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Can America Embrace Biking Like Denmark Has?
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Can America Embrace Biking Like Denmark Has? Cycling can save enormous amounts of energy and money. But the United States remains resistant. By Austin Troy|Posted Thursday, Nov. 1, 2012, at 12:02 AM ET. Tweet. People ride bicycles on Oct. 2, 2010, ...

Vermont EPSCoR requests proposals for pilot projects that are aligned with the VT EPSCoR research on adaptation to climate change in the Lake Champlain Basin with insights through complex systems computation (RACC).

The following features in this solicitation should be noted:

Eligibility Requirements: Full time, tenure track faculty at any institution in the state are eligible to apply.

Applications must be submitted on our application website, which you can access beginning December 12, 2012, at http://www.uvm.edu/~epscor/redir/pilot/app.php
Web application deadline is June 3, 2013.
The maximum amount of each Pilot Project grant is $10,000.
Funding may not be used to support Masters students’ salaries.

The new season of Emerging Science continues with a look at the growing incidence of traumatic brain injuries (TBI) among athletes. Ann McKee, M.D., is chief neuropathologist for the New England Veteran’s Administration. Her groundbreaking research focuses on Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative disease of the brain found in people with a history of repetitive brain trauma, such as concussions.

Please join the Lake Champlain Workforce Investment Board and the Lake Champlain Regional Chamber of Commerce in recognizing successful intern experiences throughout our region. This panel will feature program participants from four organizations, Linking Learning to Life, the Vermont Technology Council, Vermont Associates and Vermont Works for Women. We will hear success stories from interns and their supporting employers.

A multi-year Post-Doctoral position is available at the University of Vermont as part of large-scale, interdisciplinary, NSF-funded study concerning adaptation to climate change in the Lake Champlain basin - www.uvm.edu/~epscor/new02/?q=node/30. We seek a post-doctoral associate with expertise in interactions between nutrient enrichment and algal community structure – especially cyanobacteria – in lakes. The ideal candidate will have field experience and modeling expertise relevant to understanding spatial and seasonal variability in planktonic biomass and composition in the context of biogeochemical and hydrological dynamics. Candidates with experience using remote sensing approaches (i.e. MODIS, SeaWiFS) to monitor and model these biological systems are encouraged to apply. The postdoctoral associate will work within an interdisciplinary team of faculty, postdoctoral scientists, graduate and undergraduate students broadly studying geochemical, hydrodynamic and biological processes in Lake Champlain and its watershed.

Seasonal total precipitation is well known to affect malaria transmission because
Anopheles mosquitoes depend on standing water for breeding habitat. However, the withinseason temporal pattern of the rainfall influences persistence of standing water and thus
rainfall patterns can also affect mosquito population dynamics in water-limited environments. Here, using a numerical simulation, I show that intraseasonal rainfall pattern
accounts for 39% of the variance in simulated mosquito abundance in a Niger Sahel village
where malaria is endemic but highly seasonal. I apply a field validated coupled hydrology
and entomology model. Using synthetic rainfall time series generated using a stationary
first-order Markov Chain model, I hold all variables except hourly rainfall constant, thus
isolating the contribution of rainfall pattern to variance in mosquito abundance. I further
show the utility of hydrology modeling using topography to assess precipitation effects by
analyzing collected water. Time-integrated surface area of pools explains 70% of the
variance in simulated mosquito abundance from a mechanistic model, and time-integrated
surface area of pools persisting longer than 7 days explains 82% of the variance.
Correlations using the hydrology model output explain more variance in mosquito
abundance than the 60% from rainfall totals. I extend this analysis to investigate the
impacts of this effect on malaria vector mosquito populations under climate shift scenarios,
holding all climate variables except precipitation constant. In these scenarios, rainfall mean
and variance change with climatic change, and the modeling approach evaluates the impact
of non-stationarity in rainfall and the associated rainfall patterns on expected mosquito
activity.

Judith Van Houten, State Director, VT EPSCoR, invited presenter at Envisioning the Environment at UVM work group, October 24, 2012.

For more information please visit:
http://www.uvm.edu/provost/envisioningenvironment/

Saint Michael's College student Nick Rucci of Livonia presents research at ...
ReadMedia (press release)
Kujawa also met with researchers from the Maine EPSCoR team to complement his work on the Regional Adaptation to Climate Change project funded by Vermont EPSCoR. Meeting with Nobel Laureate Robert Kates. The professor and his students, Dr.

The first round of projects by student entrepreneurs, ranging from a flying robot that can autonomously follow and film someone using a smartphone to a sustainably produced energy bar infused with Ecuadorian guayusa tea leaves, have been announced as part of an innovative new program at the University of Vermont that raises start-up money through alumni donations.

Emerging Science Season 5 Episode 1 "Climate Change: A Northeast Primer" can now be seen on the Vermont EPSCoR website.

Climate change is already underway across our region, and 2011's Tropical Storm Irene was a sobering example of the type of severe weather we may be experiencing in the future - and the effect it might have on habitat, water quality and quality of life. A regional consortium of researchers are engaged in several projects that hope to shed light on our changing climate, and on how we can best adapt to an unpredictable future.

New Season airs on VPT!
With the recent increase in severe weather as a backdrop, VPT's Emerging Science kicks off its 5th season with a look at climate change, profiling several regional projects that are tracking the effects of climate change in the northeast.

Here's a quick preview, as Tom Manley, Ph.D., and Pat Manley, Ph.D., professors of geology at Middlebury College, focus their research on Lake Champlain.

Season 5 of VPT's "Emerging Science" (which is funded by VT EPSCoR) spotlights people doing research on problems as personal as chronic pain and as global as climate change. The first of four new “Emerging Science” programs will premiere on Wednesday, Oct. 17, at 7:30 p.m. Programs will be rebroadcast the following Saturday at 10:30 a.m. and the following Sunday at 1 p.m. They will also be available on demand at vpt.org.

In a series of talks at the United States General Accountability Office, UVM professors Christopher Koliba and Asim Zia from the Community Development & Applied Economics Department, and fellows with the Vermont Complex Systems Center and the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center, discussed the tools and techniques currently being used to model and evaluate interagency network performance and accountability. Koliba presented a talk titled,

Assessing Complex Public Sector Networks: New Developments in Research Design and Methodology. Zia presented a talk titled, Computer

Simulation Models of Interagency Networks: Applications to Transportation

Infrastructure Planning and Watershed Management. In both presentations research and modeling efforts funded through grants from the National Science Foundation and the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center were discussed. Their talks were sponsored by the Applied Research and Methods Division of GAO.

Austin Troy, director of UVM's Transportation Research Center and VT EPSCoR RACC Team member, will give a keynote address at the Yale Forestry School quinquennial reunion, October 19, 2012. The reunion's theme is "Sustainability and the City," and Troy will speak about his new book, The Very Hungry City: Urban Energy Efficiency and the Economic Fate of Cities. Troy completed his undergraduate and master’s degrees at Yale and is a professor with appointments in UVM’s Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources and the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences.
Assessing Complex Public Sector Networks: New Developments in Research Design and Methodology. Zia presented a talk titled, Computer

Simulation Models of Interagency Networks: Applications to Transportation

Infrastructure Planning and Watershed Management. In both presentations research and modeling efforts funded through grants from the National Science Foundation and the James M. Jeffords Policy Research Center were discussed. Their talks were sponsored by the Applied Research and Methods Division of GAO.

Renewable Energy Vermont: driving towards a smart, renewable energy future
vtdigger.org
... change models by Diann Gaalema, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont, and was followed by presentations by Sandra Levine of the Conservation Law Foundation and Dr. Alan Betts, a Vermonter and noted Climatologist.

How do blooms begin? Why? What keeps them going? And what makes them toxic - or not? A new, cutting-edge collaboration at UVM aims to answer the riddles.

Veronica Sosa-Gonzalez first came to the University of Vermont (UVM) as an Undergraduate Intern through the VT EPSCoR Streams Project in the summer of 2009 from the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras (UPR) where she was an Environmental Sciences major. The strong partnership between Vermont EPSCoR and the University of Puerto Rico-Rio Piedras was cultivated through the VT Streams Project; created and launched in 2007 under NSF EPS#0701410.

After obtaining her BS from UPR, Veronica successfully applied to the Department of Geology graduate program at the University of Vermont and obtained her Master’s Degree in Natural Resources with a concentration in Aquatic Ecology and Watershed Science in 2012. Veronica successfully defended her Master’s Thesis entitled:
Determining Long Term Erosion Rates in Panama: An Application of 10BE. Her research is on the determination of background erosion rates in Panama, and exploring physiographic controls on erosion in tropical climates.

On October 18th, UVM is launching a crowd-donating platform called "UVM Start" that will allow student entrepreneurs to raise money through alumni donations. UVM Start will connect student startups with alumni — gaining the connections, mentoring and capital necessary to get their companies off the ground. "Alumni support could make all the difference for many student startups. Substantive capital and mentoring is often the difference between massive success and perpetual languish" said Tucker Severson, a current UVM MBA student. "UVM has many entrepreneurial students and supportive alumni. By connecting the two, UVM Start will help turbo-charge entrepreneurship on campus!"

The National Science Foundation (NSF) offers three major investment strategies to achieve its goal of improving the Research & Development competitiveness of researchers and institutions within EPSCoR jurisdictions of which co-funding is one.