News

For two million years, Vermont was ruled by ice. Glaciers would surge south, retreat north. Each time the ice melted, a raw landscape of scoured bedrock would be revealed. And, each time, life would return.

About twenty-five thousand years ago, the ice sheet began its most recent pullback, leaving behind the bones of today’s landscape: the blunt ridge of Mount Mansfield, the signature profile of Camel's Hump, and a vast puddle of meltwater that would surge and subside—sometimes saltwater, sometimes fresh-to become our Lake Champlain.

RACC interns at Middlebury College (Zach Perzan, Amanda Fishbin, and Ellen Taylor) are working with Dr. Tom Manley to study the hydrodynamics of Lake Champlain. Research is focused in the Missisquoi Bay where the team spent the early part of the summer working on the R/V David Folger. Interns collected, cleaned and re-deployed 10 ADCP (Acoustic Doppler Current Profilers) that record water circulation over the course of a year, and will continue recording data for the next 12 months.

Interns are now working to analyze water circulation data, multibeam bathymetric data, benthic macroinvertebrate data, and more!

The University of Vermont has been chosen as one of just five universities across the country to receive a grant from NASA. The grant is for work on deep space habitats.

Darren L. Hitt is a professor of mechanical engineering at UVM and the director of the Vermont Space Grant Consortium.

Algae oil touted as Vermont's next fuel crop
BurlingtonFreePress.com
Dairy cattle leavings are oozing with potential as a growth medium for oil-producing algae, Anju Dahiya, co-founder of Burlington-based GSR Solutions, told a small gathering at Nordic Farms in Charlotte. But don't hold your breath, she cautioned.

Oil from manure-eating algae might one day heat our homes
vtdigger.org
This was just a model, said GSR Solutions president Anju Dahiya, who headed up the year-long research effort. But the process is the same as the larger-scale version in which Nordic Farm ... “Being on the cutting edge here not only has implications for ...

WPTZ The Champlain Valley
Manure-Fed Biofuels Might Make For New Crop At Dairy Farms
Vermont Public Radio
But it's also a live demonstration of government-funded research aimed at finding out whether manure and runoff from dairy farms in Vermont could be converted into fuel oil for everything from jet engines to basement boilers. And according to officials ...
Oil from manure-eating algae might one day heat our homesvtdigger.org
Study shows manure can be turned into fuel oilWPTZ The Champlain Valley

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The VT EPSCoR Center for Workforce Development and Diversity (CWDD) held a Macroinvertebrate Identification Workshop for middle-level educators on Tuesday, July 1st at Saint Michael’s College. The workshop was designed to teach participants in the identification of macroinvertebrates with help from experts like Dr. Declan McCabe (Professor of Biology at Saint Michael’s College) and Katie Chang (VT EPSCoR CWDD Research Technician).

WPTZ The Champlain Valley
Study shows manure can be turned into fuel oil
WPTZ The Champlain Valley
Dr. Anju Dahiya, chief scientist at Burlington-based GSR Solutions, said while blue-green algae common in Lake Champ[lain is not one of the fuel-producing strains, she has identified others that show great potential. "Some work needs to be done but we ...

Vermont EPSCoR Program Recognizes Evans' Contributions
UVM News
Judith Van Houten and John Evans Left, Judith Van Houten, Ph.D., University Distinguished Professor and Vermont State EPSCoR director, presents John N. Evans, Ph.D., professor of molecular physiology and biophysics emeritus, with a plaque honoring his ...

VT science teachers: On board and buoyant
BurlingtonFreePress.com
Practical problems surfaced early during a recent three-hour cruise on Lake Champlain. Among them: How best to position one's feet as the University of Vermont's research vessel Melosira pitched, rolled and yawed on the bucking waves? Many questions ...

We invite you to join us for the VT EPSCoR Research on Adaptation to Climate Change in the Lake Champlain Basin (RACC) Annual State Meeting, a 1-day meeting comprised of scientific presentations, posters and networking opportunities.

Visitors from the National Science Foundation, Congressional Offices, State and Local Agencies, Researchers, Private Sector, Graduate and Undergraduate Students will be present to share progress and provide updates on the third year of the Adaptation to Climate Change in the Lake Champlain Basin: New Understanding through Complex Systems (RACC) project.

Asim Zia presented a research paper today on RACC's hybrid IAM in the Earth System Governance's annual meeting, jointly organized by the University of East Anglia and the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research in Norwich, UK. The research paper is entitled "Adaptive Co-Management of “Tipping Points” in Social Ecological Systems: Governing Alternate Stable States in Lake Champlain Basin," and the co-authors include Chris Koliba, Arne Bomblies, Andrew Schroth, Yaoyang Xu, Peter Isles and Brian Beckage. More information on the conference program is available at http://norwich2014.earthsystemgovernance.org/

New Program Connects Vermont Teachers to UVM Science Research
UVM News
The work of the 11 Vermont teachers doesn't end, though, once the buckets are sorted. That's just the jumping off point to a conversation about how science practice — and first-hand experiences like they've just had — can be brought back to their ...

RACC summer interns working with Dr. Bob Genter and Saul Blocher at Johnson State College are researching water quality issues in and around the Lamoille River Watershed. Water samples are analyzed for nitrogen and phosphorus analytes as well as E. coli cultures. Interns will assist the RACC high school Streams Project team from Rice Memorial High School who are interested in looking at E. coli in their local stream sites: Potash Brook and Bartlett Brook in South Burlington, Vermont.

The CWDD welcomed 20 high school student/teacher teams to the Saint Michael's College campus for a week of research education, stream sampling, and career exploration. Teams traveled from as far away as Puerto Rico and as close as Colchester, Vermont. Students learned about the EPSCoR program, received hands-on experience with RACC faculty, and took a trip on UVM's research vessel, the Melosira.

On the occasion of its Foundation Council Meeting in Bern on 26 June, SIB announced the winners of the SIB Awards 2014. The SIB Young Bioinformatician Award and the SIB Best Graduate Paper Award, of CHF 10,000 and CHF 5,000 respectively, are given every year by SIB to recognize the excellent merits of young bioinformaticians.

Dr. Lesley-Ann Dupigny-Giroux was an invited speaker and participant in the inaugural Diversity in the Computational Geosciences Workshop held at NCAR. The Diversity in the Computational Geosciences Workshop: Advancing a Robust National Community & System for Diversity in Higher Education was held on June 23-25, 2014.

The Weekly Planet: Costs of severe storms require a fossil carbon tax
Barre Montpelier Times Argus
Alan Betts is one of Vermont's leading climate scientists and a past president of the Vermont Academy of Science and Engineering. He lives in Pittsford, and his columns can be read at alanbetts.com. Tweet · Email Article · Print Article. MORE IN ...

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Maggie Eppstein, chair of Computer Science (CS) at the University of Vermont, was recently awarded a competitive $650K 5-year grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF), as part of the new NSF S-STEM program (Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics). This S-STEM scholarship project will address the significant shortage of computer scientists, both in Vermont and at the national level. The project will increase the number and diversity of well-educated, skilled employees in computer science.

Photo of the 2014 RACC and REU interns