbivore or probably an omnivore.

“The invention of Mbiresaurus raathi fills in a essential geographic hole within the fossil file of the oldest dinosaurs and exhibits the ability of hypothesis-driven fieldwork for testing predictions in regards to the historic previous,” mentioned Christopher Griffin, who graduated in 2020 with a Ph.D. in geosciences from the Virginia Tech School of Science and is now a post-doctorate researcher at Yale College

Griffin added, “These are Africa’s oldest-known definitive dinosaurs, roughly equal in age to the oldest dinosaurs discovered wherever on the planet. The oldest recognized dinosaurs — from roughly 230 million years in the past, the Carnian Stage of the Late Triassic interval — are extraordinarily uncommon and have been recovered from just a few locations worldwide, primarily northern Argentina, southern Brazil and India.”

The worldwide crew on the coronary heart of this discovery included paleontologists from the Nationwide Museums and Monuments of Zimbabwe, the Pure Historical past Museum of Zimbabwe, and Universidade de São Paulo, São Paulo, Brazil.

Discovered alongside Mbiresaurus have been an assortment of Carnian-aged fossils, together with a herrerasaurid dinosaur, early mammal family reminiscent of cynodonts, armored crocodylian family reminiscent of aetosaurs, and, in Griffin’s description, “weird, archaic reptiles” referred to as rhynchosaurs, once more sometimes present in South America and India from this identical time interval.

A lot of the Mbiresaurus specimen is being stored in Virginia Tech’s Derring Corridor because the skeleton is cleaned and studied. The entire Mbiresaurus skeleton and the extra discovered fossils will likely be completely stored at Pure Historical past Museum of Zimbabwe.

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Youngsters’s musical coming to Radford College

Auditions have concluded and the solid is ready for Radford College’s annual efficiency aimed
at younger audiences: “The Rainbow Fish Musical.”

The play is a cautionary story about vainness and self-importance impressed by the favored youngsters’s
guide “The Rainbow Fish” by Swiss author and illustrator Marcus Pfister.

Affiliate professor and stage veteran Robyn Berg will direct and choreograph the present. Dylan Jones performs the title position and is accompanied by Sarah Lindsay Merriman as Little Fish and Sydney Pepper as Octopus. Three different actors will play twin roles: Georgi Fenimore performs Starfish and Ms. Minnow, Zoe Keith performs Sardine and Clownfish, and the roles of Pufferfish and Hermit Crab will likely be carried out by Olivia Nargi. Graduate pupil Kole Butler is the musical director and senior Drue Maggio is the assistant director. Senior Meagan Cox will function stage supervisor.

Performances will happen at 10 a.m. and a pair of p.m. Nov. 12 and once more at 2 p.m. Nov. 13 in Bondurant Auditorium in Preston Corridor on Radford’s major campus. Normal admission is $8 and $4 for youngsters. Radford College college students can get in free of charge. College and workers tickets are $6.