VIMS Community Tackles Vexing Question in Marine Science

Cook-Off Winners: From L: Emily Loose; Ryan Carnegie, Léo Carnegie, and Corinne Audemard; Paul Panetta; Carissa Wilkerson; Randy Jones; Jess Schloesser; Katie May Laumann; Miram Gleiber for David Malmquist; and Lori Sutter. Photo by Kattie McMillan.

By VIMS Communications Staff

Students, faculty, and staff at the Virginia Institute of Marine Science taxed their analytical abilities to the utmost on Friday evening as they tackled one of the most challenging questions in marine science—who at VIMS makes the tastiest chili or cornbread.

The Institute’s annual Chili Cook-Off, now in its 6th year, is a community-building event organized by the Graduate Student Association (GSA), the official governing body of Master’s and Ph.D. students in William & Mary’s School of Marine Science at VIMS.

During the competition, more than 60 members of the VIMS community tasted small samples of each entry, using their scientific training in hypothesis testing and statistical analysis to choose a single winner in each of the three categories.

As an example of the tasters’ analytical rigor, Adjunct Professor Paul Panetta tasted each cornbread recipe both with and without a cinnamon honey glaze supplied by one of the chefs, noting that this helped to minimize bias in his experimental design.

Winning chefs for 2013 were graduate student Ryan Schloesser and his wife Jess (meat chili), professor Panetta (veggie chili), and Communications Director David Malmquist (cornbread). Second place for meat chili went to the family trio of Research Associate Professor Ryan Carnegie, Assistant Research Scientist Corinne Audemard, and future marine scientist and budding chili aficionado Léo Carnegie, with graduate student Carissa Wilkerson taking third.  Second and third place for veggie chili went to graduate students Randy Jones and Lori Sutter, while second- and third-place prizes for cornbread went to graduate student Emily Loose and the graduate student duo of Katie May Laumann and Jon Lefcheck.

The top winners in each category won an apron (hand painted by Freedman) that featured a fire-breathing Bay scallop, brown pelican, or summer flounder.  Second- and third-place winners were awarded cooking spoons decorated with designs that included a moray eel, Pacific octopus, cownose ray, starfish, pipefish, and diamondback terrapin. Freedman and fellow graduate students Cassie Glaspie and Gar Secrist made the creatures from Sculpey clay.

Perhaps the most stunning outcome of this year’s cook-off was the passing of the coveted Golden Bowl Award from students to faculty—with faculty/staff entries earning 92 total votes compared to only 87 total votes for student entries.

Excerpted from: http://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/chili_cookoff.php

Who Gets to be a Scientist? VIMS Graduate Students Appear on NPR's "With Good Reason"

brewbooks / Foter.com / CC BY-SA

In 2009, fewer than 2% of physical science degrees—like physics and chemistry—went to African-Americans. Considering African-Americans make up 12% of the U.S. population, these numbers are shockingly low. And they’re getting even lower. In the second episode of our ongoing series about STEM education, we ask: what does a scientist look like? Short, tall, black, brown, male or female? We talk to Lindsey Kraatz, Sam Lake, Daniel Maxey, and Stephanie Salisbury about their outreach project at William and Mary’s Virginia Institute of Marine Science.  We also hear about what might be keeping American girls out of laboratories, and Laura Puaca (Christopher Newport University) explains the WWII history of Edna the Engineer.

Excerpted from: http://withgoodreasonradio.org/2013/02/edna-the-engineer-who-gets-to-be-a-scientist/

VIMS Scientists Contribute to "Bay Barometer"

Dead Zones: VIMS professor Carl Friedrichs explains how wind speed and direction can affect the development of low-oxygen dead zones in Chesapeake Bay during the Bay Barometer press conference. Photo by David Malmquist. 

By David Malmquist

Annual report says Bay impaired, but signs of resilience abound

A team of researchers from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science joined with officials from the Chesapeake Bay Program and other agencies to announce the release of the latest Bay Barometer, CBP’s annual report on Bay health and the status of long-term Bay restoration efforts. The announcement took place during a press conference at the Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, with the delighted cries of visiting school groups providing a fitting backdrop.

The bottom line on Bay health, according to the 2011-2012 Barometer, is that continued restoration actions and success in pollution reduction give cause for optimism, while scientific indicators continue to reflect the reality of an impaired Bay ecosystem.

CBP Director Nick DiPasquale says “We are having some long-term success, we are rebuilding some of the resilience that is the hallmark of a balanced ecosystem.” “But,” he adds, “we also want to recognize that we have a long way to go. We now have 17.5 million people in this watershed—that’s a lot of rooftops, a lot of parking lots, a lot of human activity that disrupts the natural flows of the environment.”

The Chesapeake Bay Program is a regional partnership that has led and directed Bay restoration since 1983. It comprises Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Virginia; the District of Columbia; the Chesapeake Bay Commission, a tri-state legislative body; the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, representing the federal government; and participating citizen advisory groups.

During the January 31^st press conference, a team of five VIMS scientists—Carl Friedrichs, Marjy Friedrichs, Carl Hershner, Rom Lipcius, and Robert “JJ” Orth—answered media questions and provided expert commentary on the specific criteria that CBP uses to gauge Bay health.

Carl Friedrichs, who serves on the CBP’s Scientific & Technical Advisory Committee, discussed how he and other scientists are working to better understand the factors that affect development of low-oxygen dead zones, with the Bay Barometer showing only 34% of Bay waters meeting standards for dissolved oxygen. The most familiar cause of dead zones are the blooms of algae that form when excessive loads of nitrogen—from fertilizers, municipal sewage, and other sources—runoff into coastal waters. When these algae die and sink, they provide a rich food source for bacteria, which in the act of decomposition take up dissolved oxygen from the surrounding environment.

“One area of progress in the last few years has been a better understanding of how the Bay’s dead zone responds to the effects of the wind versus nutrients,” said Friedrichs. The speed and direction of winds can affect the occurrence of dead zones by breaking down the stratification that keeps oxygen-rich surface waters from reaching deeper areas of the Bay. “It's good to separate those effects so that we can most effectively and fairly help agriculture reduce its nutrient inputs,” said Friedrichs. “We don’t want to blame farmers for the wind.”

Excerpted from http://www.vims.edu/newsandevents/topstories/bay_barometer.php