Deep below the Black Hills of South Dakota in the Sanford Underground Research Facility (SURF), an innovative and uniquely sensitive dark matter detector—the LUX-ZEPLIN (LZ) experiment, led by Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (Berkeley Lab)— has passed a check-out phase of startup operations and delivered first results. South Dakota Mines physicists played an integral role in LZ by creating technology that reduced the amount of background radiation that could skew the experiment’s results. They are continuing to make important contributions by calibrating and analyzing the experiment.

The take home message from this successful startup: “We’re ready and everything’s looking good,� said Berkeley Lab Senior Physicist and past LZ Spokesperson Kevin Lesko. “It’s a complex detector with many parts to it and they are all functioning well within expectations,� he said.

In a paper posted online, LZ researchers report that with the initial run, LZ is already the world’s most sensitive dark matter detector. LZ Spokesperson Hugh Lippincott of the University of California Santa Barbara said, “We plan to collect about 20 times more data in the coming years, so we’re only getting ...

For many years, Wall Street investors have used sophisticated software like artificial neural networks to gain a trading advantage. These software tools use a range of data inputs and historical trends to predict stock prices.

But the cattle market is a different beast. “The software tools used to predict the stock market fail miserably if you apply them to cattle futures,� says Jordan Baumeister. She worked the past year with fellow computer science majors Trevor Borman and Dustin Reff to build models that could better predict the cattle and corn markets in an effort to offer commodity traders an edge. The team used artificial intelligence and data science to create mathematical models to predict future market trends and provide a comparison for anomalies, like droughts or floods, using historical data analytics. 

“Our overall goal was to optimize the risk versus reward tradeoff that shows up when you exchange these contracts on the futures market,� says Reff. 

To achieve this goal, the students had to rely on decades of previous work.

A long history of success

In 1993, Todd Gagne was a student at Mines developing his own software programs when he crossed paths with Ron Ragsdale, who ranched on 55,000 acres of rolling prairie near the confluence of the Belle Fourche and Cheyenne Rivers.

Ragsdale came to ranching following a successful career in law along with a ...

South Dakota Mines researchers are part of a new $6 million grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop bioplastics for use in agriculture over the next four years.

The project, called Bioplastics with Regenerative Agricultural Properties, or BioWRAP, includes a research team at Mines working alongside a principal investigator at Kansas State University and researchers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

Traditional specialty crop production, like organic agriculture, often use petroleum-based plastic sheets to cover the ground. Conventional plastics leave microplastic residues which contaminate the environment and increase stormwater runoff. This project aims to reduce the use of plastics, herbicides, fertilizers and associated environmental impacts in agricultural production by creating an all-in-one bioplastic system that can better manage weeds, add nutrients to soils, improve soil and plant health, and save water.

“This is exciting research to see unfold on campus as it can have a major benefit for farmers in South Dakota and across the nation. Kudos to Mines researchers for seeking solutions that are both cost saving for our ag producers and health...