Inside Iowa State: Iowa State University

March 12, 2004

Research shorts

Entrepreneurial refugees
It plays out like a movie epic: Bands of soldiers are driven from their native lands by Communist forces. Eventually they flee into hill country, where they forage for food and, in time, grow their own corn and potatoes. Today, they are successful fruit and nut farmers and dominate the marketplace in their corner of the world.

Information about research funding opportunities is available online through the Office of the Vice Provost for Research and Advanced Studies: http://grants-svr.admin.iastate.edu/
Funding/homepage.html. Questions about sponsored research may be directed to Sreeparna Mitra, 4-1538, e-mail: mitra@iastate.edu.

As a teen in his native Taiwan, Shu-min Huang read a novel depicting these very events. It wasn't until years later that the social scientist began studying this group of Nationalist Chinese soldiers and their spectacular recovery in Thailand.

Huang, professor of anthropology, is in the midst of a two-year study, funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation, to examine these refugee soldiers' communities and their rapid economic growth. He's investigating how two groups of 1,000 refugees expanded their hillside from two to 40 villages, with 300,000 residents.

"Very often, you will see that these people will use their connections with other ethnic Chinese and Chinese refugees to help raise capital and become commercially viable," he said.

From grass to gas?
While the automobile industry races to put fuel-cell vehicles on the market, Iowa State researchers are working to produce hydrogen-rich gas from a native Iowa prairie grass to power the new vehicles. The research team, directed by Robert Brown, the Bergles professor in thermal science in mechanical engineering and professor of chemical engineering, has developed a process for converting switchgrass into hydrogen.

Biomass is injected into a high-temperature, oxygen-starved reactor known as a gasifier, where it is converted into a flammable gas.

"Energy in the biomass drives chemical reactions that release hydrogen from steam that has been added to the gasifier," Brown explained.

Conventional gasification produces a fuel gas with only 8 percent hydrogen, but Iowa State researchers have increased the yield to 60 percent. The goal is to reach 90 to 95 percent hydrogen in this final year of a three-year grant. Vehicles powered by fuel cells require this high level of hydrogen concentration.

Computer crime fighters
Tom Daniels, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, and colleagues Julie Dickerson and Yong Guan are developing software that will serve to "fingerprint" and track down computer criminals.

"Computer crime has skyrocketed," Daniels said, "and the ability to secure systems hasn't kept up. But there is nothing benign about it. The threat is real. It's costing us millions."

The "whodunit" software that Daniels' team is developing will identify just the right amount of clues and red flags to track down perpetrators.

"If the program is too simple, sophisticated attackers can get around it. And if a program is too broad, there are too many false alarms and wrong guesses."