A Long Walk to Development: A Review of Impact Evaluation Studies on Rural Road Interventions in Developing Countries by Ankur Mathur

It is often that correlation between cause and it’s intended effect is made popular as being its cause. Causality and correlation are distinct and necessary, but not sufficient. The use of counterfactual design in experiments is only now getting eminence in the field of civil engineering – especially so in road construction. Counterfactual design, when implemented correctly can help reduce biases and provide a way forward to measure causality. Most government, especially those in developing countries have, in the past decade made allocations worth millions of dollars in road construction in their rural areas with the intention that road connection and access to transport medium leads to a reduction of poverty, increase in education and other socially desirable parameters. Federal governments, and international credit and leaning institutions have studied the impact of such studies and made their conclusions – unless supplemented by secondary infrastructure, like access to markets, road development schemes seldom have any impact. This study reviews eight such impact evaluation studies to find flaws in such studies – both design and data – which distort the story of their effects and tries to present a reality check.

Ankur Mathur is a M.S. student studying Transportation Systems Engineering at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He works under the supervision of Dr. Oliver Gao. For more information please contact Ankur at am2779@cornell.edu.

What’s in your drinking water?  Screening for organic contaminants in Ithaca by Amy Pochodylo

Every day, we use organic compounds to keep ourselves healthy, clean, and well-fed, as well as for myriad other purposes.  Increasingly, organic compounds- including pesticides, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products- are being detected in water bodies all over the world, raising concerns about human and ecosystem health impacts.  We previously conducted a study in partnership with the Ithaca Area Wastewater Treatment Plant and the USGS that found many organic compounds in Cayuga Lake, Six Mile Creek, and Fall Creek, all three of which are used as drinking water sources for the Ithaca area.
In an effort to further understand organic contaminants in drinking water around Ithaca, I collected four tap water samples from around Ithaca, as well as a sample of Aquafina bottled water.  The samples were all concentrated using solid phase extraction and measured using liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry.  A calibration curve with 119 organic compounds was used to quantify compounds found in the samples.
Of the 119 compounds, 24 were detected at least once.  The artificial sweetener sucralose (the main ingredient in Splenda) and caffeine were among the most frequently detected compounds in the tap and bottled water samples.  The other 22 detected compounds included antidepressants, antibiotics, herbicides, and industrial compounds.

Amy Pochodylo is a Ph.D candidate studying Environmental Processes at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. She works under the supervision of Dr. Damian Helbling. For more information please contact Amy at alp244@cornell.edu.

In-Situ Reductive Dechlorination of Trichloroethylene in Oxygen-Rich Water with Alternative Electron Acceptors by Larry Ge

My research is on the biological remediation of trichloroethene through reductive dechlorination to ethene. Specifically, I am looking at the effectiveness of reductive dechlorination in mulch based permeable reactive barriers when the influent groundwater contains both oxygen and alternative electron acceptors.

Larry Ge is an M.Eng student studying Environmental Processes at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. He works under the supervision of Dr. Ruth Richardson. For more information please contact Larry at llg45@cornell.edu.

Partitioned Fluid-Structure Interaction Simulation between CU-BEN and OpenFOAM and Application for Condition Assessment and Prognosis by Justyna Kosianka

We consider the newly coupled Fluid Structure Interaction (FSI) software and a few cases for verification of this code. We will be working with hydrodynamic experimentalists to develop a “best practices” protocol for validation of this code. We will then use our FSI code in the context of condition assessment and prognosis through stochastic model updating.

Justyna Kosianka is a PhD student studying Structural Engineering at the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering. She works under the supervision of Dr. Christopher Earls. For more information please contact Justyna at jwk239@cornell.edu.