Imagine having to drink from a water supply containing eggs that grow into two-to-three-foot worms inside your body. Then imagine having to walk miles every day just to reach that polluted water supply, which is also the water source closest to your village.

This is reality for villagers in the west African nation of Ghana-reality DRI is helping to change. For four years, under a grant from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, DRI scientists have been working in Ghana with World Vision International to improve rural water supplies. Using a combination of geophysics and remote sensing technology, DRI has been able to double World Vision's success rate in drilling reliable village wells and is now training Ghanaians in the use of these advanced techniques.

An internationally recognized archaeologist received the 1996 DRI Woman of Achievement Award. Dr. Colleen Beck, deputy director of DRI's Quaternary Sciences Center, was selected for the honor based on her significant contributions to her profession, her community, and the institute, as well as her concern and support for the advancement of women.

She is well known for her archaeological research in the U.S. and abroad, and her teaching experience includes supervising graduate student research and teaching courses at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Beck has served on the Bureau of Land Management's Southern Great Basin Resource Advisory Council and is also a member of the Technical Advisory Committee for the Clark County School District's Whitney Mesa Project.

Las Vegas fifth and sixth graders took flight in the fourth annual Marsville-The Cosmic Village program. More than 250 participants were challenged with finding solutions to biological and social problems that could occur if a spaceship crash-landed at the north pole of Mars.

To solve the problems, students had to use science and math skills, not to mention creativity, to build a habitat complete with food, water, and oxygen systems to help them survive on the solar system's icy planet. The Marsville project was co-sponsored by the Nevada/NASA Space Grant Consortium and the Community College of Southern Nevada for the Clark County School District. The consortium includes all seven divisions of the University and Community College System of Nevada and is coordinated by DRI.

DRI scientists boosted mother nature's snow production in more than 30 storms this winter through the State of Nevada Cloud Seeding Program. Their helping hands added an estimated 48,000 acre feet of water to the snowpacks of the Tahoe-Truckee, Carson-Walker, and Humboldt River watersheds.

A family of five uses about an acre foot of water-around 329,000 gallons, in one year. Very conservative market estimates of $100 an acre foot in a plentiful water year put the value of the added snowpack at around $4.8 million. The State of Nevada appropriated one-half million dollars to DRI for the 1995-96 seeding season and DRI's operating costs were about $12.13 an acre foot. The institute has been seeding clouds for the state since the mid-1970s.

This spring, a group of DRI faculty traveled to Yarmouk University in northern Jordan to explore the potential of assembling a large-scale cooperative project in the deserts of Jordan that could involve investigators from both institutions. Drs. Jack Hess, Roko Andricevic, Peter Wigand, and Paul Buck left with a formal agreement that provides for exchange of students and faculty, and participation in joint workshops and research. Dr. Marwan Kamal, president of Yarmouk University, made a reciprocal visit in July.

Most vehicles on the roads of Las Vegas and Reno, Nevada, are "clean" and have little impact on urban air quality. In a project for Nevada's Department of Motor Vehicles, DRI found only 10 percent of the gasoline-powered, light-duty vehicles driven every day are responsible for about 70 percent of the total pollution. Institute researchers used remote sensing devices to sample the emissions of more than 100,000 vehicles as they drove down the highways and byways of Las Vegas and Reno.

DRI's Patti Walsh says it's not just the old clunkers that cause smog problems: "Gross polluters can be found in every model year and in every type of vehicle-usually due to lack of maintenance or engine modifications." By September, the Nevada motor vehicle department hopes to have a program in place which will use remote sensing devices to identify the "gross polluters." They will send letters to the owners of the dirty cars or trucks asking them to come in for an emission inspection. Those who fail the smog test will have 30 days to repair their vehicles. Those who don't come in for inspection will have their registrations revoked.

DRI President James V. Taranik was recently named the first occupant of the newly established Arthur W. Brant Chair in Geology and Geophysics in the Mackay School of Mines at the University of Nevada, Reno.

Brant, a mining geophysicist for Newmont, pioneered the use of new technology for mineral exploration in Nevada and other mining regions. Taranik, who was dean of the mining school before becoming DRI's president in 1987, has held a full professorship in the school's geological sciences faculty since 1982 and supervises graduate students. The new appointment will not affect Taranik's status as DRI's president, and he adds, it will enhance research opportunities for DRI and UNR in mineral assessment and environmental restoration.

DRI SPONSORS INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM	FERNLEY AIR QUALITY STUDY
The availability and use of limited water resources are critical issues facing all drylands. To address those issues, DRI is sponsoring Changing Water Regimes in Drylands, June 9-13, 1997, at Lake Tahoe, California. Poster presentations are solicited. Contact Dr. Nick Lancaster, (702) 673-7304, e-mail nick@maxey.dri.edu, or visit DRI's web site (http://www.dri.edu) for more information.	Residents of Fernley, Nevada, have been com plaining there's too much dust in their air. So the Nevada Division of Environmental Protection's (NDEP) Bureau of Air Quality hired DRI to help find out why. DRI's Dick Egami explains the study's focus is "PM-10"- particles (mainly dust) whose diameters are less than the thickness of a human hair and which can become lodged in the lung and worsen respiratory health problems. NDEP's Tom Porta says the agency will use the study's results to track down potential sources of those tiny particles.
TWO UNR STUDENTS RECEIVE MAXEY AWARD David Benson and Gregory Pohll, graduate students in the University of Nevada, Reno's hydrologic sciences pro gram, are the recipients of the 1996 Maxey Award in Wa ter Resources Research. The award, which honors the late Dr. George Burke Maxey and his wife, Jane, includes $1,000 and a plaque for each student. Benson's winning paper was "Numerical Advective Flux in Highly Variable Velocity Fields," and Pohll's paper was "Modeling Three- Dimensional Solute Transport with a Two-Dimensional Numerical Model."	DRI AWARDS $10,000 MAXEY FELLOWSHIP The 1996-1997 George Burke Maxey Hydrology/Hy drogeology Fellowship has been awarded to Angela R. Varian. A Ph.D. student in UNR's hydrologic sciences program, Varian will receive $10,000 to help her com plete research for her doctorate. The Maxey Fellowship is sponsored by Elizabeth West Stout, trustee emerita of the DRI Research Foundation, in honor of Dr. George Burke Maxey, who directed DRI's Water Resources Center from 1967 until his death in 1977.
JONATHAN O. DAVIS AWARDS ANNOUNCED
DRI awarded the 1996 Jonathan O. Davis Scholarship in Quaternary Sciences to David E. Wilkins of the University of Utah. He received a $1,000 scholarship for his study, "Late Quaternary Paleoenvironments in the Trans-Pecos Closed Basin, West Texas and South-Central New Mexico." DRI researcher and University of Nevada, Reno student Saxon Sharpe was awarded a stipend for her study, "Late Quaternary Molluscs: Developing the Paleohydrology Link." The Davis Scholarship Fund was established by Davis' family and friends after he was killed in a 1990 auto accident.

dri news is published quarterly by the Desert Research Institute, a nonprofit, statewide division of the University and Community College System of Nevada. DRI is internationally recognized for excellence in environmental research. Ninety percent of the institute's budget comes from research grants and contracts. DRI operates the Dandini Research Park in Reno. Articles appearing in dri news may be reprinted without restriction.