Dr. Burd will be returning to Antarctica to help teach the 2008 NSF International Graduate Training Course in Antarctic Biology. This course is sponsored by the US National Science Foundation and allows the students to gain experience working in Antarctica and to learn about the issues and problems of conducting research in such an extreme environment. A web-log following the progress of the course can be found at http://www-modeling.marsci.uga.edu/~adrian

Dr. Patricia Yager and graduate student Kevin Bakker are on board the Icebreaker Oden doing research in the Southern Ocean travelling from Punta Arenas, Chili to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Their expedition is documented by teacher Ms Garay at http://www.polartrec.com/oden-antarctic-expedition-07/

Congratulations to Christopher Burbage (PhD, Dr. Binder), Randolph Culp (PhD, Dr. Noakes), Jenny Fisher (PhD, Dr. Hollibaugh), Justin Hartmann (MS, Dr. Cai), Justine Lyons (PhD, Dr. Alber), Melissa Pirchio (MS, Dr. Burd), Jennie Seay (MS, Drs. Alber and Tilburg) and Qi Ye (PhD, Dr. Zhang) for completion of their advanced degrees in December 2007.

Dissolved organic carbon (DOC) is supplied to the South Atlantic Bight via the highly productive and extensive coastal salt marshes as a non-point source flux rather than from river input.  As a result, Dr. Bill Miller is developing optical algorithms to link DOC with ocean color for use as a tool to evaluate the spatial and temporal contributions of these sources of DOC. The study, funded by Georgia Sea Grant, will include experiments with moored optical instruments together with water and optical samples along the nearshore in order to refine ocean color estimates of DOC and add to our understanding of coastal carbon budgets.

Dr. Sarah Cooley (a recent Marine Science graduate) together with Dr. Patricia Yager and colleagues have found that nitrogen-fixing bacteria growing in the low-salinity Amazon River plume waters are found to absorb significant amounts of CO2 from the atmosphere - which comes as a surprise in a region thought to emit CO2 to the atmosphere.  This finding is a research highlight featured with Nature Geoscience.

Congratulations to Weidong Zhao for winning one of the best poster awards at the Gordon Research Conference titled Archaea: Ecology Metabolism & Molecular Biology.  Weidong's work with Dr. Chunluan Zhang and colleagues shows that ammonia monooxygenase subunit A (amoA), a key enzyme of ammonia oxidation that was recovered from Kamchatka hot spring mats with temperature range of 42 to 85 (degree)C, is phylogenetically distinct from amoA genes found in marine and soil environments, suggesting that nitrification may play an important role in elevated temperature environments.

Congratulations to Katherine Doyle (MS with Dr. Di Iorio) and Adair Johnson (MS with Dr. Miller) for completion of their advanced degrees in August 2007. Theses and dissertations can be viewed from the UGA electronic library.

Congratulations to Stephen Carini (PhD with Dr. Joye), Beth Orcutt (PhD with Dr. Joye) and Jacob Shalack (MS with Dr. Walker) for completion of their advanced degrees in May 2007. Theses and dissertations can be viewed from the UGA electronic library.

Congratulations to Li-Qing Jiang, a graduate student in chemical oceanography, for winning the Outstanding Student Poster Award at the American Society for Limnologists and Oceanographers 2007 Aquatic Sciences Meeting in Santa Fe, NM. His presentation was title "CO2 study on a marsh-dominated shallow continental shelf: Is the South Atlantic Bight a source of CO2 to the atmosphere?".

Dr. Ji Hong Dai (a recent Marine Science graduate) has received the John A. Knauss Marine Policy Fellowship awarded by the National Sea Grant office of NOAA.  She will work at the NOAA Fisheries Office of Science and Technology at NOAA Fisheries Service in Silver Spring, MD, which is the primary interface between NOAA Fisheries scientific activity and other national and international organizations. Her interests are to link science and policy and to work on the development and implementation of the Integrated Ocean Observing System (IOOS) and the international Global Earth Observation System of Systems (GEOSS) efforts.