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November 30, 2006

Highlights

 Eleanor Bochenek, a marine scientist at our Haskins Lab, was voted the 2006 Jersey Coast Anglers Association's (JCAA) Sportsperson of the Year. Eleanor received her award at the JCAA's annual Sportsperson of the Year award dinner on November 19. You can read more about her work with the anglers in an article by Al Ristori, of the Star Ledger.
  • Jennifer Francis' EOS paper on climate change, Francis, J.A. and E. Hunter, 2006: New Insight Into the Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice, Eos Trans., 87, 509-524, was highlighted on the front page of the Targum (11/16/06). Check it out. This paper was also reported in the Asbury Park Press in an article by Kirk Moore on November 16, 2006:
    http://www.app.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20061116/NEWS03/611160418/1007 or you can click here to read.
  • An article about the Center for Marine Biotechnology featuring Rich Lutz and Paul Falkowski was on the front page of the November 20th issue of The Daily Targum. Click here to read.
  • Jennifer Francis served on a "Committee of Visitors" to review the National Science Foundation's Arctic programs.
  • Jennifer Francis gave an invited presentation at the October AAAS Conference on the State of the Arctic. The title was "Changes in the Fabric of the Arctic's Greenhouse Blanket," by J. Francis, J. Trzaska, and E. Hunter.
  • Peter Rona presented an invited talk, "Imaging and quantifying black smoker and diffuse flow from seafloor hydrothermal fields," at the Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory Colloquium on November 29th.
  • The IT group completed several large projects in October & November.
    • Our new Network Appliance fileserver, now in production, has added data storage capacity and significantly improved performance and reliability. IMCS has one of the largest data storage facilities at Rutgers.
    • IMCS IT completed transition to our new Cisco PIX firewall with minimal downtime. The new PIX provides secure remote network access and has dramatically improved both network performance and reliability to Old Blake, Rutgers, and the Internet.
    • IMCS email systems handled record amounts of spam and outside network attacks in October & November with no downtime. Work is ongoing to improve system performance and reliability with near zero service disruption.
  • Alan Robock presented an invited talk on Global Warming to about 120 Americorps environmental workers, Princeton, NJ, Oct. 20, 2006. He also gave the following invited lectures at the University of Iowa, Iowa City, on November 10, 2006: "Comparing Climatic Response to Low and High Latitude Volcanic Eruptions" and "Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflict."
  • Alan Robock was quoted in an article in the Oct. 23, 2006 US News and World Report on geo-engineering. The article is called "Cool Geo-Whiz Warming Ideas" by Bret Schulte. You can read it at http://www.usnews.com/usnews/news/articles/061015/23warm.htm or click here.
  • Lora McGuinness, Carrie Fraser, and Lee Kerkhof participated in a 14-day Oripex cruise investigating the influence of the Orinoco River plume on microbiota of the Caribbean Basin. The cruise track was from Puerto Rico to Trinidad/Tobago, skirting the economic zone of Venezuela. Other oceanographic researchers included Jorge Corredor, Julio Morel, Jose Lopez, John Paul, and Debbie Bronk.
  • Lee Kerkhof collected soil samples along with Gerben Zylstra and Jerry Kukor along the perimeter of Lake Issikul in the Tien Shan Mountains of Kyrgyzstan. The sampling trip was for one of the NIH International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups lead by Ilya Raskin at Rutgers. The focus of the research is pharmaceutical discovery in partnership with universities from Central Asia from plants, fungi, and bacteria.

Meetings Attended

  • Ximing Guo attended the 9th International Congress of Medical and Applied Malacology, October 17–20, 2006, Qingdao, China. He chaired the “Molluscan Genetics and Breeding Session” at the conference.
  • Zarnadze, A. and L.A. Totten. BDEs in the New York/New Jersey Harbor, USA. Poster presentation at the SETAC 27th Annual Meeting in North America, 5-9 November 2006, Montreal, Canada.
  • Du, S. and L.A. Totten. PCB sources to the Delaware River, USA. Oral presentation at the SETAC 27th Annual Meeting in North America, 5-9 November 2006, Montreal, Canada.
  • Lee Kerkhof attended a PI workshop hosted by the Environmental Remediation Sciences Program of the Department of Energy in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. ERSP seeks to provide the scientific knowledge needed to clean up the largest, most complex, and diverse collection of environmental remediation challenges in the nation.

New Grants

  • DeLuca, M., PI. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration,"Jacques Cousteau Estuarine Research Reserve Program Operations Budget FY06." 10/1/06-3/31/08, ($560,000)
  • DeLuca, M., PI. Casino Reinvestment Development Authority, "Seawater Intake Pump Station - MADF." 5/1/06-4/30/07, ($252,850)
  • Kohut, J., PI. Old Dominion University, "25 MHz HF Radar Test Install and Calibration in the Chesapeake Bay Estuary." 6/9/06-8/31/06, ($17,046)
  • Grassle, J.F., PI. Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, "Ocean Biogeographic Information System (OBIS): Support for OBIS Activities and Secretariat Office." 11/1/06-10/31/08, ($1,060,000)

Publications

  • Alcivar-Warren, A., D. Meehan-Meola, Y. Wang, X. Guo, L. Zhou, J. Xiang, S. Moss, S. Arce, W. Warren, Z. Xu and K. Bell. 2006. Isolation and mapping of telomeric pentanucleotide (TAACC)n repeats of the Pacific whiteleg shrimp, Penaeus vannamei, using fluorescence in situ hybridization. Marine Biotechnology, in press. DOI:10.1007/s10126-005-6031-z.
  • Francis, J.A. and E. Hunter, 2006: New Insight into the Disappearing Arctic Sea Ice. Eos Trans., 87, 509-524.
    http://marine.rutgers.edu/~francis/pubs_10-05.html
  • Gray, D.M. and J. Dighton. 2006. Mineralization of forest litter nutrients by heat and combustion. Soil Biol. Biochem. 38: 1469-1477.
  • Karpenko, Y.V., T.I. Redchitz, V.A. Zheltonozhsky, J. Dighton, and N.N. Zhdanova. 2006. Comparative responses of microscopic fungi to ionizing radiation and light. Folia Microbiol. 51:45-49.
  • Li, Haibin, A. Robock, and M. Wild. 2006: Evaluation of Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Fourth Assessment soil moisture simulations for the second half of the twentieth century. J. Geophys. Res., doi:10.1029/2006JD007455, in press.
  • Litchman, E., C.A. Klausmeier, J.R. Miller, O. Schofield, P.G. Falkowski. 2006. Multi-nutrient, multi-group model of the present and future oceanic phytoplankton communities. Biogeosciences 3: 585-606.
  • Liu, X., X. Liu, X. Guo, Q. Gao and G. Zhang. 2006. A preliminary genetic linkage map of the Pacific abalone Haliotis discus hannai Ino. Marine Biotechnology, 8:386-397.
  • McGhee, G.R. 2007. The Geometry of Evolution: Adaptive Landscapes and Theoretical Morphospaces. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge (England). (view book cover)
  • Robock, A. and H. Li. 2006: Solar dimming and CO2 effects on soil moisture trends. Geophys. Res. Lett., 33, L20708, doi:10.1029/2006GL027585.
  • Robock, A., L. Oman, G.L. Stenchikov, O.B. Toon, C. Bardeen, and R.P. Turco, 2006: Climatic consequences of regional nuclear conflicts. Atm. Chem. Phys. Disc., in press.
  • Rowe, A.A., L.A. Totten, M. Xie, T.J. Fikslin, S.J. Eisenreich. Air-water exchange of polychlorinated biphenyls in the Delaware River. Environmental Science and Technology. 2006. In Press.
  • Sylvan, J.B., Q. Dortch, D.M. Nelson, A.F. Maier Brown, W. Morrison and J.W. Ammerman. Phosphorus limits phytoplankton growth on the Louisiana Shelf during the period of hypoxia formation. Environmental Science & Technology. in press. DOI: 10.1021/es061417t <http://dx.doi.org/10.1021/es061417t> Currently highlighted on the NSF webpage: www.nsf.gov under news (or click here). There is also a Rutgers' press release at http://ur.rutgers.edu/medrel/index.html
  • Toon, O.B., R.P. Turco, A. Robock, C. Bardeen, L. Oman, and G.L. Stenchikov, 2006: Consequences of regional scale nuclear conflicts and acts of individual nuclear terrorism. Atm. Chem. Phys. Disc., in press.
  • Tugay, T., N.N. Zhdanova, V. Zheltonozhsky, L. Sadovnikov, J. Dighton. 2006. The influence of ionizing radiation on spore germination and emergent hyphal growth response reactions of microfungi. Mycologia 98: 521-527.
  • Wolfe-Simon, F., V. Starovoytov, J.R. Reinfelder, O. Schofield, and P.G. Falkowski. Localization and Role of Manganese Superoxide Dismutase in a Marine Diatom. Plant Physiol. Published on October 20, 2006; 10.1104/pp.106.088963
  • Yang, H. and X. Guo. 2006. Tetraploid induction by inhibiting mitosis I with heat shock, cold shock and nocodazole in the hard clam Mercenaria mercenaria (Linnaeus, 1758). Marine Biotechnol., DOI:10.1007/s10126-005-6183-x.
  • Zheng, H., G. Zhang, X. Liu and X. Guo. 2006. Sustained response to selection in an introduced population of the hermaphroditic bay scallop Argopecten irradians irradians Lamarck (1819). Aquaculture, 255:579-585.

Student News

  • Darryl Babcock successfully completed his Masters degree, entitled “Sequence Analysis of Large-insert BAC clones from Dominant Microorganisms in the Mid Atlantic Bight.” His MS committee was Lee Kerkhof (advisor), Lily Young, and Jerry Kukor.
  • Katye Altieri (Sybil Seitzinger, advisor) passed her qualifying exam on November 15, 2006.
  • Eleni Anagnostou (Rob Sherrell, advisor) and Michele LaVigne (Rob Sherrell, advisor) passed their qualifying exams on November 16, 2006.
  • Erin Gallagher who is a Ph.D. student with Lily Young and Lee Kerkhof has been awarded a Knauss Fellowship to intern in Washington, D.C. for 2007. Erin will be working with FEMA developing hurricane preparedness plans for coastal communities and on food/water safety issues.

Let's Welcome

  • Enrique Curchitser: "My general interests are in ocean circulation and coupled physical- biological systems. In particular, I am interested in the linkages between the large- (climate-) scale phenomena and regional physical and ecosystem dynamics. My principal area of research is in the North Pacific ocean with an emphasis on the eastern Pacific systems of the the California Current System and the Gulf of Alaska. I have recently also began to study the Bering Sea where the effects of climate change may be particularly noticed in the changing sea ice conditions.
    (Blake 104, 2-7889)
  • Liusuo Zhang joined Ximing Guo’s genetics group at HSRL as a postdoctoral associate. Liusuo received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Qingdao, China. His expertise is in shellfish genomics. He will be working on the identification and mapping of disease-resistance genes in the eastern oyster.
  • Lumin Qian arrived at HSRL for a 6-month visit. Lumin is an associate professor at the Third Institute of Oceanography, Xiamen, China. She has been working with Ximing Guo on classifying oyster populations in China. Her visit is part of the NOAA-funded study on the distribution of Crassostrea ariakensis in China.