{"id":39497,"date":"2015-10-23T13:40:26","date_gmt":"2015-10-23T20:40:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stage.headlessnauedu-b6hgdzckfdgxgzhe.westus-01.azurewebsites.net\/?p=39497"},"modified":"2015-10-28T13:16:29","modified_gmt":"2015-10-28T20:16:29","slug":"nau-research-powering-marine-science-sensors-with-ambient-energy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-research-powering-marine-science-sensors-with-ambient-energy\/","title":{"rendered":"NAU research powering marine science sensors with ambient energy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Despite working in the high-mountain desert of a landlocked state, <strong>Michael Shafer<\/strong>, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is delving into ocean waters and assisting marine scientists with wildlife monitoring research.<\/p>\n<p>Shafer has been awarded a $634,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop energy-harvesting technologies for monitoring marine mammals.<\/p>\n<p>Scientists place tags with GPS sensors on animals so their activities and environments can be observed and studied.<\/p>\n<p>Current research is limited by the sensors\u2019 short battery lifespans or because data is stored on a memory chip and needs to be retrieved from the animal. Some\u00a0systems offload data to satellites but the process requires a lot of energy.<\/p>\n<p>Shafer\u2019s grant will explore energy harvesting from the environment, using elephant seals for the initial experiments.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe are examining a variety of transduction methods to help supplement the energy budgets of these tags when they are deployed,\u201d Shafer said. One of the methods is solar radiation,\u00a0which uses\u00a0the sun to power tags at various depths. The other method would harness energy created by the elephant seals as they swim and dive in the ocean.<\/p>\n<p>Elephant seals can weigh up to 8,800 pounds, nearly as heavy as a five-ton monster truck. The mammals regularly travel 2,620 miles between the central California coast and Alaska\u2019s Aleutian Islands.<\/p>\n<p>Methods for these prototypes each have potential, and drawbacks. \u201cOne solution is not going to work for all animals so we are interested in finding one or two technologies that can work over a broad spectrum of species and provide the most usability,\u201d Shafer said.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Paul Flikkema<\/strong>, professor of electrical engineering and computer science, will join\u00a0Shafer on the NSF-funded wildlife monitoring and employ graduate and undergraduate students to work on the research.\u00a0The group will also collaborate with the\u00a0University of California, Santa Cruz, which has a long history of marine mammal research.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"search-results-excerpt-link\" href=\"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/nau-research-powering-marine-science-sensors-with-ambient-energy\/\">Despite working in the high-mountain desert of a landlocked state, Michael Shafer, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, is delving into ocean waters and assisting marine scientists with wildlife monitoring research. Shafer has been awarded a $634,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to develop energy-harvesting technologies for monitoring marine mammals. Scientists place tags with GPS&hellip;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":39979,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-39497","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-research-academics"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39497","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=39497"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39497\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39979"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=39497"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=39497"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/in.nau.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=39497"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}