Steven Glaser

Spectrum

Steven Glaser is the Intelligent Infrastructure team leader for CITRIS and a Professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering at UC Berkeley. Glaser talks about wireless sensor networks, geothermal energy testing and his earthquake simulation.

Transcript

Speaker 1: Spectrum's next.

Speaker 2: Okay. [inaudible] [inaudible].

Speaker 1: [00:00:30] Welcome to spectrum the science and technology show on k a l x Berkeley, a biweekly 30 minute program bringing you interviews featuring bay area scientists and technologists as well as a calendar of local events and news.

Speaker 3: Good afternoon. I'm your host, Brad Swift. Today's interview is with UC Berkeley Professor Steven Glaser. Stephen is a faculty member of the Department of Civil and environmental engineering. He's currently [00:01:00] the intelligent infrastructure team leader for citrus, the center for information technology research in service to society. He has also a distinguished affiliated professor at the Technical University of Munich in Germany. In our interview, Stephen Glaser talks about engineering education, his research and field projects

Speaker 4: onto the interview. Steven Glacier, welcome to spectrum. Thank you. Thank you for having me. With increasing frequency, [00:01:30] I hear engineers suggesting that engineering education needs to engage students imaginations and provide more opportunity for them to design and build things from day one when they start an education in engineering. What are your feelings about the future of engineering education? Well, it's in a way, it's two pieces. So what kids aren't doing nowadays is playing with physical things when they're young. So they're not necessarily running around [00:02:00] in the woods with their friends tearing stuff up. They're not working on cars, they're not building radios. So when they want to go out and do things in a laboratory or do things in the field, it's very difficult for, so that would be something good to bring back another hand if they want to do computery things, everything's fine and dandy because they have the experience doing that.

Speaker 4: Then my lab, I have my own machine shop. I have a lays and bandsaw and mill and whatnot. I'm lucky to have students. I have [00:02:30] to up now, they're very good machinists, so my students all have to be able to do things with their hands. I've been lucky enough to attract them. Is it too late to sort of introduce that into the curriculum in college as an undergraduate? Would engineering benefit from a studio? Oh, I think it would, and I think you're starting to see that. I guess it's the maker movement. It's sometimes called our dean. Sastry is very into that now and do you feel that a unconventional

Speaker 3: [00:03:00] path to becoming an engineer as an advantage

Speaker 4: in a way, but it's not cost effective? Everybody has an unconventional path. I think you'd gain a lot. I think you see engineering more broadly and I think we see different types of solution. With a broader background,

Speaker 3: how would you characterize the conventional path in engineering?

Speaker 4: The conventional path would be somebody who you know who's good in math and science. Hopefully [00:03:30] somebody who was interested in things and they've taken math and science in high school. They'd come in, they'd do their engineering, which is quite focused because we have so much to learn and go off to work and they're going to be better at certain things. When I finished high school, I was going to go off to become a philosophy major, which I did. I didn't take math senior year. I didn't need it. I was going to be a liberal arts students, so the students that [00:04:00] do have this better background, they're always going to be better than math than me because they learn the fundamentals. When they were young, instead of me having to pick it up when I was 30.

Speaker 3: Your path, the choices you made going into philosophy and then pretty radically altering even from that into being an operations engineer. How were you thinking about engineering at that point?

Speaker 4: I'd never followed a path. I kind of followed what I was interested in and [00:04:30] things led to another. So I always read from a very, very young age and you know, literature, technical pieces. I always worked on things, whether it was building models when I was very young or go carts, fixing cars and whatnot. So I'm always was a very good mechanic, studied philosophy and that whole time I was working construction. I got an operating engineer's union and while I was still in college, so I went through the apprentice program. They're learning [00:05:00] to operate heavy equipment, fix heavy equipment, then worked as a driller for about eight years. So I goes fixing things, working with soils. Then I worked for a year in Iraq. My boss there, uh, had a background of being a operating engineer and then going to school and him and his wife talked me into, oh, you need to become an engineer.

Speaker 4: And I don't know, one thing led to another and here I am. I never planned on being a faculty member. In fact, when I finished [00:05:30] my phd I didn't want to be a faculty member. Pieces just happened. And here I am at Berkeley. What sort of drilling were you doing? A, we are drilling deep foundations, so uh, might be a five foot diameter hole, a hundred foot deep, which we then use for foundations, for buildings, for retaining walls, for subway excavations of subway stations. I did a lot of work on the red line in the subway in Washington DC.

Speaker 5: [inaudible]

Speaker 6: [00:06:00] our guest today is Stephen Glaser and the next segment he talks about two of his research projects, one in the lab and one in the field. This is k a l X. Berkeley.

Speaker 4: Can you give us an overview of your research? We have a number of projects [00:06:30] different yet they have some fundamental similarities. One of the projects laboratory earthquakes. I designed and make a particularly fine nano seismic sensor. So I can measure displacements down to a pico meter that's tend to the minus 12th is very, very small and I can measure signals that accurately for very wide frequency band from about 10 kilo hertz to two megahertz. So I got like the ultimate seismometer. [00:07:00] So then I can set up experiments in the lab where I can control the geometry. So I know all the mathematical descriptions of the system. I have my perfect sensors, I can load in conditions that I know what's going on. And then when I pick up the signals from the small earthquakes we, cause I can start looking at very small details like what are the little motions that lead up to large sliding.

Speaker 4: So I have a block of plexiglass on a very big plate of plexiglass. [00:07:30] So my earthquake is when the whole block moves. But something has to happen before we get frictional movement. And I believe you keep looking small and smaller. You have these small little contact disparities. You have to have little pops at these small areas. And then when do you get a chain reaction? Each pop releases a little energy to the contacts around it and you know at some magic point, enough energies released that all the contacts start popping and you [00:08:00] get an earthquake. And from the lab to a real world setting, how are you translating that kind of work into something that could be in the field? Good question. And it's not universally accepted that material we're using, we're not using rock, we're using plexiglass, but at the stresses we're working with at models ductal rock very well.

Speaker 4: So rock that might be on parts of the San Andreas. There's theories [00:08:30] and lots of work that shows that the way the geometry of contacts is fractal, so it scales self similarly, so might surface on a small slider block actually can scale in terms of geometry to a very large fault. We just had a paper in nature that certain earthquakes have lots of high frequency shaking, so the ground shakes more rapidly. The higher frequencies are more dangerous because it reaches, the [00:09:00] resonant frequency is structure. So there's more damage to Hoku. Earthquake was particularly rich and high-frequency. How do you explain it? So my student had some ideas and it turns out it has to do with how long the fall teals between earthquakes. So we could show the mechanism, the lab, the mechanism to fields and now we have an explanation of what's going on in the field instead of strictly an observation.

Speaker 4: But I can control things in the laboratory and see that yes, it was due to this [00:09:30] factor. So the healing is the time between earthquakes when the stasis is stable, right? Cause the surfaces, chemical reactions, they start to melt together on some level. Even simply putting a block on a table, the longer it sits, the frictional resistance does go up because it's chemical reactions that are giving us a sheer strength. And then some of your other research, [00:10:00] a big project looking at snow hydrology and the Sierras. This important because the state gets about 65% of the water from snow in the Sierras. And it turns out we don't know beans about how much snow is in the Sierra. So you have Frank Gerkey goes out a few times in the winter. He goes to let's say 40 sites and the Sierra sticks this pole in the ground and that really isn't giving us much information about how much snow there is.

Speaker 4: So what we do is we go into a basin, [00:10:30] we'll pick a patch, approximately a square kilometer, put in let's say 20 sensing stations, each one measuring snow depth, temperature, humidity, solar radiation, soil moisture at four depths in the soil and matrix suction at four depths in the soil. We report back the data every 15 minutes. And then we might put like an American river basin, which we're working on now. We'll have 18 such [00:11:00] networks right across the basin and we end up with the network of networks. So each of these local networks sends back to our selves here. They're by cell phone, modem, or satellite modem. The data will come back here. So then you can correlate all that and create real time. We have real time data and our application we're working on now is hydroelectric generation. So we're working with the state, [00:11:30] with the Department of Water Resources. Uh, we're starting to work with PG and nee and southern California Edison.

Speaker 4: On doing demonstration projects and ultimately then with the success of these, you would want to see this proliferate across the Sierra. So then I'll do the whole Sierras and we'd like to take these pieces and make a larger system, which would be a water information system for the state where we would also bring in groundwater information around water, isn't it regulated and we [00:12:00] know really little about the ground water situation, but the general project would be through citrus, our center for information technology research for the interest of society. That's one of the CIS psi four centers that were started by Grey Davis and were interdisciplinary in the building. We have people from law, from art production, from various engineering, all working together, sitting together to look at societal problems. And part of the goals [00:12:30] of the CIS PSI institutes, the four across the state is to take the knowledge from campus and put it in a form that it will help the financial wellbeing of the state and the physical wellbeing, emotional wellbeing, the state

Speaker 7: [inaudible]. You're listening to spectrum oil expert. [00:13:00] Our guest today is Stephen Glaser. In the next segment, he talks about his geothermal project.

Speaker 4: Let's talk a little bit about your geothermal research you're doing and Oh, we have an interesting experiment because we can blow ourselves up. First, we'll start with the idea of enhanced geothermal systems. So we usually think of a geothermal [00:13:30] system like that, the geysers up by Santa Rosa where there's natural water and you stick a straw on the ground and steam comes up and runs your generator. But that's exceedingly rare. I think that geysers might be the only field in the world that's making profit without any kind of subsidy. So what we do have as lots of hot, dry rock, there's hot rock everywhere. So the ideas, you would drill two wells, you would connect them through fractured rock, you'd [00:14:00] pump cold water down one well, push it through the fractured hot rock and pull hot water out of the other and make a cycle. Run that through the generator, then pump it back down.

Speaker 4: There's been a lot of work. We're slowly moving towards that becoming a reality. But there's this idea that you could use super critical CO2 so that CO2 under very high pressure, that it's not quite a liquid. It's not quite a gas, but it has good heat carrying capacities, but very low [00:14:30] friction, very low. A Dutch would say viscosity cause it's a fluid. However, nobody has done any measurements with the heat capacity, the state behavior of super-critical CO2 going through hot pours media. So that's what we're doing. The models show one thing, but is it true? We're running experiments in the lab and we can go up to 5,000 PSI pressure and 200 degrees centigrade. So fairly extreme conditions. [00:15:00] We run the Sea of two through a pressure vessel filled with sand and then the vessels heated and we can do all sorts of measurements inside, outside the vessel.

Speaker 4: The volume flowing through the mass, flowing through how the heat is taken from the sand into the fluid as it moves through the column. And we can then verify the models, help the modelers improve their program. And we've just written a paper where what we noticed [00:15:30] is that there's a change in the conductivity of the CO2 as it changes temperature that's large enough that it causes problems in the model because the model doesn't take it into account. So this will give us a more realistic view, whether the scheme actually is so much more efficient than using water. Now that we're talking about geology, do you have any comments about fracking? It's become sort of the controversy does your, yeah, I think the New York Times [00:16:00] is kind of responsible for that in and of itself. Fracking's just fine. I think what we've seen with gas production, there's a loophole in the EPA laws and in a lot of states they're very strict with fracturing for oil production and you don't hear horror stories about oil production fracturing and has done all the time.

Speaker 4: So the gas, the problems is that they don't take proper care with the fracking fluid. They're not careful with how they cement in their pipes. [00:16:30] A variety of pieces like that. So it's the way the operations are done. It isn't inherently a problem with fracking. And by being careful, you're probably meaning spending money to do it right. Money. Right. And that's the motivation to do it haphazardly is you can do it cheaply, right? Cause in, in the end you need to do something with the fracking fluid and if you just dump it on site, that's obviously cheaper than trucking it away and treating it. If you think about it, the fractured you're growing or [00:17:00] on the order of meters, tens of meters, and they're taking place a kilometer deep, they are not affecting the surface, they're not effecting the awkward aquifers. The problems would be that the pipe which you're pumping the pressurized fluid down, if there's leaks there that would affect the near surface water, you're pulling the gas out.

Speaker 4: Well, if the pipe isn't cemented in very well, then you would have leakage of gas, but it can be done totally safe. So it's really a matter of getting the regulation right and getting the [inaudible] in place [00:17:30] and right, exactly. That's the physical makeup of the shale. Make the fracking process, uh, do you need to be more cautious in that environment or there are some side effects to that that don't happen in other geological formations. Each formation is going to be different. What you would watch out for in your design and operation in general, you know, if we leave out the poor operation is that you don't want to damage your petroleum reservoir. So think [00:18:00] of it as a layer of rock that has the gas and then you'd have a cap and then a cap beneath it. And if you run your fractures through your cap, then you might lose your natural gas to some other formation. The chance of it going kilometer and a half to the surface is pretty insignificant. And from a given fracture, there isn't that much gas coming out anyway. You've got to have lots and lots of fractures because shales pretty well in permeable. That's why we thought we'd never get any [00:18:30] kind of patrolling production out of the shales.

Speaker 5: [inaudible]

Speaker 6: Mrs KALX Berkley, the show is spectrum. Our guest is professor Stephen Glazer, the civil environmental engineer

Speaker 4: [00:19:00] with smart infrastructure, kind of a focus of citrus. Is there growing concern that the internet is being seen as not so secure? There's a tremendous amount of work being done now on, on cyber security. One way around it might be to have, you know, like a private internet cause actually to have communication system with let's say water and [00:19:30] power utilities. There is no reason to also be able to access Facebook off of that. In a way. Our telephone system is a pretty complex system, wide ranging system that is much more secure. So the military has their own system but does lots of work being done on that. We're not worrying about it. We can use, you know, the encryption that's available now. Uh, does it mean that the Chinese government can't hack it? Yeah, of course they can, but they don't care how much [00:20:00] snow is at big creek.

Speaker 4: If the Internet becomes a means for people to do political action by denial of service and then everybody's kind of shutdown, slowed down, right. Things aren't operating. That's the more broadly based concern that I would hope is being worked on. But you're pulled in two directions cause one by making the Internet so democratic and open, it's open to people who want to make mischief as well as people who want to use it legitimately. [00:20:30] You know, the more freedom you have, the easier it is to take advantage. And you kind of then have to say, well yeah, like our legal system, it's worth a couple of guilty people getting away with a crime than having an innocent person go to jail. So I think a society, we have to decide where we want to be on this and it's certainly not an easy question to look at.

Speaker 4: Is there anything that I haven't asked you about that you want to talk about? Oh, maybe the fine quality [00:21:00] of our students here at cal. I think we sometimes forget, but then I talk with friends at other schools and it's pretty amazing with the quality of people we have here and it makes my life tremendously easier. What is it about the students that you uh, notice in terms of their capabilities or their personalities? They're really interested in what they're doing. They're interested in understanding what they're doing. They're interested in doing new things. They're interested [00:21:30] in enhancing knowledge and they're interested in working hard. Sounds like a, a good environment to be a teacher. Your teaching responsibilities are what now? I teach a graduate class on sensors and signal interpretation. I teach an undergraduate class on geological engineering. Great. Stephen Glaser. Thanks very much for coming on spectrum. Brad, thank you for having me.

Speaker 7: Aw. [00:22:00] Oh, spectrum shows are archived on iTunes university. We have created a short leap to the spectrum Harker type, tiny url.com/kalx spectrum. That's tiny URL, [inaudible] dot com [00:22:30] slash Calex spectrum. A feature of spectrum is to present new stories we find interesting.

Speaker 3: Rick Karnofsky and I present the news nature news reports that UCLA Chemistry Professor Patrick Heron well stand trial for three counts [00:23:00] of violating health and safety standards over the 2008 death of one of his research assistants. She heard Bono songy suffered third degree burns after the term butyl lithium. She was drawing from a vial caught fire. She was not wearing a lab coat. Heron could face four and a half years in jail. The UC regents made a plea agreement for their own role in the accident last year. President of the Laboratory Safety Institute, Jim Kauffman, because the case [00:23:30] a game changer that will significantly affect how people think about their responsibilities. fuse.org reports a study that began during the postdoctoral work of northern Arizona's universities. Gregory Cup Barrasso is shedding light on how adults and their dogs and kids share a microbial communities cup. RSO and assistant professor biology says, what we've been learning is the microbial communities that live in and on our [00:24:00] bodies can play a big role in our health.

Speaker 3: What was exciting about this study was how cohabitation effected microbial communities. It's a unique data set. We all have bacteria in our digestive tract, but cup RSO explained that while any two humans are 99% identical in their genomes, their gut communities of bacteria may be up to 50% different. It's those differences that interest researchers who seek to link them to the origins of obesity, malnutrition or [00:24:30] even colon cancer cup also asks what factors are driving the difference between the microbial communities in my gut and your gut? This study was an attempt to see if who you're living with is one of the factors. As it turns out, individuals from the same household, particularly couples, share more of their microbiome than they do with other individuals, and having a dog resulted in an even greater similarity because of shared contact with the animal

Speaker 7: [00:25:00] [inaudible]. No. We also mentioned a few of the science and technology [00:25:30] events happening locally

Speaker 3: for the next two weeks. Rick Karnofsky joins me for the calendar later today. Physicist Fabiola is your naughty co-discoverer of the Higgs Boson at the large Hadron collider in Geneva, Switzerland. We'll deliver a free public lecture titled the Higgs Boson and our life. The talk is part of a three day celebration of the work of University of California Berkeley physicist Bruno's Zunino, whose theory of supersymmetry [00:26:00] has emerged as a possible explanation for the number and variety of fundamental particles seen in nature. That's today, Friday, May 3rd 5:00 PM to 6:00 PM at the Chevron Auditorium International House, 2199 Piedmont Avenue in Berkeley spectrum airs at the same time as NPR is science Friday and we thank you for choosing us. But next week you'll have two chances to catch their team in the bay area, the [00:26:30] Jasper Ridge biological preserve and celebrating their 40th anniversary science. Fridays I ref Lado. Well discuss reviving the science statecraft dialogue with professor for Interdisciplinary Environmental Studies at Stanford Christopher field, cofounder of method Adam Lowry and Noah director Jane Lubchenco.

Speaker 3: On Thursday May 9th at 5:30 PM this event takes place at the Synnex Auditorium, six for one night [00:27:00] way in Palo Alto. Then on Friday, May 10th there will be a live broadcast of science Friday at 10:00 AM at the lead ka-shing center at Stanford. These events are free, but will be first come first serve for details. Go to j r DP. Dot stanford.edu best selling author Mary Roach returns to the bone room, presents for a talk in signing of her latest book, Gulp Adventures on the elementary [00:27:30] canal in Gulp, America's funniest science writer. So says the Washington Post takes us down the hatch on an unforgettable tour of our insides. That's Thursday, May 9th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM it's a free event at the bone room. 1573 Solano avenue in Berkeley. Wonder Fest is having a free event, the Soma Street food park, four to eight 11th street in San Francisco. [00:28:00] On Tuesday May 14th at 7:00 PM Elliot portrait professor of astronomy and physics at UC Berkeley. We'll be discussing the modern origin story from the Big Bang two habitable planets. He'll describe how the university evolved from its smooth beginnings to its current chunky state. Emphasizing how gravity reign supreme and builds up the planets, stars and galaxies required for biological evolution. [00:28:30] Visit Wonder fest.org for more Info. Science at the theater presents eight big ideas. Eight Berkeley lab scientists present eight game changing concepts in eight minutes each. That's Monday, May 13th 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Berkeley Repertory Theater, 2025 Addison Street in downtown Berkeley. This event is free.

Speaker 7: Okay.

Speaker 3: [00:29:00] The music heard during the show is written and produced by Alex Simon

Speaker 2: [inaudible].

Speaker 8: Thank you for listening to spectrum. If you have comments about the show, please send them to us via email. Our email address is [inaudible] spectrum dot k a l [e-mail] join us in two weeks at this same time. [inaudible].

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