Eisenhower and Troops
I’m so close to being done with the semester. I have one last exam. It’s for a great class, but the final exam is killing me. It’s a take home exam, which means it’s far harder than what we would be subjected to in an in class exam. Well, except maybe the Marine Reaction and Transport exam…that one really HURT! Of course the three extra credit questions rocked for me at least… the answers were SRV, Deep Purple and the Stones. Most of the younger students had no clue. I hope he does similar extra credit when I take his Marine Geology course.
This morning while procrastinating over my take home exam, I read and summarized a new bit of research from the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Researchers there worked with a brittle star that is common in the north sea sediments to determine how it would react to short to mid term exposures to a more acidic ocean. This is highly relevant since the ocean has been growing slowly more acidic, and a large number of marine invertebrates, including many commercially important ones, have shells, or exoskeletons of calcium carbonates. As the ocean pH goes down, those creatures will be stressed trying to maintain their shells.
Who is going to be affected? The list is long and distinguished – Corals, lobster, crabs, shrimp, oysters, clams, scallops, mussels, pteropods, sea stars, sea urchins, snails, conch, crinoids and lots more. What’s more many of these creatures are very important because they are bio-engineers creating habitat (corals and oysters) or they filter the water and sediments to keep them clean (oysters, clams, mussels). Many are also key species in the diet of other commercially and ecologically important species. Understanding how these organisms will react to acidification is important if we are going to have any hope of protecting the ecosystem we rely on for so much of our food let alone recreation and other uses. Check out the discussion at The Other 95% (that’s all the world without a backbone).
I have also added a critical review of Franklin’s The Most Important Fish in the Sea. It is a significantly shortened, readers digest version of a critical review submitted for one of my classes.
Edited: Replaced that wimpy hacked version of SRV’s Texas Flood with the full cut from the same concert that runs 9:34
Summer is almost here…
It’s just one more week and I’m through with the semester from hell.
It’s not that any of the classes were that hard, though Marine Reaction and Transport comes close enough. The problem is that I got involved in many other activities and overextended myself again.
My last class was yesterday with Prof. A. Unfortunately, I had a team presentation to give, along with a group paper to turn in. My partner is a humanities type with little experience using PowerPoint, Keynote, or any other computer software for presenting… so… I had to do all the presentation design and development. For most classes I wouldn’t have sweated that too much, but this is Peter and Matt, both of whom I respect a lot and will be going out to sea with this summer. On top of that, I’m working with Peter on at least one DVD and now a video podcast expanding on the work in the previous DVD we made.
Thursday we (my project partner and I) met to layout the battle plan. “Hmm… We have a 15 page paper and a 20 minute presentation due in 20 hours…What should we do?”
Two all-nighters later, everything is done. The paper was turned in electronically a few hours late (as in this morning), but we had a kick-*$$ presentation that will now be leading to participation in a published paper working with the same data set and expanding the analysis I did for the project. The analysis was quite the pain in the you know where, as the data is old, incomplete, and from an area I know very little about. Then again, maybe that helped me, since I had few pre-conceived notions and no idea of what had or had not been tried before.
Just one more paper to write, three take home exams, and one in class exam. Then I can pass out. For a week. Except Tammy has a “Honey please finally do” list I have been ignoring now for months that needs some action. And then there is the summer activities plan. And, of course, I owe her about a week of snuggle time.
Oh, and in my copious free time, I have managed to get an entry or two up at The Other 95%, though I doubt I will be able to contribute to Coral Week even sitting on a couple hours of video of deep sea corals and deep sea trawl fishing effects. Arggghhh!
Soon.
The semester is almost (but not quite) over, and already the summer is filling up fast.
How the heck am I going to get in any dive time?!
At Avery Point the Earthday celebrations were yesterday (tree planting, drum circle, giveaways of CFL lights, recycled reusable water bottles, speeches, ice cream, CT DEP demonstrations, hybrid car showings – not bad for a campus of only 500 or so people.
Since today is the more widely recognized day though… a few quick quotes / links
“Never doubt that a small group of thoughtfully committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
Margaret Mead
Rick MacPherson of Malaria, Bedbugs, Sea Lice & Sunsets will be joining Kevin Zelnio of The Other 95% and Deep Sea News, Jason Robertshaw of Cephalopodcast and Karen James of The Beagle Project Blog for part of a 24 hour long conversation about the health of our planet. Their segment starts at 2200 GMT (that’s 6pm EST).
Thanks Rick for the book. Arrived safe and sound! Very beautiful too!
Highly recommended for all!
A few other links for your perusal this morning:
The Times Magazine Green Issue
Hattips go out to Rick, Kevin and Sheril
Update: Johann was sorta captured at the event playing football with some of the undergrads from school
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