IMCS News || 30 June 2005

June 30, 2005

Highlights

Karl Nordstrom was awarded a Fulbright Senior Scholar Award for research in Germany in the spring of 2006. He will be evaluating ways to restore coastal landforms and habitats in shore protection projects.
Li Li and Ximing Guo's paper, "AFLP-based Genetic Linkage Maps of the Pacific Oyster Crassostrea gigas Thunberg. MBT 2004, 6:26-36," was awarded the Best Paper for 2004 by Marine Biotechnology. The award was sponsored by Springer and designed to recognize excellence in papers published in Marine Biotechnology.
Jennifer Francis served on an NSF Review Panel for the Arctic Natural Sciences and Arctic System Science Programs in May 2005.
Alan Robock has been nominated to run for three different offices to serve the national atmospheric sciences community. He will run for Member-At-Large of section W (Atmospheric and Hydrospheric Sciences) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He will also run for the office of President of the Atmospheric Science Section of the American Geophysical Union. And finally, Alan has been nominated to be a member of the University Relations Committee of the University Corporation for Atmospheric Research (UCAR), which runs the National Center for Atmospheric Research. He is already one of two Rutgers member representatives to UCAR.
George McGhee is a Visiting Fellow at the Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research in Altenberg, Austria (just outside of Vienna) for the next three months. Information about the KLI can be found at the website: http://www.kli.ac.at/ Information about George's research can be found at http://www.kli.ac.at/research.html, or by clicking on "Fellowships" on the KLI homepage, and then clicking on "Current research" for the current resident Fellows.
Ken Able spent a sabbatical semester at the NOAA Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research in Beaufort, North Carolina working on collaborative projects on time series analysis of larval fish recruitment to estuaries (with Jon Hare) and fish response to the Phragmites invasion as measured by stable isotopes (Carolyn Currin) and otolith microchemistry (Simon Thorrold). While on sabbatical he attended the bluefish workshop sponsored by RU - IMCS and NOAA.
Alan Robock has been invited to author "Chapter 7: Expectations for the Ozone Layer in the 21st Century" of the World Meteorological Organization/United Nations Environment Programme Scientific Assessment of Ozone Depletion report, to be completed in 2006.
Alan Robock made an invited visit to the European Space Research & Technology Centre of the European Space Agency, Noordwijk, Netherlands, May 31 - June 1, 2005.
Haskin Shellfish Research Lab has made it into the New York Times. To read the article "The Slow Struggle to Bring Back the Oyster" by Susan Warner, click on the link: http://marine.rutgers.edu/~keng/IMCS_Newsletter/HSRL_NYTimes.pdf

Meetings Attended

N.Skific and J.A. Francis, 2005: Natural variability and climate change, causes of NAO/AO observed trend. Poster at the AGU meeting in New Orleans, LA, May 2005.
Scott Glenn, Oscar Schofield, Josh Kohut and Matt Oliver attended the 2005 International Ocean Research Conference in Paris, France, from July 6th through the 10th.
Jennifer Francis participated in two workshops in May 2005: Study of Environmental Arctic Change (SEARCH) Implementation Workshop in Lansdowne, VA, and the NSF Fresh Water Initiatives All-Hands workshop in Seattle, WA.
As President-elect of ASLO, Sybil Seitzinger attended the annual ASLO Summer Meeting in Santiago de Compostela, Spain, from June 17-24.
Sybil Seitzinger attended the Land-Ocean Interactions in the Coastal Zone (LOICZ) Inaugural Open Science Meeting in Egmond aan zee (Amsterdam), Netherlands from June 26-29. While there, she co-convened the session on Nutrients and River Run-off.
Jim Ammerman presented an invited talk at the recent TOS/UNESCO/IOC Meeting in Paris, June 6-10, 2005 entitled "N:P Stoichiometry in the Sargasso Sea: Deviations from Redfield and Ecosystem Implications."
The annual meeting of the American Fisheries Society - Early Life History Section was held in Barcelona, Spain during 11 - 14 July 2005. Ken Able's presentation focused on scale formation in the development of fishes and its application to the larval - juvenile transition. At the same meeting he assisted in the judging of student presentations.
Ken Able participated, as one of three peer reviewers, in a a workshop "Evaluation of Potential Essential Fish Habitat Designation Methodologies for Use in the Northeast Region of the U.S." at NOAA/National Marine Fisheries Service, Northeast Fisheries Science Center, Woods Hole, June 28-30.
Tony Broccoli presented an invited talk entitled "Global Warming: Evidence and Controversy" to the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends, Philadelphia, PA, June 4, 2005.
Alan Robock attended the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) Design Consortium, Science and Human Dimensions Committee Meeting, Estes Park, Colorado, June 7-9, 2005.
At a May 24-26 Atlantic States Marine Fisheries Commission (ASMFC) workshop, Mark Sullivan and Ken Able presented data and identified the correlations between larval fish ingress and climate events and the relationship with the reported decline of the American eel. The data sets from Little Egg Inlet, New Jersey and Beaufort Inlet, North Carolina are the longest continuous time series of larval fish ingress on the east coast of the U.S.
Peter Rona and Karen Bemis presented and submitted a joint invited paper, "Acoustic imaging of seafloor hydrothermal plumes," at the 4th International Symposium of Science and Art, convened by fluid dynamics Professor Normal Zabusky at Rutgers, 10-12 June 2005.
Peter Rona presented an invited paper, "Sea level, seafloor spreading, and hydrothermal activity," at the Rutgers-Geology/FAS-DOSECC-EREUPT International Conference, Relationships Among Long-term Sea Level, Seafloor Spreading, and Ocean Chemistry Changes from Late Cretaceous to Present, held 21-22 June 2005 at Rutgers.
Phoebe Zhang and Fred Grassle attended the Ocean Biogeographic Information System International Committee meeting, June 23-24, at the Moore Foundation in San Francisco.
Tony Broccoli was an invited participant in the "Science Communications and Media Workshop" held at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, Columbia University, Palisades, NY, from June 1-3, 2005.
Alan Robock presented an invited talk, on "Comparing Climatic Response to Low and High Latitude Volcanic Eruptions" at the University of Cambridge, England, May 17, 2005.
Lily Young participated in the American Society for Microbiology Annual Meeting in Atlanta GA, the following presentations were given:
- Gallagher, E., L.J. Kerkhof, L.Y. Young. 2005. 15N-Stable Isotope Probing to Detect TNT Utilizers in Coastal Sediments. Abstract and presentation at ASM Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, June, 2005.
- Scrivo, J., D.J. Scala, L.Y. Young. 2005. Effects of DIN and DON Sources on Competition between P. putida str NCIB 9816-4 and Vibrio sp. NAP in Continuous Culture. Abstract and presentation at ASM Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, June, 2005.
- Rhine, E.D., E. Garcia-Dominguez, C.D. Phelps, LY Young. 2005. The Cycling of Arsenic by Environmental Microbes. Abstract and presentation at ASM Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, June, 2005.
- Tierney, ML, K. Hess, CD Phelps, LY Young. 2005. Proposed Mechanism of Naphthalene Degradation by Nitrate Reducing Bacteria. Abstract and presentation at ASM Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, June, 2005.
- Callaghan, A.V., L.Y. Young. 2005. Evidence of Carboxylation as the Initial Step in Hexadecane Activation. Abstract and presentation at ASM Annual Meeting, Atlanta, GA, June, 2005.
At the CEBIC (Center for BioInorganic Chemistry) Annual Meeting in Princeton, NJ on June 14, 2005, the following presentations were given:
- L.Y. Young. 2005. Hydrocarbon Degradation: Did Anaerobes Do it First?
- Callaghan, A.V., L.Y. Young. 2005. A Novel Glycyl Radical Enzyme Involved in Anaerobic Hexadecane Degradation.
- Phelps, C.D., L.Y. Young. 2005. Microbial Degradation Pathways: A Tool for Environmental Monitoring. Presentation at CEBIC (Center for BioInorganic Chemistry) Annual Meeting, Princeton, NJ, June 14, 2005.

New Grants

Costantino Vetriani (PI) was awarded a grant from NSF entitled "Collaborative Research: MIP: Physiology and molecular ecology of thermophilic nitrate-reducing microorgansisms at deep-sea hydrothermal vents." Co-PIs: Karen Casciotti and Stefan Sievert, WHOI. (6/15/05 - 5/31/08, $418,313)
Oscar Schofield was awarded a grant from ONR called "Novel acoustic techniques to measure schooling in pelagic fish in the context of an operational coastal ocean observatory" for $235,000 for 3 years. (4/15/05 - 4/14/08)
John Wilkin was awarded $115,685 from ONR for his project "Coastal Ocean Observing System Modeling: Data Assimilation and Adaptive Sampling Design." (5/13/05 - 5/31/07)
Mike Kennish (PI) was awarded a NERRS Graduate Research Fellowship in the amount of $20,000 from NOAA for Jaime Tirado's research. (6/1/05 - 5/31/06)
Eric Simms was awarded $20,000 from Research for Better Schools, Inc. for his project Continuing the Success of the MARE Program in New Jersey and the Mid-Atlantic Region." (6/1/05 - 9/30/05)
Mike De Luca was awarded $555,000 from NOAA for his Jacques Cousteau Estuarine Research Program Operation Budget. (10/1/05 - 3/31/07)

Publications

Francis, J.A., E. Hunter, C.- Z. Zou, 2005: Arctic tropospheric winds derived from TOVS satellite retrievals. Journal of Climate, 18, 2270-2285.
Gigliotti, C.L., L.A. Totten, J.H. Offenberg, J. Dachs, J.R. Reinfelder, E.D. Nelson, T.R. Glenn IV, and S.J. Eisenreich. Atmospheric Concentrations and Deposition of PAHs to the Hudson River Estuary. Environmental Science and Technology. In press.
Sherman, K., M. Sissenwine, V. Christensen, A. Duda, G. Hempel, C. Ibe, S. Levin, D. Lluch-Belda, G. Matishov, J. McGlade, M. O'Toole, S. Seitzinger, R. Serra, H.-R. Skjoldal, Q. Tang, J. Thulin, V. Vandeweerd, and K. Zwanenburg. Accepted. A global movement toward an ecosystem approach to management of marine resources. Marine Ecology Progress Series.
Yu, Z. and X. Guo. 2005. Genetic analysis of selected strains of the eastern oyster (Crassostrea virginica Gmelin) using AFLP and microsatellite markers. Marine Biotechnology, 6:575-586.
Wang, L., L. Song, Y. Chang, W. Xu, D. Ni and X. Guo. 2005. A preliminary genetic map of zhikong scallop (Chlamys farreri, Jones et Preston 1904). Aquaculture Research, 36:643-653.

Student News

Graduate student Brian Gaas has been selected as a 2005 recipient of the $1500 Marine Technology Society Scholarship.
Sean Boyd was selected by lottery to receive a student travel award of $225 towards his expenses for the Estuarine Research Federation (ERF) 2005 conference in Virginia Beach.
Chaochao Gao, Haibin Li, and Thomas Atkins, students under the direction of Alan Robock, received their M.S. degrees in May, 2005.
Amy Freestone, who received the Marine and Coastal Sciences Outstanding Senior Award in 2000, just received her PhD in Ecology from the University of California, Davis. She is now conducting independent research on tropical forest ecology in Madagascar. Beginning February 2006, she will be a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow, looking at latitudinal variation and scale dependence in local, regional and beta diversity of marine benthos.

Let's Welcome

The Marine Field Station has a new postdoctoral associate, Mark Wuenschel. Mark's PhD is from Syracuse, and he most recently had a postdoc position with Jon Hare at NOAA's Center for Coastal Fisheries and Habitat Research in Beaufort. Mark will be working with Ken Able on a bluefish grant, and he replaces out-going postdoc David L. Taylor, who has left for a tenure-track faculty position at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island.