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March 31, 2007

Highlights

Norbert Psuty was the recipient of the National Park Service award for Natural Resource Research in the Parks. He is the first non-NPS research scientist to be the recipient of this recognition. In the past month, he was the recipient of this award at the regional level (Northeast Region of the NPS) and that qualified him to compete for the national award. Click here to read the statement that applied to his award at the Region.

• Peter Rona served on the Research Associateship Panel Review of the National Research Council in Washington 8-9 March.
• Jim Ammerman presented a talk entitled "Connecting OBIS and IOOS: Biological Databases and the Challenges of Integration" to CORE (Consortium for Ocean Research and Education) in Washington, DC, on March 20, and to Ocean.US the same afternoon.
• Oscar Schofield and Scott Glenn gave the following talks:
  • Schofield, O. (March 2007). Innovating science for maintaining a healthy ocean. (Dalhousie University, Halifax Canada)
  • Glenn, S. M., Schofield, O. (March 2007). The evolution of the Northeast Observing System. (University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth)
• John Reinfelder gave an invited talk, "From the Upper West Side to the Hudson Shelf Valley: mercury and other trace metals in the Hudson River buoyant plume," Department of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, March 9, 2007.
• Information Technology (IT) News:
  • IT completed transition to a new IMCS email system with greatly improved performance and spam detection.
  • Datacenter redesign and reconfiguration work continues. Another phase of equipment relocation and rewiring was completed and plans are nearly finalized for electrical and HVAC upgrades to increase our datacenter's capacity.
  • New dedicated application servers were configured and deployed for the COOL and Ocean Modeling groups.
• Two articles in Sunday's Asbury Park Press (3-4-07) feature interviews with and research by Rutgers IMCS scientists and environmental leaders across the state, including Mike Kennish, Rick Lathrop, and IMCS Board member Tim Dillingham, executive director of the American Littoral Society. Click on the titles to read the articles in its entirety: "Troubling tides," and "Development blocks wetlands 'retreat' areas"
• Mike Kennish served as a panelist on a local global warming forum. Mike was quoted in the Asbury Park Press in the (3/27/07) article by Shruti Mathur, "Talk heats up on hot issue"
• Fred Grassle, Chair of the Census of Marine Life Scientific Steering Committee and Phoebe Zhang were interviewed by Patrick Regan of NJN News on March 14, 2007. Commenting on the biological survey of Antarctic sea life conducted by scientists aboard the German research vessel Polarstern, Grassle said “We hope that by 2010 we will have a reasonable Census of Marine Life for the first time..” The species exposed with the collapse of two ice shelves in the Antarctic will become part of the Ocean Biogeographic Information System database managed by Phoebe Zhang, an environmental informatics researcher at Rutgers University. “We now have 200 databases contributing to OBIS” remarked Phoebe. The OBIS web site will allow scientists and and the public to find out what and where different species can be found. OBIS and the Antarctic survey are both projects of the Census of Marine Life.
• From April 6 to 23, there will be on display at Chang Library a new Pinelands exhibit. The exhibit will include several posters from the Pinelands Field station team representing the station and its activities. (Click here to read the RU press release.)
• Alan Robock gave the following invited talks:
  • "Global Warming and the Impact on Coastal Communities," Southeast Regional Offshore Wind Power Symposium, Charleston, South Carolina, February 26-27, 2007
  • On "Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict," Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey, March 5, 2007
  • On "Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict," Camagüey Meteorological Center, Camagüey, Cuba, March 12, 2007
  • On "Global Warming," Millersville University, Millersville, Pennsylvania, March 22, 2007 (The Paul J. McInerney Memorial Lecture)
• Alan Robock gave invited testimony at a New Jersey Assembly Environment and Solid Waste Committee hearing on bill A-3301, the Global Warming Response Act, West Orange, New Jersey, February 20, 2007. This testimony was reported in the Feb. 21 Bergen Record and The Newark Star-Ledger.

Meetings Attended

• The Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory was well represented at Aquaculture 2007 "Science for sustainable aquaculture" held February 26 - March 2, 2007 in San Antonio Texas. This is the triennial meeting of the National Shellfisheries Association, the World Aquaculture Society and the Fish Culture Section of the American Fisheries Society. It is a major international meeting with over 3500 attendees and 1100 talks. Dave Bushek organized and chaired a day-long session on 'Bivalve Mollusc Diseases' and Ximing Guo organized and chaired a session on 'Aquaculture in China'. Jaclyn Taylor, a masters student in Dave Bushek's lab received a registration waiver from the National Shellfisheries Association. Click here to view the abstracts from nine HSRL presentations.
• Members of the Bidle Lab (Kay, Assaf Vardi and Ben Tully) attended the 2007 ASLO Aquatic Sciences Meeting (Santa Fe, New Mexico; 4-9 February 2007. Kay was a Co-organizer for Special Session SS31 “Mortality Among Microbes." He presented the following talk: Bidle, K.D., Haramaty, L., Barcelos-Ramos, J., Falkowski, P.G. “Activation and recruitment of the caspase cell death machinery during lytic viral infection of the unicellular coccolithophorid, Emiliania huxleyi.” (Abstract ID: 994). Kay was also a co-author on: Rosenberg, G., Bidle, K., Berman-Frank, I.R. “Genes regulating programmed cell death in the marine cyanobacterium Trichodesmium” (Abstract ID: 552)
• Assaf Vardi presented the following talk in the "Mortality Among Microbes" session:
  • Vardi , A., Bidle, K. D., Falkowski, P.G., Bowler, C.P. “The role of nitric oxide in stress surveillance and its interplay with the cell death machinery in marine diatoms” (Abstract ID: 1056)
  • Ben Tully presented a poster in session SS41 Research Experiences of Undergraduates: Tully, B.J., Bidle, K.D. “Assessing the biochemical diversity of marine ectoproteases” (Abstract ID#992).
• Kay Bidle attended the Emiliania huxleyi Genome Pre-Annotation Jamboree at the Station Biologique de Roscoff, 19-20 March 2007) and presented a talk on “Autocatalytic Programmed Cell Death in Emiliania huxleyi.” The Bidle Lab will be actively involved as part of the annotation team.
• Fred Grassle attended the Consortium for Oceanographic Research and Education (CORE) Joint Meeting with the National Academy of Sciences Ocean Studies Board and the Public Policy Forum, and the National Association of Marine Laboratories (NAML) Annual Winter Business meeting in Washington, DC., March 6-8, 2007.

New Grants

• Kay Bidle obtained an NSF REU-Supplement to an ongoing grant "Examination of the autocatalytic cell death machinery in marine, planktonic photoautotrophs" (IOB-0414536); $6,000; 1 May 2007 – 30 June 2008. Cliff Kwityn, a SEBS undergraduate and microbiology major, will be working on the project for the summer and has also planned to do a George H. Cook Senior Honors Thesis on this work during the 2007-2008 Academic Year.
• Dale Haidvogel, Dave Bushek and Ximing Guo received a $12,000 REU supplement to support two undergraduates this summer at the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory to participate in the NSF Ecology of Infectious Disease project titled "Collaborative Research: Field and Modeling Studies in Support of Understanding disease Resistance in Estuarine Populations and Response to Climate Change."
• McDonnell, J. Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, "Marine Activities, Resources and Education (MARE) Program." 3/30/07-10/31/07, ($52,500).
• Rosenthal, Y. Joint Oceanographic Institutions, Inc.,"The Schlanger Ocean Drilling Fellowship Award - The Mid-Pleistocene Transition: Deep Sea Temperature and Global Ice Volume from Mg/Ca d¹⁸O and in Benthic Foraminifera." 6/1/07-3/31/08, ($28,000)
• Schofield, O., Glenn, S. Department of Defense- Office of Naval Research 2007 “Characterizing storm impacts on nearshore nepheloid layers using optical Slocum gliders.” ($25,000)
• Sherrell, R. National Science Foundation, "US GEOTRACES Sampling Systems and Intercalibration." 4/1/07-3/31/10, ($405,833).

Publications

• Bidle, K.D., L. Haramaty, J. Barcelos-Ramos and P.G. Falkowski. 2007. Viral activation and recruitment of metacaspases in the unicellular coccolithophorid, Emiliania huxleyi. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA doi/10.1073/pnas.0701240104.
• Bissett, W. P., R. Arnone, S. Debra, D. Dye, G. Kirkpatrick, C. Mobley, O. Schofield. 2007. The integration of ocean color remote sensing with coastal nowcast/forecast simulations of Harmful Algal Blooms (HABs). In Real Time Coastal Observing systems for ecosystems dynamics and harmful algal blooms. Babin, M. And Cullen, J. J. (Eds) UNESCO, Paris. 695-732.
• Pearson, P. N., B.E. van Dongen, C.J. Nicholas, R.D. Pancost, S. Schouten, J.M. Singano, and B.S. Wade. 2007. Stable warm tropical climate through the Eocene epoch. Geology, 35 (3): 211-214.
• Ragueneau, O., S. Schultes, K. Bidle, P. Claquin and B. Moriceau. 2006. Si and C interactions in the world ocean: Importance of ecological processes and implications for the role of diatoms in the biological pump. Global Biogeochemical Cycles 20: GB4SO2, doi:10.1029/2006GB002688
• Schofield, O., J. Bosch, S.M. Glenn, G. Kirkpatrick, J. Kerfoot, M. Moline, M. Oliver, W.P. Bissett. 2007. Bio-optics in integrated ocean observing networks: potential for studying harmful algal blooms. In Real Time Coastal Observing systems for ecosystems dynamics and harmful algal blooms. Babin, M. Roelser, C. and Cullen, J. J. (Eds) UNESCO, Paris. 85-108.
• Toon, O.B., A. Robock, R.P. Turco, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G.L. Stenchikov, 2007: Consequences of regional-scale nuclear conflicts. Science, 315, 1224-1225.

Student News

• 30 March 2007 - Ben Tully successfully completed his Henry Rutgers Honors Senior Thesis Project entitled, “An assessment of the biochemical diversity of marine ectoproteases.” Ben was under the advising of Kay Bidle and will be staying on for a few months before attending graduate school in the Fall 2007.