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Thursday, 04.14.22
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Green Roofs provide research opportunities for students FRANCESCA BOSTON reporter SIUE is home to six green roofs, spread across four buildings, which serve as both a research area to improve the performance of green infrastructure and a way to benefit sustainability. Susan Morgan, a civil engineering professor, has been a part of the Green Roof Environmental Evaluation Network at SIUE since its beginning back in 2004. She said the general use of the roofs is for research by multiple departments across the university including industrial. engineering and biology. “They’ve been established for research, them being the research projects, we’ve incorporated a lot of students into it,” Morgan said. Morgan said they are currently working on moving experimental setups off the engineering building to another building as recent Occupational Safety and Health Administration regulation changes have changed access to the roof. They are still deciding between the Student Success Center and the Science buildings. Serdar Celik, a mechanical and industrial engineering professor, has also been a part of the project for many years. He said
he is always using the roofs as a real-world example in order to teach his students the benefits of green roofs, especially in terms of energy conservation – by saving air conditioning in the summer and heating in the winter. “I have been teaching HVAC in the School of Engineering and one of our topics is building insulation,” Celik said. “I have shown students the roof, explaining what the benefits of the green roof are. It has indirectly helped us in terms of teaching on a demonstrative basis.” Green roofs have the ability to increase urban biodiversity, reduce stormwater runoff, as well as filter pollutants and carbon dioxide. Most of the roofs are planted with various species of plant called Sedum, which is a very hardy plant and can survive in a shallow soil depth, according to Morgan. “In the industry, there are all sorts of plants and if you want to go to deeper media depths, you can make it like a garden. People do research and plant natives which have deeper root systems, which make the roof actually weigh more,” Morgan said. “So we tend to go with a much shallower media depth.” Celik said the green roofs
have also been part of solar energy research on top of the Science West building, studying the symbiotic relationship between the green roofs and solar panels. “The scope of the [solar pan-
el] work that we include a green roof there so that we can study the synergies between green roofs and photovoltaic panels because they both actually benefit each other,” Celik said.
A goose preens itself on a Green Roof.
Morgan said SIUE was one of few higher education institutions in the country to be named as Living Architecture Regional Center back in 2018 and has kept that title for the past four years.
| Jihun Han / The Alestle
REVIEW: ‘Sonic the Hedgehog 2’: more than a meme, less than great EMILY STERZINGER lifestyles editor
| Image courtesy of Paramount Pictures
“Sonic the Hedgehog 2” was fun in the moment, but failed to be much more than an average all ages action-comedy. Personally, a lot of my enjoyment came from the fact that I am a fan of retro gaming, with there being references to the series peppered into the movie. So seeing childhood characters come to life for this sequel was quite nostalgic for me. However, if you’re not a fan of retro gaming or the Sonic franchise, you may not see the appeal. As for the good parts, of which there were still plenty, the action sequences were pretty enjoyable. The fight at the end was particularly fun to watch, and the mech suit Dr. Robotnik (played by Jim Carrey) piloted was well designed. Unfortunately, despite the exciting action sequences, some things about the movie just made me cringe. Obviously, as an all-ages movie, it’s going to have some juvenile jokes which I can tolerate. However, some things, like the use of the dance move flossing (which was already outdated when the movie started production) felt particularly egregious. I enjoyed the cast generally, both returning and new. Ben Schwartz brings a certain charm to the protagonist Sonic, which plays well off of Sonic’s surrogate father figure, Tom (played by James Marsden). Jim Carrey is back as Dr. Robotnik, and brings the trademark over-the-top comedic
acting that he’s well known for. As for new actors, Idris Elba voiced Knuckles and Colleen O’Shaughnessey voiced Tails (though technically the latter showed up in the credits of the last movie). They both gave engaging performances, and fans of the series may notice that the voice actress for Tails has consistently played the character in games and TV shows since 2014. Though the emotional aspect of the movie isn’t really what anybody comes to see this movie for, I couldn’t help but feel touched by the parental relationship Tom and Maddie (played by Tika Sumpter) had with Sonic. Sure, it’s a movie about a blue hedgehog that likes chili dogs, but that doesn’t mean it’s devoid of any emotional resonance, even if there’s only a little. In contrast, I was somewhat disappointed with the relationship between Sonic and Tails, which felt like it built up too soon to have any real impact on the plot. Tails as a character just felt like an expositional character who turned into an ineffectual sidekick, especially compared to Knuckles, who at least had more motivation and backstory. Overall, the movie was reasonably funny with a good set of action scenes, and generally filled its role as an all ages action-comedy. However, it never really went beyond that standard, and most of the enjoyment I got out of the film was because I’ve played the classic Sonic games. If you’re a geek, go ahead and watch it, but if you’re not, you may not enjoy it as much.
