Maybe not. New Hampshire police officers will soon be driving a new
kind of patrol car that has a lot in common with the Batmobile, although
this year's model lacks the menacing style and jet engine. The new
cruiser is the product of a UNH research project called Project
54, after the '50s television series "Car 54, Where Are You?" The
car has a built-in computer that responds to simple voice commands,
freeing up the driver's hands so he or she can focus on the road.
The $7 million prototype, unveiled in August, incorporates
voice-activated technology, wireless networking and embedded
mobile-computing equipment. Officers can use spoken commands to operate
equipment such as lights, sirens and radio or to retrieve motor vehicle
information from a database. The computer keeps an audio and video log
of all cruiser activities and uses a global positioning system (GPS) to
keep the dispatch center informed of the cruiser's location at all
times. The equipment required for each cruiser will cost less than the
$4,000 police currently pay for a cruiser laptop.
UNH researchers Bill
Lenharth '74G, '78G, director of the Research Computing Center and associate
research professor in the electrical and computer engineering department, and Tom Miller, a professor in the same department, have
been working with the New Hampshire State Police to
develop this technology since 1996. The research is funded by a
three-year, $3.5 million annual grant from the United States Department of Justice.
The grant is shared by the UNH researchers, the New Hampshire State
Police and a master's program in justice administration in the College of
Liberal Arts.
"This technology offers several important features," says Lenharth.
"Currently, when state police officers get on the radio to ask for
information, they are all calling the same headquarters, so there is
radio congestion, which can result in information delays. And if they
are cut off from their radios, they are very isolated. With this system,
they can get data on their own in seconds without using the radio. In
addition, the voice control will improve safety, since officers won't
have to take their hands off the wheel or eyes off the road when they
are in pursuit. And the GPS system is a great safety feature when an
officer is in trouble."
After working with models for more than a year, the researchers
received their first police car--a 2000 Crown Victoria--in November.
They are currently outfitting it with the new technology. The goal is to
have six cars equipped with the system and in troopers' hands before
May.
"I've been at UNH for 22 years," Lenharth says, "and this is the
most exciting research I've worked on." New Hampshire State Police
Executive Major Fred Booth has a similar assessment. "This is not being
done anywhere else," he notes. "It's our state university and state
police, but the technology developed in Project 54 will benefit law
enforcement agencies nationwide."
"In northern New England, winter is the limiting factor of the deer
herd," Pekins says. "In the fall, most adult female deer store enough
fat to survive roughly 90 days of snow cover, which diminishes food
quality and quantity. Supplemental feed's influence varies with a
winter's length and the occurrence of late-season snows."
Pekins and UNH graduate student Matthew Tarr studied the winter
ecology habits of wild fawns, which are most susceptible to the rigors
of a New Hampshire winter. They captured 10 fawns at supplemental
feeding sites, fitted them with radio collars and kept track of them for
several weeks.
The research team monitored the impact of supplemental feeding on
the deer's home range. They analyzed fecal samples to determine the
ratio of feed to natural browse consumed, used urinalysis to gauge
protein metabolism, and used novel isotopic techniques to measure energy
expenditure and body composition. Twenty days later, they recaptured the
deer and measured weight loss and collected blood samples to measure
changes in body composition and energy expenditure. They compared this
data to similar information gathered from captive deer.
"The study indicated that supplemental feeding may be beneficial in
certain situations and relatively benign in others," Pekins says. "In a
herd that ranged a few hundred yards from the feeding site, one fawn
gained weight, which is incredible in mid-winter. At another site, the
herd ranged a mile to access limited feed. Natural forage was critical
to the fawns in that herd, since dominant adults ate most of the
supplemental feed.
Some of the fawns monitored by the researchers clearly expended more
energy than they would have if they weren't being fed. "This contradicts
dogma, which holds that to survive the hardships of winter, deer must
behave in a way that conserves energy," Pekins says. Having handouts
available was actually detrimental to the energy balance of those fawns
because their activity and energy expenditure increased as they followed
dominant adults to backyards.
Pekins notes that nutrition is not the only concern when deer are
being fed. Feeding sites can be reservoirs of disease and increase the
risk of predation. They may even indirectly endanger the deer's habitat.
"The New Hampshire Department of Fish and Game
works with timber and paper companies to manage and maintain enough
winter habitat to support the northern deer herd," Pekins says. "If
people draw deer away, what's the impetus to preserve this habitat? And
if it's not preserved, where will the deer go when people stop feeding
them? All too often, our wildlife management problems are more
sociological than biological."
Rodgers is working with professor Charles Walker and associate professor Michael Lesser '83, both of the UNH zoology
department. She and other marine biology students are tending two tanks
of urchins at the university's Coastal Marine Laboratory at Fort Constitution in New
Castle, N.H. The tanks are in two separate rooms, hardly larger than
closets. In one room, a timed lamp gives the urchins about 18 hours of
light each day, the equivalent of a June photoperiod all year long. The
urchins in the other room--the control sample--suffer through the short
days of winter along with the rest of us.
Why go to so much trouble to confuse these prickly little critters?
Because there's a large market for uni, the reproductive organs of both male and female
urchins. Described by Walker as "orange mush that tastes like wet
saltine crackers," uni is considered a delicacy in Japan and some
European countries. It is served on vinegar rice and can be eaten fresh
or processed. The best processed uni can sell for as much as several
hundred dollars per pound.
Uni is graded according to the size, firmness, color, texture and
taste of the urchin organs. There is only a short season each summer
when the product is suitable for market. When the harvest season is
over, buyers shift their attention to other parts of the world, where
uni is ripe at different times of the year.
With the help of their student lab assistants, Walker and Lesser
have been studying the reproductive biology of sea urchins with the goal
of developing a successful land-based urchin aquaculture industry. Their
project is funded by the New Hampshire Sea Grant Program, the UNH
Agricultural Experiment Station and the Department of Commerce.
Walker and Lesser have discovered that light plays an important role
in the sea urchin's reproductive cycle. When urchins are raised under
artificial lights, timed to mimic summer daylight, the marketable period
for Gulf of Maine uni is extended.
Walker says that the information provided by this project is
essential if sea urchins are to be a long-term resource in New England.
The urchin industry has seen turbulent times over the past 15 years,
with the sea urchin population going through a boom cycle in the 1980s,
when fishermen first starting harvesting them, and then a bust in the
1990s. Aquaculture may be the only way to keep the industry going,
Walker says, adding that the production of premium-priced "designer"
urchins is not beyond reach.
