December 18, 2000

Highlights

• Daryl Van Ry, a Ph.D. student in Steve Eisenreich's group, has been awarded a $25,000 scholarship from the American Air and Waste Management Association for his proposal to examine the scavenging of atmospheric organic contaminants such as PCBs and Cl-pesticides form polluted air masses transported in the I-95 corridor by vegetation, especially scrub pine, in the Pinelands.
• Yuan Gao was recently awarded a NSF grant to participate in a large-scale, multi-country Aerosol Characterization Experiment in the Asian-Pacific region (ACE-Asia) to investigate aerosol climate effects.
• Jointly with Paul Falkowski and Yoram Kaufman, Yuan Gao was funded for a project by NASA EOS Interdisciplinary Science Program to investigate aeolian iron-ocean biosphere interaction, with extensive use of aerosol data and MODIS products from Terra satellite.
• Yuan Gao has just been awarded a visiting scholarship by China's Department of Education to participate in and advise on marine environmental science research in key laboratories.
• Scott Glenn and Dale Haidvogel gave a 2-hour invited presentation on atmospheric and oceanic forecasting at the Navy's Fleet Numerical Meteorology and Oceanography Center (FNMOC) in Monterey, California. They then discussed plans to couple the latest Navy atmospheric model to the Rutgers ocean model for planned east coast scientific studies and eventual fleet operations.
• Oscar Schofield met with the steering committee for NOAA's Coastal Ocean Program at Tiburon, California.
• Scott Glenn was invited to serve on the steering committee for the Coalition of Coastal Observatories (CoCO).
• After a presentation of recent Newark Bay results to the NJDEP, Bob Chant was invited to give a full presentation at a joint New Jersey New York Harbor Meeting.
  COOL Highlights
  1) Josh Kohut received 3 days of shiptime aboard the R/V Endeavor this month for the first large-scale spatial validation of a long-range CODAR system deployed on Long Beach Island. Surface current maps generated by the new system are currently being featured in full-page CODAR advertisements appearing in Sea Technology and Backscatter.
  2) Josh Kohut arranged a meeting between Rutgers, CODAR and Coast Guard personnel to discuss the use of existing 100 foot LORAN-A towers to increase the efficiency of long-range CODAR transmitters. The decommissioned LORAN-A tower at the Coast Guard station in Cape May is undergoing approval for the first test. The results will have international implications, since countries like Norway have not dismantled their LORAN-A coastal arrays, enabling the rapid transition to a long-range CODAR coastal array.
  3) Mike Crowley was contacted by Dr. Gene Feldman, the head of the NASA SeaWiFS satellite program, to discuss the potential role of the Chinese satellites in the U.S. ocean color program. Rutgers is the only non-Chinese downlink for this data, and is now providing the data to NASA for joint product validation studies.
  4) Oscar Schofield and Scott Glenn met with Rutgers Professor Lisa Covi to begin a scientific study of the COOL Room as a model for a clearbox collaboratory. The study will examine the effects of radical collocation on learning, motivation, coordination and productivity. The implications for virtual collocation will be further assessed through studies of the computer, audio and video communications between remote shore sites and ships within the research fleet. Scientists and students will be asked to sign a wavier form allowing them to be darted and tagged with an individually-numbered biodegradable ear-tag during the July 2001 experiment.

In Memory Of

• Paul Capel, a Ph.D. student in Steve Eisenreich's group, was killed in a tragic swimming accident in Australia on Nov. 20, 2000. Paul was scheduled to defend his thesis in late January 2001, and assume a postdoctoral position in Roni Avissar's group. His thesis will be awarded posthumously at May graduation ceremonies.