THE OREDIGGER

The student voice of the Colorado School of Mines

Volume 94, Issue 18 March 3, 2014
COURTESY ADENOSIME

News

Student research projects on display at CEER

Features 4

Depression Quest depressing excuse for video game

The closing ceremony marks the end of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.

Constructing new tunnels in D.C.

Hope Sisley Staff Writer
Professional engineer Bill Edgerton of Jacobs Associates came to the only student chapter of the Underground Construction Association (UCA) in the country to talk about the Combined Sewer Overflow (CSO) tunnel project in Washington, DC. Edgerton is a principal on the D.C. Clean Rivers Project, of which the CSO is a part, and the chair of the UCA. The Clean Rivers Project is a multi-billion-dollar endeavour, projected to run until 2025, to stop sewer overow during storms from going into the three rivers that ow through the D.C. area, which is the current destination for sewer overow for a third of the region. It will also help mitigate extreme ooding from even relatively minor storm events. The slowest-moving of the rivers concerned, the Anacostia, is being tackled rst. Four major CSO tunnels are being constructed, at a cost of $3.5 billion, to tie into and divert storm overow from the citys sewers. The longest of these, the twenty-seven-thousand-foot-long Northeast Boundary Tunnel, is still in design. Before construction can begin, an environmental impact assessment must be done. This involves more than just environmental impacts: the eects of the project on traffic, pollution, and even the local archaeology must be considered. As a result of such an assessment, a smaller tunnel now under construction (and the shortest of the four at only 2700 feet long), the First Street NW Tunnel, is being constructed using a dierent method from the other three since it is located in a residential area and the equipment used for the conventional construction method was considered too disruptive for the residents. The twelve-thousandfoot-long Anacostia River tunnel crosses directly underneath the presidential helicopter hangar, so its environmental impacts are also of prime importance - especially potential subsidence, which can damage surface structures. The majority of Edgertons talk, however, focused on the Blue Plains Tunnel, which is planned to be twenty-three feet across and twentythree thousand feet long, and which is the closest to completion of the four CSO tunnels. In order to dig this monumental construction, a massive tunnel boring machine (named Lady Bird after President Lyndon Johnsons wife) was brought in, weighing over seventy-ve thousand tons. Two massive shafts built by the river to screen and de-water the overow serve as the launch point for Lady Bird; once the shafts were completed, a special crane lowered the boring machine into the hole and set it on its way. Edgerton discussed two parts of the construction process: the building of the shafts and the preservation of existing structures aected by the Blue Plains CSO, specically a football-eld-sized sewer pumping station that has been operating since 1900 and several of the stations contemporary sewers, which are of historical as well as practical signicance. Because the turn-ofthe-century sewers cannot be replaced or shut o, damage to them would have been near catastrophic. The two shafts - a hundredfoot-diameter pump shaft and a somewhat smaller screening shaft - were originally designed to be separate, connected by a small tunnel. The client, however, preferred a dierent design, in which the shafts abutted each other, sharing a wall. While this removed the need for the small tunnel, it posed a suite of new problems, as the stresses on two isolated round shafts are quite dierent from those acting upon adjoining shafts. The method of construction also changed so that special Y-shaped cement panels must be designed for the shaft junction. A two-hundred-foot-deep trench was dug for the panels, then fty-foot segments of rebar lowered into the hole and connected, and, nally, after a network of pipes was placed, a concrete slurry was pumped into the space. The resulting cement sections abut each other but have no true joint so it is essential that the design be perfect. For instance, the slurry panels must sit exactly at on the ground or the structure will not hold. After the shafts completion, it was discovered that one of the panels did not sit properly. As it could not be re-set, the engineers had to reexamine the stresses, and they determined that stronger concrete would have to be used in the panel to compensate the error.

Sports 7

Wrestlers ght hard but fall to Grand State

Opinion 8

Minds at Mines asks students favorite movies

A miscommunication caused the cement plant to send a weaker concrete mix instead, which was disastrous. After much testing and analysis, the project engineers determined that the weak panel would be just barely sucient, necessitating the installation of considerable monitoring equipment so that any failure of the shaft due to this panel could be detected and mitigated. Other factors interfered with construction of the shaft. During the pouring of another one of the wall panels, the slurry contaminated the panel cement at the very bottom of the shaft, requiring the entire panel to be re-done; this set the project back several months. Also, the wet conditions in Washington DC meant that the shafts often lled with water. Rather than pump the water out, Jacobs Associates decided to work with the conditions. When the shaft was ooded, the rebar cages were set by divers, and the slurry could still be poured normally. By not dewatering, the engineers reduced possible ground modication from removal of the water from the surrounding soil, and they also reduced potential exterior pressures on the shaft, since the water equalized the pressure inside and out. But to remove it would have meant the water would be pressing in without anything to push against it. The second engineering problem that aected the project was that of the existing historic structures, specically the sewers. Continued at UC&T on page 3

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Scientic discoveries this week

Ramiro Rodriguez, Staff Writer
Copenhagen, Denmark - Despite Gardasil, the vaccine against the human papillomavirus, having only been in the Danish vaccination program for the past six years, a study has found a reduction of 40 to 80 percent reduction in incidents of cervical precursor lesions in vaccinated women compared to non-vaccinated women. Professor Susanne Krger Kjr, MD, of the Danish Cancer Society and the Copenhagen University Hospital says, The special thing about Denmark in this context is that we were very quick to implement the HPV vaccine nationwide. This is why we have managed to carry out such a comprehensive study of the eect of the HPV vaccine so soon.

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Chicago, IL - Female night owls are have been found to have cortisone levels and propensity towards risk taking more similar to male night owls than other women. Being a night owl has been associated in men previously with extraversion, higher risk taking, as well as a higher number of sexual partners, and this study links the same for women. This study furthers the idea that eveningness developed in humans recently in human evolution to advance a short term mating strategy.

Heidelberg , Germany - A team led by Sven Sturm of the Max Planck Institute for Nuclear Physics in Heidelberg has found a more accurate measurement for the weight of the electron, one of the most basic building blocks of matter. This was accomplished by weighing a single atom of carbon that was trapped inside of a Penning trap. The estimate of 0.000548579909067 atomic mass units is thirteen times more accurate than previous measurements. Jack Hills, Australia - A piece of zircon discovered in an outcrop on a sheep farm in Western Australia has been discovered to be the oldest unchanging piece of earth discovered, at an age of 4.4 billion years. John Valley, the geoscience professor from the University of Wisconsin who led the research, claims that this could imply that the planet was capable of sustaining earth 4.3 billion years ago where the earliest fossils are 3.4 billion years old, implying life-sustaining temperatures earlier than previously thought.

Oredigger Staff
Deborah Good Editor-in-Chief Emily McNair Managing Editor Taylor Polodna Design Editor Connor McDonald Webmaster Lucy Orsi Business Manager Arnaud Filliat Copy Editor Katerina Gonzales Content Manager Jared Riemer Content Manager Karen Gilbert Faculty Advisor

Headlines from around the world

Ramiro Rodriguez, Staff Writer
A federal judge in San Antonio has ruled that Texass ban on same-sex marriage and its refusal to recognize the validity of out-of-state same-sex marriages are unconstitutional. U.S. District Judge Orlando Garcia writes in his ruling, Regulation of marriage has traditionally been the province of the states and remains so today, However, any state law involving marriage or any other protected interest must comply with the United States Constitution. The two bans will, however, remain in eect for the time being as the judge has issued a stay until the issue is resolved by a higher court. A document released recently by Edward Snowden has revealed that the Government Communications Headquarters, a British intelligence agency, has a group known as the Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group. This inltrated numerous groups online with the intent to inject false information to destroy the reputation of its targets as well as manipulated online discourse through negative information, false ag operations, and fake victim blog posts. The ACLU is ling suit against the Haralson County school district in Georgia over the ring of Johnny Cook who refused to issue an apology for statements on his Facebook account where he commented on a student being refused lunch because the student did not have the forty cents needed for a reduced price lunch. The day after making the comment, Cook was given an ultimatum of apologizing and receiving a two-week suspension or having his employment terminated. Davi Barker, co-founder of BitcoinsNotBombs, a Bitcoin advocacy group that aids donation-based groups in being able to use the crypto-currency, was confronted by the TSA because they needed to check his bag because they found Bitcoin in his bag. While the currency is completely digital, Barker was wearing promotional material for his group at the time and had lapel pins that he sells at conferences. It is unclear as of yet the reason for the stop, as while it is illegal to travel internationally from the US with large amounts of money, Barkers ight was within the continental US. The Food and Drug Administration is proposing major changes to nutritional labels on food labels that aims to put calorie count in large type and adjusts portion sizes to better reect the actual amount of foods Americans eat. The proposal also adds a line to nutritional labels that will point out the amount of manufactured sugar added to a food item in addition to total sugar as opposed to the current label which only has total sugar. The proposal is centered around the fact that portion sizes in the US have changed dramatically since the 1970s and 1980s which is from when most of the serving sizes on food labels are based on.

Local News
The Colorado State Fair will not continue to use the cash-free system implemented last year. Last year, fair attendees used pre-loaded cards to purchase snacks and tickets to shows at the fairgrounds. The vendor of the cards earned about $60,000 by charging $1 per card in fees. This year, the proposed agreement would increase the companys earnings to $200,000. Ocials want to decrease the costs to attendees this year. Canon City Police report that humans caused the re that severely damaged the Royal Gorge Bridge and Park. The re burned more than 3000 acres and destroyed most of the structures within the park. However, no homes were burned and no one was injured. The city and the Royal Gorge Bridge Company of Colorado are rebuilding the park. Voting for the Mayor of Divide has begun. This years candidates include a 35-year-old donkey named Herbie, a hedgehog named Blackberry, a wolf named Nakai, and many other animals. The current mayor of Divide, Walter, the three-legged cat, was elected in 2012. Votes cost $1 and all proceeds support the Teller County Regional Animal Shelter. The weekends snow caused mass pileups along a ve mile stretch of I-25 in Denver. Denver Police say that 104 vehicles were involved and caused the interstate to shut down. The largest of the pileups involved 45 vehicles. Investigators believe that poor visibility and icy roads contributed to the collisions.

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Hope Sisley Staff Writer

UC&T continued Tying future and policy

Continued from page 1 Engineers went into the sewer during dry weather and found large cracks already present in the walls, even tree roots breaking through. It was clear that the subsidence caused by the tunnel would destroy this sewer, so steel sets were brought in to stabilize the walls: bolted-in rebar ribs to keep the sewer from collapsing. These had to be carried in by hand through a manhole, which was the only access to the sewer. As the cracks will probably widen in spite of the steel sets, after the CSO tunnels construction is complete, the contractor will go into the old sewer and repair the walls permanently. Edgerton brought up a nal point: a phenomenon known as conservatism in engineering design. The faulty slurry panel which was found to pass the bill with weak concrete had been designed to withstand far greater stresses than it will likely encounter. An engineer is always under pressure to make things extra-sturdy since a failure will be blamed on her design. A contractor, however, is under pressure to save time and materials, since the client wants to spend as little as possible. Every project is an interplay between these opposing forces. Ideally a happy medium will be found, allowing the client to save cost while still receiving a quality project which, like the historic sewers of DC, will last for many years to come.

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Katerina Gonzales Content Manager

Where buildings were potentially endangered by ground movement caused by the CSO tunnels construction, ground cores were taken and structural proles of the subsurface made in order to assess the strength of the soil. In one place, a brick-and-concrete masonry sewer over a hundred years old sat only seven feet away from the planned tunnel route. Lab tests of the soil parameters were plugged into a model to predict possible ground subsidence or displacement where the sewer lay. The wall of the sewer was cored and the actual eective strength of the old materials assessed. The result was that, if there were no mitigation eorts made, the damage to the sewer caused by the tunnel would be irreparable. To prevent a catastrophe, stronger soil was packed in around the sewer to replace the existing weak ll; this is called ground improvement. The cost was nearly $800,000, but it prevented damage to the sewer, which would have incurred far worse costs. Another sewer from the same era was at similar risks. This one was larger and had been designed to accommodate wet-weather overow, much like the modern CSO will do.

Movement of theYakutat
Hope Sisley Staff Writer
sea level rather than far below it, with large deltaic systems pumping sediments onto the plateau. In order to determine the source of the deltaic sediments, detrital zircons and conglomeratic clasts were examined. The clasts give rock type and the zircons give rock age. By comparing the ages of the zircons with plutonic rocks (e.g. granitics) along the Pacic coast, the path along which the plateau moved can be ascertained. In this case, three plutons corresponding to the derived zircon ages of 58, 91, and 157 million years old were found to be far to the south, in the Coast Range of British Columbia, showing just how far the plateau has moved since that time. Ridgway next described the younger rock record. The basalts of the plateau are from the paleocene, but during the eocene the

From biofuels to mineral exploration, the Conference on Earth and Energy Research (CEER) brought together great minds and scientists, current and future, at Mines. The Graduation Student Association of CSM did a great job of displaying great research while empowering energy and earth scientists after hearing the keynote lectures. U.S. Senator Ken Salazar opened up the conference by giving his keynote lecture titled, Toward North American Energy Independence. Salazar is former Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and started off by speaking of his experience of dealing with the Deep Water Horizon crisis in 2010. Salazar also reflected on a conversation with President Obama in which Salazar pointed out the turn that the U.S. has made in going towards

energy independence: in 2005, the U.S. was importing 60% of its oil and was projected to be importing 40% by the year 2020. However, today the U.S. is only importing 40%. Salazar credited this turnaround to two things: policy and technology. Salazar acknowledged that policy should have a bigger role in funding technology and admonished the Mines campus to keep on going. To close off the conference, Pieter Tans from the NOAA Earth System Research Lab in Boulder gave a talk about energy policys relation to man-made climate change. Tans is a distinguished climate scientist and used only simple physics and chemistry including mass and energy balance to show that climate change is anthropogenic. He explained the concept of climate forcing, saying, Its as if the sun has become 1.2% brighter. Tans likened doing nothing as playing Russian

Roulette, but with our children, and then put forth some things that we can do. These include ending subsidies, being more energy efficient, and conserving more energy, all which have to do with policy. Tans also did not agree with the IPCCs method of communicating climate change, a form that relies heavily on models, which opens the door wider for skeptics. He instead proposed that climate change be communicated better to policymakers with simple physics and chemistry. Though the poster sessions and oral presentations had a technical flavor from a broad spectrum of research areas, the keynote speeches tied everything in with policy and the future. The two-day conference was a huge success, and anyone interested in earth and energy should look out for CEER to be even bigger and better next year.

Water & culture

Elizabeth Starbuck Staff Writer

This week the Humanitarian Engineering Program along with EWB/ B2P, the Civil and Environmental Engineering Department and ReNUWIt Research Center brought Je Walters from CU Boulder, their rst guest Lecture of the semester. Je is a PhD candidate in Civil Systems Engineering at the University of Colorado and is a Mortenson Fellow in Engineering for Developing Communities (EDC). Seeing the Forest for the Trees: A System Dynamics Based Methodology for Sustainable Rural Water Services in Developing Countries was the title of this weeks lecture. To begin, Mr. Walters started in the trees. It may be dicult to see any forest when projects are constantly failing; water projects in rural communities in particular have a low success rate, 30% fail within 2 to 5 years. After graduating, Je started working with Engineers Without Borders to put his new engineering skills to the test in developing countries. Many of his rst few projects failed, but knowing this was the nature of projects in rural communities and that failure is systematic, he didnt let this slow him down. Je and a friend started Second Mile Water. This organization not only wanted to get people water, it also goes the second mile and keeps the water projects going and sustainable. Je left the organization and decided to go back to school to get his PhD in this issue. Today there are many groups and organizations that go to developing countries to install clean water sources and other infrastructure to help encourage development. After the groups and organizations put in the systems, the next issue and step to tackle is getting these new systems to be sustainable in the communities. Je saw that he had two options to going about this problem, he could take the red pill or the blue pill. The red pill being a linear ap-

proach, looking at indicators, and scoring them together. Je saw two big areas related to the red pill he did not like: rst, a linear approach is linear and second the data collected is not based on time. As a result Je took the blue pill or a systems approach, allowing him to see the forest through the trees. The systems approach is heavily weighted in the use and creation of models. Je is using the System Dynamic Modeling, a type of model used to describe economics and implications of complex business pursuits, to try and explain his ndings. The project was broken into ve steps. Step one is the problem statement: inability to plan for and evaluate the systematic inuences that aect sustainability of rural water projects; the purpose being to investigate and model these dynamic inuences. Step two is where things start to heat up and also where Je is in the process, going through hundreds of academic articles relating the project and from this creating a dynamic hypothesis. Next comes step three, model building/simulating. To complete this step, Je reached out to 40 dierent experts on developing countries water projects with a survey, to see what they think about dierent areas aecting developing rural water project as a whole, so far the experts and Je have only be able to reach a consensus on ve of the sixty questions. From this tremendous amount of data, Je will complete steps four and ve, creating a code for all of this and drawing references from it. What it all comes down to is trying to create a model for culture and how it relates to the sustainability and success of the implementation of developing countrys water projects. Je Walters conclusion from this project could be the key to seeing the forest of issues related to sustainable water projects in developing countries instead of just each individual problem or tree.

volcanism gets steadily younger to the north, showing the northwards migration of the plateau. These volcanoes are part of the Dr Ken Ridgway of Purdue modern-day Wrangell Mountains. University and, previously, ChevThe collision of the thick plaron, spoke on a unique subducteau with the continent led to tion zone in south-central Alaska. signicant deformation of the Here, in a situation similar to that continent as well as the slab. This at the Ontong Java Trench in the can be seen in the progressively southwestern Pacic, a large ocelarger gaps in the rock record as anic plateau is subducting under one proceeds inland, where faults the continent. Because the mahave removed sections of the jority of oceanic crust is relatively stratigraphy. In the glacial sedithin and dense, it readily slides ments scraped o of the plateau, under continental crust, which is which consist of shelfal muds and thicker and more buoyant. turbidites (underwater landslide When a thick deposit of underdeposits) with diamictites (a type sea lavas reaches a subduction of underwater glacial sediment) zone, however, it causes proband dropstones (rocks that meltlems, since such volcanic proved out of icebergs and fell to the inces are dierent from normal seaoor), there are growth strucoceanic crust. Such a situation tures: angular cut-os between is called at slab subduction successive layers of sediment because of the tendency of the which show continued movement subducting crust to go under the along a fault as the angle steepcontinent at a much shallower This part of the state boasts ens. Indeed, this area exhibits angle than normal. an abnormally thick record of In southern Alaska, the terrane, or chunk of crust, the highest coastal mountain deformation of the subducting plate, thanks to the scraped-o containing the thirty-kilometer-thick plateau is called the range in the world resulting rock that makes up so much of area. Yakutat terrane; it began subfrom some ten kilometers theAs for the continent, the ducting about thirty million years ago and is thicker in the of sedimentary rock being backstop was uplifted about twenty to thirty million years direction of the ocean, such that it resembles a door stop scraped off of the subducting ago as the Yakutat plateau plowed under it, with a fold and being wedged under Alaska. The terrane is close to the sur- plateau onto the continent. thrust belt (a heavily-faulted deformational zone) forming at face as well, only fteen kilometers deep beneath Mt McKin- plateau struck land, jamming up tip of the uplifted area. In the mioley. A very steep paleotransform the subduction zone and stop- cene period, the western margin fault (a strike-slip fault that was ping basalt extrusion until the of the slab led to subsidence in active in the distant past but not miocene period, many millions of the overriding plate, however, relany longer) separates the Yakutat years later, when pillow basalts ative to the uplifted zone, just as a blanket will dip down at the edges from the Pacic plate. This part formed along faults in the area. At this same time, the Pacic of an object pushed under it; this of the state boasts the highest coastal mountain range in the plate abruptly changed its mo- is the modern-day Cook Inlet. Fiworld resulting from some ten ki- tion, suggesting the plateaus nally, a band of seismic activity, lometers of sedimentary rock be- collision with North America very diuse and still active, exing scraped o of the subducting had something to do with the tends far into the continent where plateau onto the continent. Mount change. Likewise, volcanic erup- the slab is going under, showing St. Elias, inland of the shore, rep- tions in the overriding plate show how it is still causing deformation resents the edge of the actual a temporary shut-o from about today. Ridgway ended his talk by continent, or the backstop of thirty million years ago, the same time that the plateau hit. This is pointing out the myriad eects the subduction zone. The scraped-o rock is highly a known symptom of at slab the unique subduction regime in faulted, with some 190 km of subduction, as the subducting the area has had on topographcrustal shortening. Coal beds, plate is too thick to allow mantle ic, seismic and volcanic activity, representing former deltaic material and heat to get through and petroleum exploration. Inswamps, serve as the decolle- to the surface. Instead, the east- deed, the rst Alaskan oil eld to ments, or sliding surfaces, for ern side of the subducting slab be produced was discovered in the faults. The presence of these caused slab-edge volcanism, the 1800s on the submarine fan coals indicates that, when they with volcanoes forming at the deposits of the Yakutat, and the were deposited, the rock was at margin in the overriding plate; the area is still being produced today.

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Geek Week
of the
find? [I] enjoy being a hall director of Maple, have philosophical debates, read webcomics, and have a jolly ol time. What is your favorite thing about Mines? The community. The people here are great. Everyone...we understand each other and what we each go through. People will generally help you out if you seek for it. If you could have any superpower, what would it be and why? [I would have powers] kinda like Rogue from X-Men where you can take other peoples power, not because I would want to take them, but because then I could have any other power. What do you like about being a hall director? The managers side of things, having a staff of fun people, and getting to know an entire building, especially one like Maple with how big it is. What are your greatest accomplishments? Three different internships in different states, three years with Res Life, and surviving and almost graduating [from] Mines. If you could be dropped into any fictional universe, what would it be and why? [The universe of] Homestuck because thats just incredible. Time travel, so much goes on, and the trolls are amazing. Assuming your basic necessities and expenses were taken care of, would you rather travel the world but have no extra money or travel a specific place with an unlimited budget? [I would rather go] everywhere with no money [because] I really like window shopping. I could see way more of the world but wouldnt have to get anything or pay for it. What is your best nerd moment story? Talking about Firefly with someone from a different college where its a lot less common to know about something like that. Do you have any plans for the future? Moving to Washington State, exploring the Pacific Northwest, and maybe working for Wizards of the Coast. Do you have any advice for fellow geeks and Mines students? Take risks, do new things, and talk to everyone you can. Do you have a favorite quote? I hate turtlenecks. Wearing a turtleneck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. -Mitch Hedberg

f e a t u r e s

march 3, 2014

... Aaron Gunzner, Senior: Mechanical Engineering

JORDAN FRANCIS / OREDIGGER

Jordan Francis Staff Writer

A few students manage to make it out of Mines almost entirely normal. From start to graduation, they are able to largely conform to societal standards for acceptable behavior. The rest of the Mines geeks understand that complete normalcy is boring. Those in the latter category, like senior Aaron Gunzner, usually wind up just as successful and having a lot more fun. [Oredigger]: Why did you choose Mechanical Engineering as a major? [Gunzner]: When I got here I was pretty unsure, so I just went with a pretty common one and it turns out I really like it. It provides some fun opportunity and its widely applicable. What has been your favorite class so far? Machine Design. It was just really neat doing calculations on specific components of mechanical systems. Are you a geek and why? I am because of my passion for Magic: The Gathering. I, at one point, was ranked fourth in the state [of Colorado] and its a great time. Its always on my mind. What do you do with what little bits of spare time you can

Katerina Gonzales Content Manager

SWiM makes sine waves for women in math

Being a math or stats major is not a prerequisite for joining SWiM, just a curiosity about the subjects. Its really geared towards the Mathematics department, said Her, But if theres any woman on campus that would be interested in math or careers or internships and REUs in math, they are more than welcome to come and join us, especially those that are minors in Math. SWiM holds their meetings on the last Tuesday of every month at 5PM in Chauvenet 143. Every meeting this semester weve brought in speakers who are in industry but have graduated with a math or stats degree to talk to us about their career, how they got their job, what theyre learning, and what we can do to prepare ourselves for industry. One of our SWiM members actually got an internship from talking to one of our guest speakers. SWiM is also starting workshops on issues that specifically happen to women. Her said, One that were excited about is the Imposter Syndrome, and were also thinking about workshops on negotiation and leadership. For SWiMs February meeting, CSM alumna Claire Le Lait revisited her old stomping grounds to talk about her path to biostatistics. After getting her undergraduate degree in statistics at Mines, Le Lait stayed on for graduate school after getting funded to teach (third and fourth year undergraduates may remember Le Lait teaching some of the lower level math courses such as calculus). She now works as a statistical research specialist for the RADARS System (Researched Abuse, Diversion, and Addiction Related Surveillance), a subset of Denver Health. Being a statistical research specialist is one way to work in the field of biostatistics in industry, as Le Lait works with the statistics of prescription drug abuse. Said Le Lait, I dont know if I would call myself in industry. Im just kind of in a balanced place. Le Lait offered some tips especially for those interested in a field other than engineering. Number one piece of advice: Dont just stick to Mines. It is a great base, said Le Lait, who also took full advantage of external programs such as The Summer Institute for Training in Biostatisics (SIBS). From summer programs to studying abroad, there are many things to be learned and experienced outside of CSM. Second, she advised students to look for jobs early, but to also make sure the people are enjoyable to work with. Said Le Lait, I work with great people. Make sure that when youre looking for a job, you connect with the people who are interviewing you. Le Lait also recommended honesty when being interviewed. She additionally warned with a laugh, If you go into statistics, you will find that you make a sickening amount of tables. Graphs and tables are only the tip of the iceberg of what SWiM is all about, and the club is certain to grow in the coming semesters. In the near future we definitely want to grow our programming, envisioned Carney. We have interest in doing outreach, so sponsoring a middle school math day, or just reach out to middle school and high school girls. Were looking to build a community and look for events that bring people together. In the clubs short existence, the faculty and students have indeed managed to build a community. The best part of SWiM, I think, is that the faculty interacts with us. Nearly every single table has a math faculty member, that way we can interact and get to know our professors, Her said. And we have great food, Branch added. Food, community, and math all come together in Chauvenet.

Aaron Gunzner hopes to work for Wizards of the Coast.

KATERINA GONZALES / OREDIGGER

When Professors Rebecca Swanson and Deb Carney set foot on campus in 2012, they felt something was missing. They already had this idea of coming together and making the women community stronger, said Kownoon Her, a SWiM officer. A group for women in math was something Carney and Swanson had previously experienced and enjoyed, but there was no such group at Minesyet. Society for Women in Mathematics at Mines was born last Spring, but truly launched in the Fall with hearty support from the Department of Applied Math and Statistics. Though Carney, Swanson, and Agata Dean were instrumental in the initiation and vision of the club, SWiM thrives from both AMS faculty and student leadership and participation, creating a vertically integrated community. Before SWiM, SWE was the only organization on the Mines campus that was specifically for women, but growing efforts by Mines to recruit more women resulted in strong support for SWiM by the campus, including WISEM (Women in Science, Engineering, and Math). SWiM is now an official student chapter of AWM, Association for Women in Mathematics. In its second semester, the current is carrying SWiM along well. Meetings are held bimonthly, with students and math faculty socializing over a meal for the first half of the meeting, and then listening and interacting with the guest speaker. Every meeting theres about thirty students who come, and all women, which makes it easy to talk and get to know each other, said Her. But men are more than welcome to come if they like, Abby Branch added, also an officer in SWiM.

Members of SWiM listen to the meetings guest speaker.

Claire Le Lait talks about her path into biostatistics.

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Professor Nigel Kelly: a student favorite

Elizabeth Starbuck McMillan Staff Writer
Like many Mines students, Professor Nigel Kelly began his time in college knowing he was good at science but not knowing what direction to take from there. Originally Professor Kelly did not even want to go to college, as he was more interested in music, but with a little encouragement from his mother he applied and was accepted into the University of Sydney. He then took a gap year and traveled. Upon reection during his year o from school Kelly realized he was really really good at science, always getting his best grades in these classes. But during high school his passion was always ancient history and politics and music, but science was actually more what [he] was able to do. When choosing his freshman courses, a friend of Professor Kellys brother suggested he take geology, which ended up being a very benecial suggestion. Dr. Kelly went in thinking he would pursue marine biology or marine geology, but after taking a class in marine biology his second year, he realized it was incredibly boring to him, making him change his track to focus solely on geology. Dr. Kelly said, Geology has been a passion ever since. Dr. Kelly graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelors of Science with First Class Honors in Geology and shortly after decided to get his PhD as well. For his PhD, Dr. Kelly did research in Antarctica. In the four years of his PhD he was lucky enough to get in three eld seasons. His experience in Antarctica from the lethargic seals and inquisitive penguins and the incredible silence and isolation made Antarctica Dr. Kellys favorite place. He described a day out in the eld saying, You could spend the entire day not seeing or hearing anyone else and knowing that the nearest person was a couple kilometers away, like being on another planet almost. He enjoyed the incredibly unique environment and team aspect of the research trips. Between seasons in Antarctica, Dr. Kelly helped a man in Edinburgh, Scotland who was also working on the project. Dr. Kellys time in Edinburgh really opened his mind to dierent possibilities for post graduate work, and from there he decided to do postdoctoral research. There was a gap of time between nishing his PhD and the start of the post doctoral research position, so Dr. Kelly took a break from geology and worked in nance. When looked at linearly, this may seem like a big jump in interest, but surprisingly geology and nance go hand in hand. Dr. Kelly explained why geologists often get hired in nance: First o, geologists tend to be numerate, and therefore not afraid of numbers. And two, geologists are used to dealing with incomplete information. Geologists are able to make condent interpretations on incomplete data, which is a very important skill set in nance and other similar elds. After this, Dr. Kelly worked in the post doctoral research position for six years, getting a chance to do a lot of diverse work, more research in Antarctica, two summers in Greenland, as well as his main research in Scotland. Once he nished there, he applied to several professorial positions and ended up here at Colorado School of Mines. Although Dr. Kelly had a wonderful time in Edinburgh, which has easy access to the Highlands and travel to other European countries, he has grown to love Colorado as well. At Mines, Professor Kelly has had the opportunity to teach undergraduate and graduate classes from Earth Materials to Applied Geochronology, along with assisting students with their research projects. Most recently Dr. Kelly has worked on research in South Africa. Just three weeks ago, Dr. Kelly went to Zambia to do research on abnormalities in the Central African Copper Belt, which will help with mining the area in the most ecient way possible. One of the benets of Professor Kellys job is the many opportunities to travel, and he enjoys traveling for recreation as well. When Dr. Kelly is not teaching or traveling the world he loves to ski, road bike, hike and professes to play guitar.. Along with these activities Dr. Kelly also nds time to run with his German shorthaired pointer, who keeps him t and is [his] running companion, and goes upland bird hunting with her. Dr. Kelly is very enthusiastic and knowledgeable about geology. It is evident that geology, and teaching

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students about it, are very important to him. Not only is his favorite book a geology textbook (commonly referred to as the Blue Bible,) but his best compliments relate to teaching geology also. Dr. Kelly loves to hear from students that have graduated and come back to thank him for teaching. Dr. Kelly recalls on one evaluation a student commented give him a raise, and on another, a student said that they had learned more in his eld methods class than any other class. Dr. Nigel Kelly is an amazing teacher and geologist and a valuable xture in the Colorado School of Mines Geology department.
COURTESY NIGEL KELLY

Vegetarian Lasagna for cheap NSBE Cultural Fest

Jacqueline Feuerborn Staff Writer
Vegetarian lasagna is an excellent choice for anyone, whether vegetarian or not. This is for one simple reason: it is cheap. As a poor college student, it is often dicult to cook on a budget and still make tasty meals. Vegetarianism is a good solution to this because meat can be quite pricey so avoiding it can be cost eective. Most people avoid vegetarian food because they are under the ignorant assumption that vegetarian food either is not very good or that it just is not right. Anyone under that assumption is wrong. Vegetarian meals can be delicious and sometimes it is impossible to tell that the meat is missing. So to save money and try some vegetarian food, make a vegetarian lasagna. This is an incredibly simple recipe that anyone can follow. Ingredients: One 24 oz jar of tomato sauce (any brand or avor will work) One box of lasagna noodles Two 15 oz packages of ricotta cheese One egg cup of milk Instructions: 1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Spray a nine by thirteen pan with Canola oil or vegetable oil. 2. Pour the tomato sauce into a saucepan and heat on the stove. At this point, spices or garlic can be added to jazz up the sauce but this is completely optional and will work whether or not anything is added to the sauce. 3. A pot of water should be boiled and the noodles added. The most dicult part of this entire process is ensuring that all of the noodles are cooked well. This is dicult because it is often hard to t all of the noodles into the boiling water and ensure that they are all submerged. 4. In a bowl, the ricotta, egg and milk should be mixed. More milk may need to be added. Milk should be added until the cheese and egg mixture is roughly the same consistency as the tomato sauce. 5. Once the noodles are completely cooked they should be strained and rinsed with cold water until they can be handled without the pasta being too hot to hold. 6. A layer of noodles should be placed on the bottom of the pan. On top of this add a layer of the tomato sauce. On top of the tomato sauce, a layer of the ricotta cheese should be added. 7. Repeat step 6 until all of the noodles and tomato sauce have been used up. 8. Any extra cheese mixture can be added to the top of the lasagna. 9. Place pan in oven for 30 minutes or until the cheese on top is golden brown. This is a delicious meal that is quite cheap and easy to make. The lack of meat might not even be noticed by anyone eating it. Serves 8.

Dr. Nigel Kelly has worked all over the world, from Antarctica to Edinburgh.

Jordan Francis Staff Writer

The NSBE Cultural Festival displayed both African and AfricanAmerican customs and traditions in a fun and enriching celebration of culture and history. The festivities facilitated cultural celebration and blending through sharing traditional foods, performances, and dancing. The evening began with NSBE hosts providing attendees with foods such as moinmoin, efo, jollof rice, beans, chopped barbeque pork, and beef and chicken turned in Nigerian stew. While eating their ll and admiring the decorations, the audience was treated to a performance by a four-member, soulful jazz band by the name of JoFoke aNem. After the band, the NSBE brought slam poets Mahogany and Niyah from Slam Nuba

JACQEULINE FEUERBORN / OREDIGGER

to the stage to recite some powerful poetry ranging in topic from discussions of slam poetry and what it meant to each of the poets, to stories about life and personal struggles, to culture appropriation, to the bonds of family and humanity in general. Afterwords, the Ujamaa Dance Collective nished the night with a high-energy return to music through their performance with African drums. They quickly got the audience up on its feet and easily encouraged attendees to learn and participate in some traditional African dances. The night culminated with everyone in the audience participating in a followthe-leader type of dance. The Cultural Festival was an entertaining and educational way to present and celebrate African and AfricanAmerican customs to the audience at Mines.
JORDAN FRANCIS / OREDIGGER

Vegetarian lasagna is an inexpensive, delicious meal.

The Ujamaa Dance Collective performed at the NSBE festival.

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Comic Corner: Leaves on the Wind #1 & #2

Jordan Francis Staff Writer
Joss Whedons Firey is a sci western television series canceled far too soon with a fanbase whose continual growth and compounding enthusiasm keep the spirit of the show alive and well even though the show has been o the air for more than ten years. As many people are aware, the rabid devotion of the cult following that developed in the wake of Fireys untimely cancellation was strong enough to convince studio executives to green light a movie sequel to the show in the form of Serenity, which was released a few years after the episodes stopped airing. However, the rest of the ways in which the Verse lives on are relatively less well known to the public. Many fans have risen to the task of making their own Firey productions in the form of lms, radio and audio dramas, written stories, fan art, and other mediums. Gaming companies have released multiple Firey-based games and, as many fans are aware, Dark Horse has released several stories in comic book format under the Serenity title. These comics detail the adventures and lives of the characters in the Firey universe, giving many fans the character insights, background information, and continuing storylines they were denied after the show was cancelled. At the beginning of this year, Dark Horse began releasing a six-issue miniseries under the Serenity label: Leaves on the Wind. This series picks up nine months after the events of the Serenity movie and shows the reader how the characters actions in that lm have changed life in the Verse. This is an ongoing series, so readers who wish to nd and read issues #1 and #2 on their own before the third comic comes out are advised to skip the next two paragraphs. Issue #1 begins approximately nine months after the events of Serenity, with life progressing in a relatively expected manner: the Alliance is denying the validity of the incriminating report on Reavers Mal and his crew broadcast to the Verse, many media outlets are calling the broadcast a hoax, and rumblings of a New Rebellion against the Alliance are getting stronger by the day. Everybody is looking for the Serenity: the media and the general populace of the Verse want the crew to come forward with the truth about the Reaver broadcast, the Alliance wants the ship because, among other reasons, River Tam is aboard it, and the New Rebellion wants to nd Malcolm Reynolds and make him their leader. With almost the entire Verse after them, the crew of the Serenity hides in one of the only safe places they can nd: a spot in the middle of nowhere that lacks the signicance of even a name. The crewmembers fans remember from the movie are all still there except for Jayne, who seems to have left of his own volition. Mal nds himself under increasing pressure as the ships supplies of money and food continue to dwindle. However, with everyone out looking for his crew and Jayne gone and Zoe incapacitated due to pregnancy, he refuses to risk taking on a job. Zoe, still dealing with the pain of losing Wash, soon nds herself giving birth to his child. However, after the birth, Simon takes Mal aside and warns him that though the baby is healthy, Zoe is bleeding internally and the ships equipment is insucient to determine the extent of the damage. Without hesitation, Mal has Kaylee re up the engines and has River pilot them out of the safety of obscurity to a relatively nearby medical facility. The comic shifts perspective to show the supposedly dead bounty hunter Jubal Early presenting himself to the Alliance as the man who is going to nd Malcolm Reynolds. The story ends with members of the New Rebellion bribing Jayne into helping them nd Mal. Issue #2 opens with Jubal Early expounding slightly on his plan to nd the Serenity and with Jayne and the New Rebellion continuing their search for Mal. The comic then shifts back to the Serenity where the crew is preparing to dock with a medical ship. The crew plans various ways to try and slow down the inevitable moment when the facility will identify them and alert the Alliance. Despite the high likelihood that the Alliance will nd them, Simon and Mal take Zoe into the facility. The doctors on board are able to help her, but tell Mal that it will be several days before she is recovered enough to return to the ship. With the Alliance notied and its soldiers making a beeline for the medical facility, Zoe urges Mal to leave and, promising her that they will come get her when shes healed up, he follows her suggestion and abandons her to the Alliance. Mal suers some serious guilt for his actions and cannot come up with a plan for how to rescue Zoe until River points out the bargaining chip they have: her. River oers to go into a medically induced coma so that she can unlock some of the Alliance secrets in her brain. Once she can reach these secrets, she suggests that they oer her silence to the Alliance in exchange for Zoes safe return. The crew eventually agrees, but as soon as River is put into her coma, the New Rebellion ship nds the Serenity. Jayne and the current New Rebellion leader, Bea, board the ship. Mal is less than pleased to see them, assuming that someone followed their crew to his own. This assumption turns out to be correct, as the reader soon sees Jubal Early kill everyone aboard the New Rebellion ship and land aboard the Serenity. Back in Alliance facilities, an ofcer threatens Zoe with permanent imprisonment and separation from her crew and child. The comic ends back on the Serenity with Mal rejecting Jaynes oer to help with Zoe on the grounds that Mal cannot trust him and with the reveal that Jubal Early has snuck aboard the ship and found the unconscious River. These comics are great for fans of the Firey universe. The characters and story are written so well and so truly to the spirit of the source material that opening the book honestly feels like stepping right back into the show or the movie. Everything about these comics is engineered to recapture the feel of the original universe and in most cases, it succeeds wildly in that respect. Admittedly, this story is going to be dicult for non-fans to get into, as much of the tale depends on references to or knowledge of prior events in the series. The art is the other main weakness of the series. The backgrounds and objects in the comics are well

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Anonymous

Depression Quest Thor 2: an improvement

ambient sounds from the characters current situation, can really start to bum a player out. It is almost like the game is trying to put the player in a bad mood and make sure he or she stays there from start to nish. Nothing moves at all and besides the infrequent changes in the background sounds (which never last particularly long, meaning that the player is stuck listening to that piano a lot), the audio stays pretty constantly xated on one track, which gives the game a pretty dull and dreary atmosphere before the player even starts to consider the actual story or interactive elements. The actual gameplay itself is pretty simple and thus obviously pretty stupid. There is no character creation option. Instead, the player is always dropped into the shoes of a person in their mid-twenties with motivation issues who is working an average day job and dating a girl named Alex. The game tries to make up for the lack of character customization by being really vague and not going into too many details about things like the main characters job, hobbies, or anything else he/she does, which is stupid. The developers should know that the point of a protagonist is not to make a character who is understandable and widely accessible, but to create a character that fulls a specic fantasy and then spend half of the rest of the game convincing the player that they have always wanted to live out that fantasy. Amateurs. Continued at Depression Quest on the web.

done and the representations of space are truly excellent and do a great job of capturing the scope and majesty of the Black that the show and movie worked so hard to portray. However, proportions and details on characters are sometimes a bit o, particularly on close-ups. This is most noticeable on characters from the show, since fans already have an established mental image of the actors who play these characters. However, these artistic imperfections are not particularly distracting and they artwork does improve and start to better mimic the look of the original characters. Everything else, the dialogue, the character interactions, the plot, the details of the universe, the little nods to fans, all of it just smacks of everything that made fans fall in love with Firey in the rst place. Little can be said about what makes this comic good that has not been said a thousand times over about the show itself. The comic really does capture the feel and appeal of the original work and honestly seems like it could have t perfectly as another movie or couple episodes in the show. Though a release date has not been announced at the time of this writing, Dark Horse will likely release a trade publication of the entire mini-series after all of the issues have been released. Fans who cannot wait that long are advised that the third issue comes out on March twenty-sixth. Whether by following the issues as they come out or waiting for the bound release of the full story, Browncoats of all kinds who have been itching for more Firey are heavily advised to check out this series.

Hope Sisley Staff Writer

Depression Quest. What kind of a game is this?!? There are no guns, no cars, no explosions, no air strikes, no invincibility mods, and heck, there are barely any graphics! In fact, the graphics are only just random pictures that pop up sometimes alongside the text that makes up the entirety of the interactive portion of the game. The whole thing is just a boring story about an average guy going about his day-to-day life and he never gets any superpowers or becomes an unlikely hero or nds out he is the Chosen One. He just eats, sleeps, goes to work, and does boring stu in between. Who thinks that stu is fun? Even old-school text-based adventures had more enemies than this stupid thing. The fact that the developers of this piece of garbage have the nerve to call it a game in a day and age where awesome titles like Call of Duty, Battleeld, Skyrim, and anything with Batmans name on it rule the industry is an insult to everything that is awesome about gaming. As previously mentioned, the graphics are worthless. The player mostly only ever gets to see a few dierent pictures, some with static and grainy interference, displayed above the text describing the characters current situation and the players options. The background is a gray-ish sort of static-y image that stays constant the whole time. Seriously, it never changes. That, combined with the repetitive, somber piano music that is only occasionally interrupted by

Most critics and many viewers response to Thor 2: The Dark World was ambivalent. The general consensus seems to be that the Thor franchise is weaker than those of the other Marvel heroes, that the movies are entertaining but nothing to write home about. Instead, people rave about The Avengers. The Avengers was fairly standard comic book fare: a team of superheroes bands together to save the world from a looming menace of epic proportions, learning how to get along in the process. Neither Thor nor Thor 2 boasts a particularly divergent plot from this formula (looming menace, save the world, etc). Yet both of these movies - and especially the second one - stand apart from, and above, the rest of the Marvel canon. The reason for this is not anything novel in the twists and turns of the plot, but in the characterization of the villain, Loki, and in the female characters of the franchise, most notably Jane, played by Natalie Portman, and her sidekick, an unpaid intern named Darcy. First, Loki. As any fangirl will readily explain, he is the true star of the Thor movies. In Norse mythology, he is a shape-shifting trickster gure who is eventually made to suffer eternal torment for accidentally causing the death of another god. In the other superhero stories, Marvel was starting from scratch, but with Thor, the creators had a lot of old myths to draw upon, and they did not shy away from this task. As a trickster god, Loki is chaotic neutral - sometimes a villain, sometimes a

hero. Part of the reason he has such pull is because Tom Hiddleston, who plays him, is an excellent actor; but the main reason is because he is a genuinely interesting, believable, nuanced character. He has complex motivations, which are actually quite reasonable considering the context. He is relatable and charming, with a quick wit and good love/hate chemistry with his brother Thor. Ignoring The Avengers (which threw the characterization established for him in Thor completely out the window), he never does anything really evil. He may be out for his own gain, but he also shows genuine aection for people - his mother, for instance, a major plot point in The Dark World - and even acts selessly on occasion, exhibiting nobility or kindness when he stands to gain nothing - for example, saving Jane at the risk of his own life. In this way, he is a complete departure from the traditional comic book villain: neither an evil maniac bent on the destruction of everything, like Malakith, the actual villain in this movie; nor a sympathetic enemy, like Two-Face in The Dark Knight or Prince Nuada in Hellboy 2. He is not truly a villain at all. Instead, he is a dangerous randomizing factor thrown into the mix to either help or hurt Thor and his goals. He keeps things interesting. Here is a good point to mention that Odin, Thors father and the ruler of Asgard, is the worst king in history. Firstly, his bad attitude and pointless bigotry is the real reason why Loki is such a jerk. Secondly, his response when Thor gives him a reasonable alternative to a worldsspanning war resulting in the deaths of millions of people is to veto it

without any concern for logic. He sends armed troops after his son, ignoring the fact that Thor could easily have been killed in the assault, and treats Jane like crap because she is a mortal and therefore beneath him. In other words, he is a ruthless, arrogant racist who brooks no opposition either real or imagined and apparently cares for no one except his wife. It is a great point in his favor that Thor seems to nally realize as much during the course of this movie. Speaking of Odin, his wife, Frigga (or Freya, more commonly seen in mythology) is quite the opposite of her husband. She is loving and accepting, treating both Loki and Jane with kindness in deance of Odins wishes. And, despite being a middle-aged aristocrat, she is also a complete badass. She is able to easily get the better of Malakith, something even Thor is unable to do, and could have killed him were she that sort of person. She is portrayed as clever and wise, a capable queen and also beautiful despite her age (the actress, Rene Russo, is sixty). Better yet, all of the women in the lm get similar treatment. Sif, a female warrior in Thors band of buddies, likes to party hard, is as good a ghter as any of the men, probably has a minor crush on Thor but never makes any romantic overtures towards him, and never pushes the love triangle the lm hints ever-sovaguely at into being. Continued at Thor: The Dark World - A nontraditional superhero movie on the web.

COURTESY BLT COMMUNICATIONS, LLC

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Basketball ends Baseball splits with Regis on high note

Jared Riemer Content Manager Jared Riemer Content Manager
The tenth ranked Colorado School of Mines mens basketball team squared off against Colorado Christian on Saturday in Lakewood for their final regular season game of the year. The Orediggers (23-3, 19-3 RMAC) defeated the Cougars by a score of 110 to 69. With the win, the Orediggers clinch the two seed in the RMAC tournament and will play their first round game on Tuesday the 4 at 7 p.m in Lockridge arena. The Orediggers dominated this game. They never trailed, and, halfway through the first half, they lead 34-12. At halftime, they lead by 30 points, 57-28. The second half was much like the first. Mines continued their domination, but were not quite as efficient in the second half, only outscoring the Cougars by 12 points. The final score was 110-69, and with that finale, the Orediggers finish second in the RMAC and get to host their first tournament game on Tuesday. Luke Meisch led the Orediggers with 18 points, and added five rebounds. Off the bench, Gokul Natesan scored 17 points and added three assists, while Caleb Waitsman scored 14 in just 19 minutes and added eight rebounds and a block. Trevor Wages and Brett Green scored 13 points, and Wages finished with a double-double, grabbing 12 rebounds and adding three blocks. Green contributed nine rebounds and one steal, assist, and block. Trevor Ritchie and Brian Muller also scored in double digits (10 apiece). Overall there were seven Orediggers in double figures including all five starters. As a team, Mines shot a blistering 57.6% from the field while holding CCU to just 36.5%. The Orediggers won the rebounding battle by 25 rebound, 47-22 and had the 36-26 points in the paint advantage. The Colorado School of Mines played a double header on Friday, because of the impending weather that would be hitting the state on Saturday and Sunday. The Orediggers played Regis twice on Friday, and walked away with a split. Regis won the first game, 9-4 and Mines won the second game 8-4. Game one of the double header was won by Regis. Christian Rooney (1-2) took the loss for the Orediggers, allowing eight earned runs (nine total) on nine hits in just three and two-thirds innings. Relieving Rooney was freshman A.J. Valerio. Valerio pitched 4.1 innings recording one strikeout and allowing just one hit. From the offensive end, Charlie Basil, Cody Marvel, and Nate Olinger each recorded two hits in the game. Basil recorded an RBI, and Olinger scored a run. Overall, the Orediggers recorded 11 hits in the loss, with A.J. Schillinger, Evan Brown, and Zach Bothwell each scoring a run. Mines lost the first game 9-4, but gained redemption in the second game. Game two was started by

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Orediggers shine at RMAC Championships

Jared Riemer Content Manager
The Colorado School of Mines track and field teams headed for Alamosa, Colorado in search of provisionals and all-conference distinction. The RMAC Championship lasted two days from Friday to Saturday. On Friday, Kayla Johnson (senior) set the school record in womens pentathalon by finishing in fourth, good enough for second team. In the 800, Patrick Weaver (freshman), finished sixth in a provisional worthy time of 1:55, and in the mens 400, junior Garrett Hoch and sophomore Austin Shaffer finished 3-4-5 respectively along with Matthe Drotar. Michelle Rigsby earned allconference distinction placing fifth in the long jump with a distance of 18-1.75 (5.35m). In the 5K, Derek Alcorn and Chloe Gustafson ran a provisional time in their events. Gustafson garnered first team all-RMAC with her race and Alcorn earned a respectable third team all-conference medal. In pole vault, Justin Gildmeister (junior ) and freshman Jessie Berndsen received all-RMAC honors for a second and fourth place jump of 14-7.50 (4.46m) and 10-8.00 (3.25m)respectively. Finishing third of 14 throwers, Ryan Ewen garnered second team all-RMAC with a throw of 58-6.50 (17.84m. Earning third team allconference, Jacob Hollister (fifth place) and Austin Roup, finished sixth. On Saturday, McKenzie Zeman (sophomore) placed fifth in the womens 400m to garner analconference nod. In the womens triple jump, Michelle Rigsby finished seventh with a distance of 37-9.25 (11.51m). In the Mens 4x400 relay, the team of Shaffer, Weaver, Matthew Drotar, and Hoch captured the vic-

Olinger, who recorded his first career complete game. Olinger allowed only three earned runs (four total), giving up nine hits over seven innings, striking out three in the process, while not issuing a walk. As a team, the Orediggers recorded 10 hits with Marvel and Brown each recording two hits on the day (both 2-for-4). Marvel and Brown each had a RBI in the game, and Rooney and Logan Smith also recorded an RBI. Schillinger tallied an RBI. After the Cougars hit a threerun homer in the bottom of the first, the Orediggers came out swinging, winning the game 8-4.

Season closes for Lady Orediggers

Chris Robbins Staffm Writer
The Lady Oredigger basketball team took to the court for the final time this regular season Saturday night in Lakewood, competing against Colorado Christian University. Not able to complete the season on a winning note as hoped, Mines fell to the Cougars 65-53. Courtney Gallo got things started early for the Orediggers, hitting an early layup to spark an early 6-0 to start the game for Mines, but the Cougars would come storming back, tying things up at 12 apiece about halfway through the period. The rest of the half would go in favor of CCU, and on 44.8% shooting in the frame, the Cougars would go into the locker room at halftime ahead of the Orediggers 33-24. Both teams emerged from the break with the same momentum levels they had ended the first half with, as CCU went on to build a 37-23 lead before Mines was able to sink a shot in the second half. From there on out, CSM was able to keep pace with the Cougars, but the early deficit proved to be too much for the Orediggers to overcome. CCU ended the game

RMAC tournament proves tough for Mines

Chris Robbins Staff Writer
The Mines wrestling squad took to the mat this weekend in their final team competition of the season in the RMAC championships. The two-day event also coincided with the NCAA West Regional Championships in which several Orediggers competed for individual honors. In the team competitions, Mines finished 10th out of 10 in the RMAC both days, posting team scores of 10.0 on Friday (well behind champion Western States mark of 62.5) and 12.5 on Saturday (again won by Western State, this time with an 86.5 score). These marks took CSM out of any contention for the RMAC team title. Individually, three Mines wrestlers were able to find success in Fridays events. Luis Gurule, Jacob Gerken, and Paul Wilson all earned bids to the next stage of the West Regional tournament on Saturday, where they were met with mixed results. Gurule defeated Erick Rangel of New Mexico Highlands but was then bested by Skylor Davis of Simon Fraser University. Having been moved to the consolation bracket after the loss to Davis, Gurule then fell to Marc Collier of San Francisco State University, effectively eliminating him from the competition. Gerken was defeated in his first match of the tournament by Ryan Fillingame of Adams State, but then advanced far into the consolation bracket, defeating Colorado Mesas Daniel Salazar and CSUPueblos Jimmy Chase. However, Gerkens great run would fall just short of the semifinals as he fell to Bradford Gerl of California Baptist. Wilson also stumbled in his opening match versus Paco Retana of Colorado Mesa, but rebounded to win in the consolation bracket against Justin Rockhill of New Mexico Highlands. But Wilsons tournament would also come to an end before the semifinals, as he was bested by Andrew Reggi of San Francisco State.

on an 8-3 run to secure the 65-53 victory over Mines. Gallo led Mines scorers on the evening with 16 points and was the only Oredigger to reach double figures in the game. Katie Clements added nine points, and Allie Grazulis came close to posting a double-double in the game with seven points and 11 rebounds. On the team stat sheet, the Cougars held every edge over the Orediggers. CCU outshot Mines everywhere from the field except for the free throw line, out rebounded Mines, and committed fewer turnovers. The loss put the Orediggers at 11-15 (10-12 RMAC) overall, and ninth place in the final regular season RMAC standings. However, with only the top eight teams earning bids to the conference tournament, this proved to be the final game for the Lady Orediggers this season, and the final games in the careers of six Orediggers. Clements, Grazulis, Gallo, Tory Langas, Laura Brigham, and Catherine Jimenez all wrap up their Mines basketball careers after several hard-working years contributed between them. The Lady Orediggers will now look towards preparing for the 2014-15 season to begin next winter.

Coyote Classic challenges

Chris Robbins Staff Writer
The Oredigger golf team kicked off the 2014 season earlier this week taking on 16 other schools in San Bernardino, California at the Coyote Classic. The No. 25 ranked Mines squad faced stiff competition, and left the tournament with an eleventh place finish out of 17 competing schools. Michael Lee was CSMs highest finishing individual golfer, ending the event tied for 18th place. After Mondays first two rounds, the Orediggers found themselves tied for thirteenth with the Academy of the Arts at +36 as a team. Lee posted the teams lowest rounds of the day, a +3 first round of 73 followed by a +4 second round score of 74. This put him tied for 34 after the day, a fair distance behind the tournament leaders whose opening rounds were in the mid- to high60s. Jordan Arndt ended the day one stroke behind Lee and tied for 37 overall, while Kyle Grassel, Nick Berry, and John Ahern completed Mondays rounds tied for 48, 54, and 84 respectively. The third and final round on Tuesday saw Mines rebound strongly, with three of five Orediggers posting their lowest rounds of the tournament. Lee shot a +1 on Tuesday,

tory in a time of 3:17.70. This time earned an NCAA provisional time (fastest high-altitude time in the country) and a first team all-RMAC nod. In the 400m, Drotar and Hoch both captured second team allconference, with Hoch finishing third (49.58) and Drotar, fourth (49.98). Kayla Johnson claimed fourth in the 60 meter hurdles and sixth in the triple jump (both earned her all-RMAC honors). This a day after she won the womens pentathlon. In the 3000m (3K), redshirt Freshman Seth Topper garnered third team all-RMAC with a time of 9:01.42 (good enough for fifth out of 25), while Sean Gildea (senior ) finished seventh. Overall, the men finished fourth out of eight, and the womens team finished eighth out of 10 teams. The next task for the Orediggers is the Division II Indoor Championships. They are held March in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

resulting in an 18 place overall finish, while Grassel shot his third consecutive round score of 75 to end at +15 for the event and tied for 37. Arndt finished one stroke behind Grassel for the tournament, tied for 39, while Berry wound up tied for 54 and Ahern tied for 62. As a team, Mines ended the event in 11 place, 38 strokes behind the champion Chico State squad. Mines will hit the road again early next week to compete in the St. Edwards Invitational down in Austin, Texas. That event will be held at the Grey Rock Golf Club in Austin, and goes from Monday, March 3 to Tuesday, March 4.

Also competing for the Orediggers in the tournament were Robert Schultheis, Justin Ray, Austin Krajnovich, Robert Davis, Josh Brown, and Andrew Rixon. Although some of these competitors were able to come away with victories along the way, these wrestlers saw their tournament come to a close on Friday evening. Having completed the schedule for this season, the Mines wrestling team will begin preparations to challenge the RMAC once again come next season.

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Pro graphics cards for students

SolidWorks assembly on three test computers. The test systems were congured as follows: HP ENVY dv6 Custom Desktop Dell T7500 CPU i7-3630QM (2.4GHz) i7-3770k (4.3GHz OC) 2x Xeon x5560 (2.79GHz) Ram 12GB DDR3 32GB DDR3 24GB ECC DDR3 Hard Disk 5200RPM SATA 7200RPM SATA 15,000RPM SAS Video 650M (2GB) 2x 560ti (1GB) V4900 (1GB) Typical Synthetic Benchmark 1300 3500 for a single card, Somewhat less than double in SLI 1300 OS Windows 8 Windows 7 Windows 8.1 SolidWorks 2013-2014 x64 2013-2014 x64 2013-2014 x64 The key takeaway from the test system lineup is that all of the computers are modern, have modern quad core CPUs and far more than sucient RAM. The T7500 will likely be somewhat faster than the others in CPU terms (so long as the program can take advantage of having twice as many cores) and gains signicant loading time advantages from the high speed SAS hard drives. However, once everything is in RAM, the disk speed shouldnt matter and the CPU is hardly used to render the regular display in most modern programs. Qualitatively, the dierence in video card performance is striking. The test assembly a detailed model of a commercial shing vessel is complex enough to cause a signicant drop in the frame rate on the 650m. The card is still capable of rendering the assembly fast enough to work with despite struggling some with the complexity. The SLI setup with 560TIs does better as expected. However, some minor slowdowns and low frame rates still occur despite being on a reasonably high end gaming setup. The V4900 has no issue displaying and rotating this assembly in normal graphics mode or RealView. RealView is a higher detail working view of a model that is close to the quality of PhotoViews integrated preview and renders in real time. It is not available without a workstation card. This improvement alone is worth getting a workstation card if you like or need an accurate display while you are working on your model. The ne tuned drivers come with another key advantage stability. Both the V4900 and the Quadro Fx1700 (obsolete but I used it until I bought the V4900) cards I have worked with have incredibly stable drivers. While display driver crashes regularly happen on consumer grade hardware, the professional drivers seem to be more stable than the gaming drivers. I have yet to get a crash with either cards drivers. In contrast, the gaming hardware has occasional crashes and low end ADIT systems have regular video driver crashes with SolidWorks. The only rendering the V4900 seems to have trouble with is transparencies. When a large assembly is made transparent by editing a component, it will cause the frame rate to slow to a crawl. To be fair, the same thing happens to the 650m and the 560TIs to a lesser extent. This seems to be an issue with the V4900s relatively low actual computing power (relative to a couple midrange gaming cards in SLI) catching up to it. This is not a problem on assemblies of a size that even an advanced user would make for classes like Senior Design or Machine Design. My large assembly is 28MB, has numerous complex toolbox items, and has the maximum detail on many of these items displayed. If the transparency becomes a problem, it can easily be disabled or complex parts hidden and the V4900 will go back to smoothly outperforming consumer hardware. At the end of the day, a budget workstation card like the V4900 can be a signicant improvement for some users. Because I have a dedicated workstation, the V4900 is not a tradeo. It outperforms more expensive gaming hardware at its intended task and is signicantly more stable. In contrast, the average power user at Mines will not have such an easy choice. If you only have one good computer and also use it for graphics intense video games, the V4900 will kill your frame rate. There is no way it can compete with the far more powerful GPUs in aordable mainstream cards. The V4900 is a specialized tool. If you have the problem it is built for, it is an excellent choice. If you only occasionally use SolidWorks for homework and mainly use you computer for games, youre better o grabbing whatever decent consumer card the Micro Center or Newegg have on sale.

Erik Charrier Staff Writer

Professional graphics cards exist to ll a lucrative niche market. Professional software like SolidWorks or ANSYS Fluent and the time of the engineers using this software is extremely expensive. Companies that have spent a minimum of $5,000 on a single seat license for a professional program are willing to pay drastically increased hardware costs to maximize the productivity of their engineers. Professional graphics cards do this by carefully optimizing their drivers for specic programs and workloads. If ones sole interest in graphics cards is pumping out higher framerates in Quake or Doom (or whatever kids are playing these days), these cards will not be useful. If one is more interested in getting the most out of SolidWorks, one may want to consider a professional card. Traditionally, the cost of workstation graphics cards (AMDs FirePro and nVidias Quadro) have been too high for students to consider. However, the price of entry level workstation cards has declined to the point where a student can aord to buy one. AMDs FirePro V3900 and V4900 are presently squared o against nVidias Quadro k600 in the $150 range. Selecting a workstation card is a little more complicated than buying whatever high performance gaming card happens to be on sale. Because much of the improvement in professional graphics cards comes from carefully tailored drivers (the GPUs themselves are usually identical to consumer cards), the AMD vs. nVidia debate often comes down to who has the better driver for a specic program. I am a MechE and SolidWorks TA so real world SolidWorks performance was far more important to me than either synthetic benchmarks or a survey of professional applications. The FirePro V4900 came out ahead for my needs because it gets better SolidWorks performance within its class. I will not stoke the AMD vs. nVidia ame war beyond saying that AMD often likes to use aggressive pricing to hold or gain market share and nVidia is often viewed as the incumbent here. The $155 price tag on the V4900 seems to be an instance of this strategy. Compared to a consumer video card, the V4900 is horribly slow on synthetic benchmarks. Videocard Benchmarks (A convenient compilation of PassMark results available at http://www.videocardbenchmark.net ) scores it at about 1300. To get a sense of how the V4900 compares to consumer hardware, I worked with the same large

Minds at Mines
Favorite Movie?
Katerina Gonzales Content Manager
Everyone has that one movie they watched over and over again as kids, and sometimes the viewing ended in rewinding, for DVDs had not become wide-spread yet in the 90s. This week, Minds at Mines asked, What was your favorite movie from your childhood?

Spy Kids... oh my gosh. Susan Xu

Oh, gosh. That depends. And how do you dene childhood? I really liked Belle and Beauty and the Beast because I thought Belle was me because she didnt have friends and just read books. Antonia McMullan

I dont really remember. Gana Yanjinsuren

Oh man. Im actually going to have to think about that one. I know I had one. What was it? Amanda Casner

Editorials Policy The Oredigger is a designated public forum. Editors have the authority to make all content decisions without censorship or advance approval and may edit submitted pieces for length so long as the original meaning of the piece is unchanged. Opinions contained within the Opinion Section do not necessarily reect those of Colorado School of Mines or The Oredigger. The Oredigger does not accept submissions without identication and will consider all requests for anonymity in publication on a case-by-case basis. Submissions less than 300 words will receive preference.

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AMDs FirePro V4900