SCSE Academy of Science and Engineering: 2009 Inductees
Left to Right: Dean Jim Riehl, Michael Hafeman, James Rohlf,
Roy Sanford, Kurt Fausch, Amit Singhal, and Wanda Taylor
Six graduates of UMD's Swenson Collge of Science and Engineering were inducted into the Academy of Science and Engineering at a banquet in October. (read more)
SUMMER 2009 NEWS
Seminar
"Cell Wall Invertase 4 is Required for Nectar Production in Arabidopsis thaliana"
Speaker: Jeff Ruhlmann, IBS Master's Degree Candidate
Host: Dr. Clay Carter
Date: Wednesday, July 15
Time: 2:00pm
Congratulations to biology major Natalia Hart who has been selected as a 2009-2010 Raymond W. Darland All-American Scholarship recipient. The scholarship program was established by Regent Emeritus Richard L. Griggs in honor of Provost Emeritus Raymond W. Darland. Scholarship criteria are academic achievement and leadership contributions to UMD.
UMD Science Fair Picnic
Wednesday, July 1
11am - 2pm
SSB Atrium and Courtyard
Check out the latest products from science equipment vendors and enjoy free food, games and prizes.
"Local adaptation and clinal variation of populations of Solidago altissima sampled from a water-availability gradient"
Tim McAulay, UMD Biology Master's Degree Candidate Host: Dr. Julie Etterson
Time: 9:30 a.m.
Date: June 29, 2009
Location: 409 Library
"Challenges to Aquatic Resource Management in Lake Victoria, East Africa and its Catchment"
10:00 a.m. - 12:00 noon
Thursday, June 18
Library Rotunda, UMD
An open forum to provide an introduction to the challenges of managing one of the world's great lakes will be presented by Dr. Tom Okurut, Executive Secretary of the Lake Victoria Basin Commission and Mr. Dick Nyeko, Executive Secretary of the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organization.
SPRING 2009 NEWS
IBS master's degree student Josh Dumke presented a talk on “A selective wood removal technique to expose coarse substrate in small sand-embedded streams” co-authored by Valerie Brady and Tom Hrabik at the 57th Annual Meeting of the North American Benthological Society in Grad Rapids, Michigan in May.
The biology department will be honoring Ruth Hemming at a retirement luncheon on Monday, May 18 at 12pm in the Swenson Science Building Atrium. Ruth has been the Executive Administrative Specialist in the department for nearly 21 years. A buffet lunch will be served at noon, with a program to begin at 12:45pm.
From Stephanie Guildford, assistant professor, Department of Biology. Although Lake Superior has excellent water quality relative to the other North American Great Lakes, lake trout have surprisingly high concentrations of PCBs. In this survey of 23 lakes, including Lake Superior, extending from northwestern Canada to the southern extreme of lake trout distribution, lake area and latitude accounted for most of the variation in PCBs. Trout in smaller and more northerly lakes had greater access to productive benthic littoral habitats for feeding and had lower PCB concentrations compared to lake trout in larger more southerly lakes where feeding was more restricted to the offshore, pelagic habitat. Guildford, S.J., Muir, D.C.G., Houde, M., Evans, M.S., Kidd, K.A., Whittle, D.M., Drouillard, K., Wang, X., Anderson, M.R., Bronte, C.R., DeVault, D.S., Haffner, D., Payne, J., Kling, H.J. 2008. PCB concentrations in lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush) are correlated to habitat use and lake characteristics. Environmental Science and Technology 42: 8239-8244.
UMD graduate commencement will be held at 7 pm on Thursday, May 14 in the UMD Romano Gymnasium. The total number of graduate degrees awarded from UMD this academic year is 225. UMD professor and distinguished geoscience researcher Vickie Hansen will deliver the featured commencement address. Hansen is the McKnight Presidential Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences. Her research and teaching interests include understanding how rocky/icy planets work, evolve, and lose heat; in short, how they tick. She is particularly fascinated with the bending and breaking of planet surfaces, and the resulting record of operative planetary processes, especially on Earth and Venus.
Undergraduate Commencement will be held at 12 noon on Saturday, May 16 at the DECC. This will be UMD’s largest commencement, with 1,200 students at the event and a total of 1,800 receiving undergraduate degrees this academic year. Lois and Jeno Paulucci, civic leaders, humanitarians and internationally recognized entrepreneurs will be honored during the ceremony. Lois Paulucci will be presented the Chancellor’s Distinguished Service Award, and Jeno Paulucci will be awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws degree for public service. From their humble roots in Northeastern Minnesota, the Pauluccis have created and have built more than 50 companies and organizations worldwide, which led to economic opportunities for thousands of workers. Over the years, Jeno and Lois Paulucci have quietly helped hundreds of people when faced with personal hardships, from providing transportation for seeking medical care to financial help during a crisis. The student speaker will be James Cook, a graduate in the School of Fine Arts and the College of Liberal Arts from Amherst, Wisconsin. IBS graduate student Josh Dumke will be giving a talk entitled "A selective wood removal method to expose coarse spawning substrate in small sand-laden traout streams" at the Twin Ports Freshwater Folks' monthly meeting on Wednesday, May 6. This meeting will be held at 11:30 a.m. at the Minnesota Pollution Control Agency office located at 525 Lake Avenue South, Duluth.
UMD Undergraduate Research/Artistic Showcase
The Fourteenth Annual UMD Undergraduate Research and Artistic Showcase was held in the Kirby Ballroom on April 30, 2009. Four biology students participated.
Matt Stuart
Research Mentor: Randall Hicks
Presentation: “Determining the Abundance of Beta-Proteobacterial Ammonia Oxidizers in Lake Superior Picoplankton Samples Using Quantitative PCR”
Nadejda Bozadijieva
Research Mentor: Randall Hicks
Poster: “Changes in the Nitrification Rate During Late Summer and Fall in Lake Superior”
Kevin Krawiecki
Research Mentor: Cindy Hale
Poster: “Effects of Invasive Earthworms on Northern Hardwood Forest Floor Invertebrates”
Jessica Schul
Research Mentor: Allen Mensinger
Poster: “Site Fidelity of Apollina Melanostomus (Round Goby) in the Duluth-Superior Harbor
Recently funded...
J. Cavender-Bares (PI), J.R. Etterson and J.D. Sparks (Co-PIs). National Science Foundation. Collaborative Research: Adaptive differentiation, selection and water use of a seasonally dry tropical oak: implications for global change $ 565,529 (funded 12/4/08).
RiverWebs, a Freshwater Illustrated documentary film about an international group of river ecologists, will be shown at noon on Friday, April 3 in the Kirby Lounge. This film is being shown in conjunction with the biology seminar presented by Kurt Fausch, a Colorado State University professor and one of the scientists featured in the film, at 3:15pm in 185 Life Science.
Tom Hrabik will be giving a seminar titled 'Diel vertical migration of three trophic levels in the deep waters of Lake Superior' at 11:30am on Wednesday, April 1, at the MPCA Office located at 525 Lake Avenue S. in Duluth during the Twin Ports Freshwater Folk monthly meeting.
Celebrate Earth Hour from 8:30-9:30pm on Saturday, March 28 by turning off our lights. This international conservation effort has been brought to the attention of UMD and the Duluth community by undergraduate students Tom Cariveau, Lindsey Nelson and Bryan Nelson.
Congratulations to Lyle Shannon, the biology department's first Inspirational Teacher of the Life Sciences (ITLS) awardee! Beginning in 2009 the ITLS will be awarded annually to a Department of Biology faculty member whose teaching has inspired others to think critically about the biological sciences. This is a person who has inspired students to do their best work and has helped shape careers. The ITLS awardee is an innovative teacher who offers students guidance, and inspires current and future teachers to pursue excellence in the classroom.
Cindy Hale’s research is the focus of an article in this month’s Scientific American (March 2009, page 22). The article by Michael Tennesen is titled “Crawling to Oblivion: Invasive earthworms denude Great Lakes forests.” Hale will be teaching BIOL 4803 Ecology Field Methods May Session 2009.
Graduate Programs Information Session
Monday, March 9
115 SSB
12:00 noon Learn about some of the great graduate programs offered at UMD! Bring your questions to ask representatives from these programs: Academic Health Center Duluth, Center for Environmental Education, Integrated Biosciences Program, Water Resources Sciences.
Hosted by the UMD Biology Club
Allen Mensinger co-authored two recent articles with research colleagues...
Maruska, KP, Korzan,WJ, and Mensinger, AF. 2009. Individual, temporal, and population-level variations in circulating 11-ketotestosterone and 17β-estradiol concentrations in the oyster toadfish Opsanus tau. Comparative Biochemistry and Physiology - Part A: Molecular & Integrative Physiology, 152: 569-578.
Maruska, KP and Mensinger, AF. 2009. Acoustic characteristics and variations in grunt vocalizations in the oyster toadfish Opsanus tau. Environmental Biology of Fishes. 84:325-337.
Gerald Niemi (NRRI, Biology, UMD), Lucinda Johnson (NRRI, UMD), and Valerie Brady (NRRI, MN Sea Grant, UMD) are three of eight co-authors of the International Joint Commission’s white paper entitled “Ecosystem responses to regulation-based water level changes in the Upper Great Lakes.” This paper forms the basis for evaluation of ecosystem effects of the potential water level regulation plans in the Upper Great Lakes of Huron, Michigan, and Superior and their connecting channels.
February 12, 2009 is International Darwin Day, a global celebration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday. In recognition, the UMD Departments of Biology and Geological Science, along with Sigma Xi will be hosting a visit from Dr. Brian Barnes, Director and Professor from the Institute of Arctic Biology at the University of Alaska - Fairbanks. Dr. Barnes will give two lectures on the UMD campus, "Strategies for Overwintering in Arctic Animals" at 3:30pm on Thursday, February 12 in 175 LSci and "Sex and Time in the Hibernating Arctic Ground Squirrel" at 3:15pm on Friday, Februrary 13 in 185 LSci.
Tune in to the Sea Grant Files on KUMD, Wednesday mornings at 7:45am, to hear fresh news about fresh water, sponsored by the Minnesota Sea Grant and hosted by Sea Grant Director and Biology Professor Stephen Bortone.
Steve Bortone, biology professor, presented “A Model for Testing the Efficacy of Artificial Habitats in Fisheries Management” at the annual meeting of the Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Ontario Chapters of the American Fisheries Society in Duluth in February, 2009.
Biology professor Robert Hecky and colleagues recently published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that was selected as one of the top 100 science stories of 2008 by Discover magazine. In a 37-year experiment with a lake in northern Ontario, scientists demonstrated that controlling phosphorus in particular is the key to reversing eutrophication. To reference the paper: Schindler, D.W., Hecky, R.E., Findlay, D.L., et al...2008, Eutrophication of lakes cannot be controlled by reducing nitrogen input: Results of a 37-year whole-ecosystem experiment: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, v. 105, P. 11254-11258.
The UMD Center for Freshwater Research and Policy (CFRP) recently published Fresh Water: Understanding and solving freshwater problems facing the world, a publication that highlights aquatic research being conducted at UMD and how freshwater professionals in northern Minnesota are making a global impact. This publication includes information about the research of Drs. Randall Hicks, John Pastor, Donn Branstrator, Gerald Niemi, Tom Hrabik, Robert Hecky, Stephanie Guildford and a number of graduate students within the biology department. Copies of this publication can be downloaded from the CFRP website.
Victoria Olson, IBS graduate student, will be giving a seminar titled 'The Effects of the Spiny Water Flea (Bythotrephes longimanus) on Fish Diets and Mercury Levels' at 11:30am on Wednesday, January 7, 2009 at the MPCA Office located at 525 Lake Avenue S. in Duluth during the Twin Ports Freshwater Folk weekly meeting.
Congratulations to biology students who were granted Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) awards for the spring semester. Use this link for a description and more information about UROP.
2009 spring semester UROPs in the biology department...
Chromosome Mapping of Spermatogenesis Defective Genes in C. elegans, Kate Bennington (Kroft)
Genetic Mapping of the Fertilization Defective Mutant eb137 in C. elegans, Gabriel Fall (Kroft)
Metabolism of Hibernating Mammals and the Effects of Fibroblast Growth Factor (FGF21), Heather Moline (Andrews)
Efficiacy of Standard Minnow Traps for Round Goby (Apollina melanostomus) Collection, Jessica Schul (Mensinger)
Determining the Abundance of Bacterial Ammonia Oxidizers in Lake Superior Picoplankton Samples, Matthew Stuart (Hicks)
Hair Depth, Lindsay Taute (Moen)
Joanne Itami is serving as the UMD Commission on Women grant committe chair during 2008-09. Several grants of up to $1000 are awarded to individuals or organizations seeking assistance in providing programs or activities which directly benefit a broad group of women in the UMD community each year. Large grant applications ($301-$1000) have two deadlines: Nov. 14, 2008 and April 17, 2009. Small grant applications (up to $300) will be evaluated as they are received
