and solar.

Ian Hiskens, professor of 

electrical 
engineering 
and 

computer science, said the 
energy transition has several 
impacts on the electric grid.

“The 
main 
issue 
with 

renewables 
is 
variability,” 

Hiskens said. “Output for 
a coal power station can be 
fixed and controlled. If you 
deal with a wind farm, you 
have no control over the 
output. The energy grid needs 
to be upgraded to manage 
fluctuations and variability.”

Pascal 
Van 
Hentenryck, 

professor of industrial and 
operations engineering and 
the leader of the project, 
said 
the 
change 
alters 

fundamentals 
about 
how 

energy grids function.

“As we push the frontier as 

to how much renewable energy 
can be put in the network, 
the basic assumptions of the 
grids are no longer true,” 
Van Henternyck said. “We 
need to change the way the 
system operates by altering 
the algorithm that determines 
the balance of electricity in 
different places.”

As 
an 
example 
of 
an 

alteration, he cited a possible 
need to import and ship solar 
energy from sunny places like 
Arizona to elsewhere in the 
United States.

Most existing test cases 

that transmission operators 
draw from have become “toy 
problems”, Van Hentenryck 
said, 
making 
them 
not 

necessarily 
reflective 
of 

today’s complex networks.

To mitigate this dearth of 

realistic data sets, the team 
will embark on a multi-phase 
two-year 
project, 
one 
of 

the seven funded by the $11 
million Advanced Research 
Projects 
Agency-Energy 

(ARPA-E) program run by the 
Department of Energy.

The first phase of the project 

involves 
data 
acquisition 

and modeling. This includes 
monitoring the life of existing 
power networks to obtain a 
year-long series of data. Since 
retrieving 
real 
data 
from 

the United States is difficult 
due to security concerns, the 
group plans to partner with 
French utility firm, Réseau 
de 
Transport 
d’Électrique. 

The data from French and 
European 
networks 
then 

have to be modeled into an 
intelligible format.

For the modeling phase, 

Hiskens, 
a 
former 
power 

engineer in Australia, said he 
hopes to use his knowledge 
about realistic power system 
domains.

“We 
are 
interested 
in 

building 
data 
sets 
with 

numbers, 
parameters 
and 

variables that are sensible 
when 
evaluated 
from 
the 

perspective of a real power 
system,” Hiskens said. “I will 
be involved in making sure 
that formats and structures 
developed are sufficiently rich 
to capture the idiosyncrasies 
of power systems.”

However, 
he 
noted 
the 

difficulty in capturing the 
uniqueness and intricacy of 
power systems.

“Ultimately we need to 

establish a format that is 

complex, flexible yet useable. 
This way, others who want 
to work on power system 
optimization can test new 
algorithms based on the data 
sets, building a community 
pool of information.

Given 
the 
sensitivities 

of 
using 
real 
data, 
Van 

Hentenryck hiding some data 
while interpreting the overall 
picture will also be a challenge.

“We will have to use the 

algorithm to obfuscate data 
that is sensitive, such that the 
real data is unrecoverable,” 
Van Hentenryck. “Sometimes 
we 
get 
aggregated 

consumption profile, meaning 
that we need to desegregate 
the data into as fine-grained as 
possible.”

The next phase of the 

project would be to generate 
synthetic benchmark data that 
are not identical, but similar 
to reality. Subsequently, the 
team will have to validate its 
processes and findings, as well 
as place the test cases on an 
accessible portal.

The 
University 
team 

will also work closely with 
researchers 
from 
the 
Los 

Alamos National Laboratory, 
which has a long history 
of 
providing 
capability 

and support to the federal 
government in modeling and 
simulating power systems.

Russell Bent, who works 

as a scientist in Los Alamos, 
said 
industry-academia-

government collaboration is 
highly important in improving 
the 
United 
States’ 
power 

systems.

“My role at Los Alamos 

is 
to 
develop 
underlying 

schemas that describe all the 

components of power systems 
in their complexity,” he said. 
“We hope to take a closer 
look at some of the synthetic 
problems and test cases being 
created and make sure there is 
a realistic flavor to them.”

The ultimate goal, Bent said, 

is to build better, more efficient 
algorithms and computational 
methods for federal customers 
— the transmission operators.

Van Hentenryck said the 

grant will largely go into 
recruiting 
and 
sponsoring 

manpower for the project. 
Currently, 
researchers 

from 
Columbia 
University 

and California Institute of 
Technology 
are 
working 

alongside the University team. 
He said he hopes to assemble 
a team of 15 to 20, comprising 
undergraduate, 
graduate, 

Ph.D. and post-doc students.

Though there are multiple 

milestones that the team is 
expected to reach, the project’s 
ultimate success in power 
optimization is indeterminate 
at this point, researchers said.

Van 
Hentenryck 
likened 

the project to an exploration 
phase.

“We know where we are 

going, but we don’t know 
what we are going to find,” 
he said. “So here we are going 
to generate these test cases, 
but we don’t really know how 
well we can solve them or if 
the solution can be scalable 
for 
future 
networks 
that 

incorporate more renewable 
energy.”

Nonetheless, he said, he is 

excited about the potential of 
the project.

“It’s not every day that you 

can change the world.”

3-News

University students 
receive Hopwood 
Awards

The University Hopwood 

Awards program recently 
bestowed almost $29,000 to 
students who entered the Avery 
and Jule Hopwood Underclassmen 
Contest for creative writing.

These awards are the oldest 

writing awards for college-level 
writers, and are supported by an 
endowment from University alum 
Avery Hopwood, a Broadway 
playwright from the 1920s. The 
writer gave one-fifth of his estate 
to the University in hopes of 
encouraging creative writing. 
The University has given over 
3,200 students a total of over 
$3,000,000, according to the 
LSA Hopwood Awards Program 
website. Famous playwright and 
creative author, Arthur Miller has 
also won Hopwood Awards.

Winners received awards based 

on categories such as fiction, 
nonfiction and poetry. 

A ceremony for the award-

winners was held Wednesday in 
the Rackham Amphitheater with 
a reading by Marge Piercy, four-
time Hopwood Award winner. 

 

Children with 
half- and step-
siblings exhibit 
aggressive habits

About one in six children living 

in the United States live with half- 
or step-siblings just before they 
enter kindergarten, according to 
recent University research.

Paula Fomby, a sociologist at 

the Institute for Social Research, 
conducted the study and found 
that these children also behave 
more aggressively more often than 
children who do not live with half- 
or step-siblings. 

Though many similar studies 

have focused on how family 
complexity affects children’s 
development and look at the 
marital status of the parents and 
their relationship to the children 
living in the home, Fomby said 
most of the children with complex 
sibling relationships do not live 
with step-parents. Rather, they 
often live with a single mother or 
both biological parents.

The study used data from 

a sample of nearly 6,500 U.S. 
children and their families. Other 
factors that explained the increased 
aggression in some children include 
financial resources, the mother’s 
parenting style and the absence of 
either parent.

 ‘U’ endorses 
HPV vaccination 
as preventative 
measure for cancer 

The University Comprehensive 

Cancer Center joined 69 other 
top cancer centers across the 
country in releasing a statement 
encouraging people to receive 
the human papillomavirus 
vaccination as a preventative 
measure for cancer. The 
statement is in response to low 
vaccination rates among all 
demographics. 

Low national vaccination 

rates have resulted from a lack 
of physicians recommending the 
vaccine to their patients and a 
misconception in parents who do 
not realize the vaccine’s potential 
to be effective in preventing 
certain types of cancers. 

The Centers for Disease 

Control and Prevention released 
information stating that HPV 
infections are the cause of nearly 
27,000 cancer diagnoses in the 
country. Though girls have 
more often received the vaccine 
than boys, still no more than 40 
percent of girls and 21 percent 
of boys have received all three 
recommended doses. 

Ted Lawrence, director of 

the University Comprehensive 
Cancer Center, said in a press 
release that the goal of the center 
is to conquer cancer, and by 
encouraging people to receive the 
HPV vaccine, the center becomes 
closer to achieving that goal.

 
—ALEXA ST. JOHN

NEWS BRIEFS

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
News
Thursday, January 28, 2016 — 3A

MARINA ROSS/Daily

Owner of Antelope Antiques & Coins Karl Lagler poses in front of his merchandise at his shop on Wednesday. 

opinion 
the 
state 
has 
done 

nothing on it,” Petainen said. 
“Today Snyder promised to work 
harder on these issues, hold him 
to it if he’s not recalled.”

“He has consistently ignored 

the environment as he aimed for 
profits. But in the process, he 
forgot about his true customer. 
His customers should not have 
been the businesses, but the 
people 
of 
this 
great 
state,” 

Petainen added.

1,4-dioxane has been linked 

to cancer and can cause nervous, 
liver and kidney damage in large 
amounts. 
The 
Environmental 

Protection 
Agency 
linked 
a 

dioxane concentration of 3.5 
parts per billion in groundwater 
to a one in 100,000 incidence rate 
of cancer in a 2010 report.

According 
to 
Kristen 

Schweighoefer, the Washtenaw 
County Environmental Health 
director, computer models show 
the plume is also slowly moving 
eastward and northeast, which 
may reach Ann Arbor’s principal 
water sources of Barton Pond 
and the Huron River after an 
extended time frame.

“There is some thought that 

the plume may eventually reach 
Barton 
Pond 
or 
the 
Huron 

River,” Schweighoefer wrote in 
an e-mail. “The timeframe is not 
known, but may be decades or 
hundreds of years or more away.”

She added there are monitoring 

systems in place to prevent this 
contamination from reaching the 
public.

During the public commentary 

period of the Jan. 19 Ann Arbor 
City Council Meeting, Ann Arbor 
resident Kai Petainen connected 
the Flint crisis to Ann Arbor’s 
contamination in urging the city 
council push for more state action 
regarding the underground hole 
of dioxane (called a plume), and 
criticized Gov. Rick Snyder’s (R) 
lack of response to it.

Ann 
Arbor 
Environmental 

Coordinator 
Matthew 
Naud 

said though dioxane has been 
detected in private wells, routine 
tests of city water have never 
detected any dioxane, let alone 
any near the hazard threshold of 
3.5 parts per billion maintained 
by the EPA.

“For anybody drinking city 

water, there is no risk,” Naud 
said. “That being said, there are 
areas in the county where it is 
showing up in private wells … in 
subdivisions outside the city there 
is a chance of contamination.”

Despite assurances that there 

was no immediate risk and that 
this issue is completely separate 
from 
Flint, 
both 
Naud 
and 

Schweighoefer said the crisis in 
Flint has drawn more attention to 
their work regarding the dioxane 
plume.

“(The 
1,4-dioxane 

contamination) is a different 
situation 
from 
the 
lead 

contamination 
in 
Flint,” 

Schweighoefer 
wrote. 
“There 

has 
certainly 
been 
more 

attention to the situation here 
and the ongoing actions since the 

WATER
From Page 1A

GRANT
From Page 1A

to be a hybrid between the 
two known North American 
mammoth 
species: 
the 

Columbian mammoth and 
the woolly mammoth.

Fisher said he is most 

excited about what this 
discovery can uncover about 
early human’s relationships 
with mammoths.

“I think the most exciting 

thing and most important 
thing is the nature of human 
impact on these animals,” 
he said. “The early people 
who immigrated to this 
continent were seeing these 
animals 
and 
they 
were 

critical to their livelihood. 
We are humans; we are 
interested 
in 
our 
own 

history.”

As part of the discussion, 

the 
museum 
directors 

asked 
for 
suggestions 

from the public on how to 
display the specimen. The 
museum already plans to 
display the entirety of the 
skull and create a mold and 
cast of the tusk to place 
into the skull. The tusks 
were removed from the 
skull in order to safely dry 
and study them.

Rountrey 
also 
said 
a 

larger 
project 
on 
fossil 

display by the Museum of 
Natural History is currently 
underway, which aims to 
create 3D models of the 
University’s collection of 
fossils to be viewed online.

Rountrey 
said 
this 

is 
important 
because 
it 

would 
allow 
researchers 

to examine fossils without 
having to physically move 
them, risking damage.

“The models are valuable 

not just in making a nice 
website,” he said. “They 
serve in some ways to 
protect the specimen.”

LSA 
freshman 
Bailey 

Rousseau said he found the 
concept of a hybrid species 
fascinating.

“I 
think 
it’s 
pretty 

interesting how it might be 
a hybrid of the two known 
pachyderm-like 
species 

from the Ice Age,” he said.

Kira Berman, assistant 

director of the Museum of 
Natural History, said the 
discovery is a thrilling one 
for the University.

“It’s just so exciting to 

have such a large exciting 
fossil that’s found so close,” 
she said. “It has such an 
importance in terms of what 
we know about Michigan’s 
prehistory.”

MAMMOTH
From Page 1A

by those individuals are usually 
small, she added — typically 
around $5,000 to $10,000.

Thus, the “crisis” really only 

affects those who have a low 
income following graduation 
or an incomplete education, 
Dynarski said.

“In my opinion, if there is a 

crisis of any sorts, it’s a crisis of 
low earnings in our country,” 
she said. “We lack a safety net 
to handle a very large number 
of people who are receiving 
very low earnings and who 
cannot handle even $5,000 in 
debt as a result.”

Chopra 
said 
from 
his 

experiences, which he said 
had given him a “consumer 
financial market perspective, 
other bills and responsibilities 
contribute to the student debt 
problem and debt alone is not 
the issue.

“When 
someone 
is 

delinquent on their student 
loans, it is often just one side of a 
broader array of shocks that are 
happening in their life: fighting 
to keep paying rent, struggling 
to make payments on their car 
loan … the trauma that they’re 
managing is something that we 
always have to keep at the top 
of mind,” he said.

Chopra also noted various 

policies 
currently 
being 

pursued 
to 
counteract 
his 

definition of the issues with 
student debt, specifically citing 
loan repayment plans.

“This is a broad expansion of 

affordable loan modifications 
… that allow borrowers to pay 
a reasonable amount of income 
to manage those times of 
distress,” he said.

Along 
with 
whether 
a 

student 
debt 
crisis 
exists, 

another question for Chopra 
and Dynarski came both from 
multiple 
audience 
members 

and online viewers: “Why not 
make college free?”

Chopra said there is an effort 

to essentially make community 
college free or nearly free, 
arguing that if society believes 
getting a degree is critical for a 
person’s future, it needs to be 
readily available.

Last 
January, 
President 

Barack 
Obama 
proposed 

making two years of community 
college free for students who 
met certain requirements. The 
proposal is currently stalled 
before committee in Congress, 
and faces a significant uphill 
battle in both chambers given 
that both are GOP-controlled.

Chopra 
noted 
that 
how 

tuition is made free and also 
to whom it is made free needs 
to be taken into account when 

considering 
free 
college 

proposals, adding that people 
with lower incomes should not 
view cost as an impediment.

Dynarski said historically 

college has been free, citing 
nominal costs in the ‘60s and 
‘70s. Free community college, 
she said, would be a return to 
that era.

Referring 
back 
to 
the 

discussion 
about 
the 
debt 

crisis, she added that free 
college would be an effective 
way of controlling it because 
many minorities and first-
generation 
college 
students 

attend community colleges.

Public 
Policy 
graduate 

student Joshua Rivera, who 
attended the event, said he 
enjoyed 
the 
back-and-forth 

engagement 
between 
the 

speakers regarding a relevant 
topic.

“I am deeply interested in 

education policy and I thought 
that it was a wonderful event,” 
he said. “It’s nice to have 
Professor 
Dynarski, 
who’s 

been writing in the field very 
extensively in The New York 
Times, but also to have someone 
who’s going to work for the 
Department 
of 
Education 

(Chopra) give their perspective 
and so it was interesting and 
humorous to see them kind of 
engage in these issues and their 
respective roles.”

DEBT
From Page 1A

