Archived News and Announcements: 2009

Zehr elected AAM Fellow

Jon Zehr was recently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. An interview with Zehr appears in the Dec. 2009 issue of the Academy’s News and Views (PDF).

“Microbial Planet”

Each year at the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, six new members — one from each class — are invited to provide research briefings for the Academy members and their guests. At the 146th meeting of the Academy in April 2009, Ed DeLong was invited to speak about his C-MORE related research. View the video of his presentation here.

Summer Course in Microbial Oceanography

May 31–July 10, 2010 • Honolulu, Hawai‘i
The course is offered to graduate students and post-docs. Deadline to apply is Friday 29 January. For more information, download the advertisement PDF.

Zehr elected AAM Fellow

Jon Zehr was recently elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology. An interview with Zehr appears in the Dec. 2009 issue of the Academy’s News and Views (PDF).

“Microbial Planet”

Each year at the Annual Meeting of the National Academy of Sciences, six new members — one from each class — are invited to provide research briefings for the Academy members and their guests. At the 146th meeting of the Academy in April 2009, Ed DeLong was invited to speak about his C-MORE related research. View the video of his presentation here.

Congratulations, Scott!

Scott Doney has been elected as a Council Member for The Oceanography Society

Congratulations, Brenner!

C-MORE Scholar Brenner Wai is an author on a paper published in Environmental Microbiology. See the C-MORE Scholars Program page for details.

C-MORE Scholars Program Symposium

Friday 11 December 2009 from 9 am to Noon, Marine Science Bldg 114. Please join us as the Fall 2009 C-MORE Scholars present on their undergraduate research experience. A brief description of the projects is available on the Scholars’ Projects page. Refreshments will be served.

Application for C-MORE Scholars Program

In Fall 2009, C-MORE granted awards to ten undergraduate students in the UH system to participate in their prestigious and competitive undergraduate scholars program.

Applications for Spring 2010 are due Tuesday 01 December, so visit the C-MORE Scholars Program web site for application information today!

Ocean FEST is online!

Ocean FEST (Families Exploring Science Together) puts science in the hands of Hawai‘i’s students and their families. Our overarching goal is to interest Hawai‘i’s kids in careers in ocean science and related Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields through fun, hands-on activities. Read more about it in the UH News.

“Ocean acidification” in Education in Chemistry

Scott Doney is the lead author in an article (scroll down to “The Elements”) on ocean acidification in the UK Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal for education. (The image above is the cover, which highlights the article; click on it to go to the online issue.) Education is Chemistry is “[t]he only magazine in the UK aimed at teachers of chemistry at all levels. It is written by its readers for its readers, and covers the whole spectrum of chemistry teaching from balanced science in secondary courses to the final stages of undergraduate courses.”

ARB workshop materials available

Educational resources for the analysis of microbial sequence data using the software program ARB are now available.

C-MORE EDventure grants awarded

C-MORE EDventure grants were recently awarded to:

For more information about the program, visit the C-MORE EDventure web site.

UH undergraduates receive C-MORE Scholars award

C-MORE has granted awards to ten undergraduate students in the UH system to participate in their prestigious and competitive undergraduate scholars program. For more information about the program, visit the C-MORE Scholars Program web site. Read more about it in the UH Mānoa paper Ka Leo O Hawai‘i.

Congratulations, graduates!

This summer saw the graduation of two PhD students and one Masters student within C-MORE:

Congratulations to all of you and best wishes for the next steps ahead!

Station ALOHA data reveal ocean acidification

Reporting in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, lead author and former SOEST researcher John Dore (now at Montana State University) presents an analysis of the changes of pH at Station ALOHA over time and depth. Dore, along with SOEST co-authors Dave Karl, Roger Lukas, Matt Church, and Dan Sadler, found that the surface ocean grew more acidic at exactly the rate expected from chemical equilibration with increasing atmospheric CO2.
Download the PNAS article (PDF). Read more about it in the SOEST press release (PDF).

Report on Ocean Acidification Released

Microbial oceanographers met at C-MORE in February 2009 to assess “Rising CO2, Ocean Acidification, and Their Impacts on Marine Microbes.” The conference report (PDF) has been released.

Clemente on HPR: “Plastic Debris Pollute Ocean and Food Chain.”

C-MORE participant Tara Clemente was interviewed for a Hawai‘ Public Radio (HPR) report entitled “Plastic Debris Pollute Ocean and Food Chain.” Clemente was Chief Scientist on the C-MORE SUPER (Survey of Underwater Plastic and Ecosystem Response) cruise, which examined plastic debris during a transit from Hawai‘i to California between 25 August and 5 September 2008. Listen to the interview at the HPR website.

C-MORE featured on Science Buzz

The Center is featured in a recent blog entry at Science Buzz. This is part of a partnership between C-MORE and the Science Museum of Minnesota.

Big ocean, small RNAs in Nature

In recent article in the journal Nature, C-MORE co-PI Ed DeLong (at MIT), his graduate student Yanmei Shi, and postdoc Gene Tyson have discovered that around 30% of all RNA transcripts in the North Pacific Ocean code for short, untranslated transcripts that match to the regions between genes in microbial genomes. Read more about it in TheScientist.com.

“Challenges and Opportunities in Microbial Oceanography”

Friday, July 17, from 8:30 am to 4 pm at the Asia Room, Imin Conference Center, East-West Center, UH Manoa; Dave Karl, moderator. Lunch will be provided, reception to follow. For more information, please visit the syllabus web page or download the flyer PDF.

“To the twilight zone and beyond: life from sea surface to sea floor”

Saturday, July 11, from 8:30 am to 4 pm, at the Asia Room, Imin Conference Center, East-West Center, UH Manoa; Grieg Steward, moderator. Lunch will be provided, reception to follow. For more information, please visit the syllabus web page or download the flyer PDF.

Red glow traces ocean plant health

C-MORE team member Scott Doney (at WHOI) published in the journal Biogeosciences about how fluorescent red light emitted by ocean phytoplankton and detected by the satellite “Aqua” reveals how efficiently the microscopic plants are turning sunlight and nutrients into food through photosynthesis. Read more about it in the NASA press release. (Image courtesy Maria Vernet, Scripps Institution of Oceanography.)

Phylogenetics Workshop featuring intro to ARB

C-MORE is offering hands-on workshops at UH and WHOI to provide participants with the skills necessary to perform phylogenetic analyses on nucleotide sequences from microorganisms. For details and to application forms, please visit our grad student and post-doc opportunities page.

“Sea Change: New perspectives on microbially-driven elemental cycles”

Saturday, June 13, from 8:30 am to 4 pm at the William Richardson School of Law, UH Manoa; Matt Church, moderator. Lunch will be provided, reception to follow. For more information, please visit the syllabus web page or download the flyer PDF.

Nature “Insight” microbial oceanography supplement

““Microorganisms are the most abundant lifeforms in the ocean, and as such have a very important role in many ecosystems. New technologies are allowing scientists to dig deeper than ever before into the composition and activity of microbial communities.”

C-MORE team members, including Dave Karl and Ed DeLong, contributed to this special supplement to the prestigious journal Nature. See Nature Insight Vol. 459, No. 7244, pp 179–212

C-MORE on Wikipedia

Two new C-MORE-related Wikipedia articles are now online: a C-MORE overview and the SUPER HI-CAT research cruise.

How big is that widening gyre of floating plastic?

Dave Karl, director C-MORE, and post-doctoral scholar Angelicque White, University of Oregon, are quoted in an article in the Wall Street Journal about the size and density of the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” — the subject of last year’s Survey of Underwater Plastic and Ecosystem Response (SUPER) cruise.

Lucy Marcus, a documentary filmmaker and marine biologist, joined the cruise to communicate about the effects of particulate plastic accumulations in the North Pacific gyre on microbial oceanography. Lucy’s recently-completed short documentary about it is available here.

Congratulations to Ed DeLong!

The 2009 American Society for Microbiology (ASM) D.C. White Research and Mentoring Award is being presented to C-MORE co-PI Edward DeLong. DeLong, a Fellow of the ASM, is known as being one of the first marine microbiologists to apply novel molecular genetic methods to address fundamental ecological questions. For more information, please download the ASM press release PDF. Congratulations to Ed!

“Journey to Planet Earth” special on PBS

“State of the Planet’s Oceans” includes footage with C-MORE Theme IV leader Scott Doney of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI).

C-MORE cultivates budding scientists!

During April and May, C-MORE will provide a 3-day research experience for high school biology students in Hawai‘i. Students from Farrington, Roosevelt and Kamehameha high schools will use up-to-date molecular techniques to assess microbial diversity over a range of habitats. The students will then pool their data to test their hypotheses about shifts in genetic diversity over a gradient of environmental pollution.

Phytoplankton surprise with alternative body-building technique

In a new paper published in Nature, an international team of scientists, including C-MORE‘s Dave Karl and Michael Rappé, describe a novel strategy for marine phytoplankton growth in the vast nutrient-poor habitats of tropical and subtropical seas. Read more about it in the SOEST press release and Raising Oceans by science writer Jan TenBruggencate.

C-MORE featured in Earthzine

A recent article in the online science magazine earthzine profiled C-MORE Education & Outreach efforts to “entice and educate the next generation of ocean and earth scientists.” The article focused on the C-MORE Scholars Program and its outreach to Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders undergraduates.

Symposium: “Rising CO2, Ocean Acidification, and Their Impacts on Marine Microbes”

All-day symposium on Tuesday 24 Feb. from 8 am - 4 pm at the East-West Center, UH Manoa. For more information, visit the symposium web site or download the flyer PDF.

MBARI Summer Internship Program

The 10-week MBARI Summer internship program is open to educators and college students (undergraduate and graduate level). Information for the 2009 internship program is available now; applications will be due mid-February, and decisions made by March. There are no application forms other than the material available here.

Zehr elected American Academy of Microbiology Fellow

C-MORE co-PI Jon Zehr has been elected a Fellow in the American Academy of Microbiology for his pioneering research on marine molecular ecology and nitrogen cycle processes. Congratulations to Jon!

Kemp and Feng awarded ASLO “Distinguished Service Award”

On 26 January 2009 in Nice, France, Paul Kemp and Sue Feng will receive the prestigious “Distinguished Service Award” of the American Society of Limnology and Oceanography (ASLO). Congratulations on a job well done!

In addition to this well earned recognition by the Society, we would like to mention two other awardees with connections to C-MORE: Mike Pace, who will receive the “G. E. Hutchinson Medal,” and Peter J. le B. Williams, who will receive the “A.C. Redfield Lifetime Achievement Award.” Both Mike and Peter have been faculty members in the C-MORE / Agouron Summer Training Course. Congratulations to all!

First C-MORE intern co-authors ISME paper

Brenda Asuncion, C-MORE’s first intern, has co-authored an ISME paper with Alex Culley and Grieg Steward. She is publishing on the project she started working on during Summer 2007. Thanks, Alex and Grieg, for superb mentoring!

The publication is referenced as “Culley, A., B. Asuncion, G. Steward (2008). Detection of inteins among diverse DNA polymerase genes of uncultivated members of the Phycodnaviridae. ISME (Dec, 2008).”

Science Kit Workshops for Teachers

Teachers learned how to use the C-MORE science kits at FREE workshops to be held in February 2009. For more info, please email us or download the flyer PDF.

2009 Summer Course accepting applications

C-MORE is pleased to offer an international summer course Microbial Oceanography: Genomes to Biomes. The course is sponsored by the Agouron Institute and is offered to graduate students and post-doctoral researchers. The course will explore the dynamic and fundamental role marine microbes play in shaping ocean ecology and global biogeochemistry.

To apply for the 2009 summer course to be held June 08 to July 17, 2009, please use the online application form, or download the course application PDF or Word document; print the form, fill it out, and mail it to the address below. Application deadline is February 20, 2009. For more information, download the flyer PDF and visit the 2009 course web site.

 

See also Archived News and Announcements: Current Archives • 2012 • 2011 • 2010 • 2009 • 2008

 

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