Yamacraw Distinguished Speaker Series (YDSS):
April 3, 2003:
Dr. Jeff Sanders, Oxford University Computing Laboratory, Oxford, England
Title: Quantum Computing

Distinguihed Professor (2002-03) Workshop Series: (Contact: Dr. Chellu S. Chetty)
April 11, 2003:
Theme: Breaking New Grounds in Academic Advisement/ Mentoring

MARC Honors Program (Contact: Dr. Harpal Singh)
April 4, 2003:
Dr. Morris Blaylock, Department of Infectious Diseases, St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital
Theme: Bioconversion of a Nonionic Detergent to Poly-(3Hydroxybutyate) by Ralstonia eutropha

Marine Science Seminar Series (Contact: Dr. Carol Pride)
April 4, 2003:
Dr. Dionne Hoskins , Savannah State University
"Seasonal Fluctuations In Benthic Biomass In The Macrofaunal Community Of A Coastal Georgia Mudflat"

March 28, 2003:
Dr. Dan Lockwood, Savannah State University
"Use of GIS in Coastal Marine Science"

Eight students and two faculty from the Department of Natural Science and Mathematics attended the Fourth National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Expanding Opportunities in Ocean and Atmospheric Sciences conference. Mr. Steward James, Mr. Richard Hodges, Mr. Brian Williams, Ms. Ebony Henderson, Mr. Ranaldo Smith, Mr. John Braxton, Ms. Kymberly Brown, and Ms. Nena Strachan traveled with Dr. Dionne Hoskins and Dr. Matthew Gilligan to the meeting hosted by Florida A&M University in Tallahassee, Florida on March 30, 31 and April 1, 2003.

The trip was sponsored by the SSU component of the NOAA/UMES Living Marine Resources Collaborative Science Center which Dr. Hoskins, a NOAA Fishery Biologist and Assistant Research Professor, directs at SSU.

Dr. Gilligan was the moderator for Technical Session III: Living Marine Resources in which Dr. Hoskins was a presenter.

Sajwan, K.S., S. Paramasivam, J.P. Richardson, and A.K. Alva. 2003. Preliminary Assessment of Soybean [Glycine max (L..)] Seedlings for Beryllium Accumulation. Journal of Plant Nutrition. 26(2):331-329.

Sajwan, K.S., S. Paramasivam, A.K. Alva, and P. Hooda. 2003. Assessing the Feasibility of Land Application of Fly Ash, Sewage Sudge and their Mixtures. Advances in Environmental Research. 7(4):1-15.

Paramasivam, S. K.S. Sajwan, A.K. Alva, D. VanClif, and K.H. Hostler. 2003. Elemental Transport in Soils Amended with Incinerated Sewage Sludge. Journal of Environmental Science and Health. 38(5): 807-821.

Dr Lambright, Assistant Professor (Georgia Tech Regional Engineering Program), presented a paper "Bringing Reality Into The Classroom: Using Industry Strategic Consulting Case Studies To Teach Real World Engineering" at the 2003 American Society For Engineering Education (ASEE) South East Conference held in Macon, GA on April 8, 2003.

Earth Day Provided by: NASA The blue marble Earth as seen by the Apollo 8 astronauts in December of 1968 became an icon for a generation holding a new sense of stewardship for our fragile environment. April 22, 1970 was declared Earth Day by President Nixon, beginning an annual celebration of awareness, appreciation and understanding of our planet. Much progress has been made in 31 years towards assuring a healthier environment, but many challenges and threats to the natural balance of the Earth system remain. The need for cooperation among neighbors and nations is as urgent as ever.

Red Sprites and Blue Jets Provided by: NASA & University of Alaska, Fairbanks To demonstrate that lightning indeed had an electric field, Benjamin Franklin used a kite and a key to attract a lightning bolt. This rather dangerous experiment proved his point and resulted in his invention of the lightning rod. In the last decade, a new form of lightning has been identified that seems to be generated between Earth and space - high above thunderstorms. Red sprites and blue jets are the signatures of this "space lightning." The photo above was taken by an astronaut on board the space shuttle and shows what has become known as a red sprite. Red sprites are flashes of red light that last just a few thousandths of a second. These curious flashes can reach as high as the lower edge of the thermosphere, about 90 km high, and may spread over extensive areas of the sky. Blue jets, on the other hand, appear to emanate directly from the tops of thunderstorm clouds and zip through the stratosphere at speeds of approximately 100 km a second.

Silver of Daylight Provided by: MeteoFrance/Meteosat At first glance, there's not much to see on this visible satellite image, taken over the Indian Ocean. The image date is December 20 - just one day before the solstice. For the Northern Hemisphere, December 21 is the first day of winter, and it's the first day of summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The sliver of light at the lower left and bottom of the image confirms that indeed it's summer in the Southern Hemisphere. Note that the terminator, or edge of night, extends from over the Southern Atlantic Ocean to Antarctica, where the Sun is now up all day. At the South Pole, the Sun won't set again until March 21. The Earth's Southern Hemisphere is currently tilted (23 1/2 degrees) toward the Sun, thus the Sun's direct rays at noon fall over the Tropic of Capricorn (23 1/2 degrees south of the Equator) rather than over the Equator. On the above image, taken 22,000 miles (35,000 km) above the Equator, the Sun has just set over the southern tip of South Africa, while at all latitudes to the north, at the same longitude, it's already dark.         $nbsp;

The Dream of a Map Maker Provided by: NASA/JPL/NIMA (SRTM Mission) Imagine the work it would have taken a hundred years ago to generate this map of the eastern flank of the Andes in Argentina near San Martin de Los Andes with the detail and accuracy of the image shown above. Not an artist's or cartographer's rendering, this colorful image was created entirely from data collected by the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) flown in February, 2000. Two visualization methods were combined to produce this image: shading and color coding of topographic height. The shade image was derived by computing topographic slope in the north-south direction. Northern slopes appear bright and southern slopes appear dark, as would be the case at noon at this latitude in the southern hemisphere. Color coding is directly related to topographic height, with green at the lower elevations, rising through yellow, red and magenta to white at the highest elevations. The result is a colorful and easy to grasp map of this part of the world, showing eroded peaks on the left, smooth lava plateaus and signs of recent volcanic activity with a dimpled cone and surrounding flow field in the center. North is to the top of the image which covers 57.6 x 40.5 kilometers on the surface. SRTM mapped most of the Earth's land surface in this way, promising a global topographic map of unprecedented consistency and accuracy.

The Transantarctic Mountains Provided by: James Conder, Washington University Many glaciers such as this spill into the dry valleys of the Transantarctic Mountains from the Antarctic icecap. A bleak, flat, U.S.-sized ice plateau covers 95% of Antarctica. However, the Transantarctic Mountains act as a dam to keep back the encroachment of the icesheet. Where the icesheet is higher than the mountains, it flows into the valleys, eroding them further. Most of these glaciers ablate away without any outlet streams long before they reach the far end of the valley. Because of Antarctica's unique environment, several interesting geologic features can be seen in this picture. 1) The constant flow of a glacier from its source, with flow lines visible where the glacier turns near the bottom of the image. 2) The vast Antarctic icecap in the background. 3) The eroding power of a glacier (it has eroded a large horseshoe bend out of the surrounding mountains). And 4) The resistance to erosion of different rock types. The dark brown basalts are more erodable than the blocky sandstone cliffs they overlay, leaving the valley floor covered in basalt rubble.

Oklahoma Mesonet Provided by: Oklahoma Mesonet The Oklahoma Mesonet is a network of environmental monitoring stations, designed and implemented by scientists at the University of Oklahoma (OU) and at Oklahoma State University (OSU). The network consists of 114 automated stations covering the state of Oklahoma. The photo above shows a station near the town of Butler in the west-central part of the state. There's at least one Mesonet station in each of Oklahoma's 77 counties. At each site, the environment is measured by a set of instruments (primarily weather sensors) located on or near a 10-meter-tall tower. The measurements are packaged into observations every 5 minutes, then the observations are transmitted to a central facility every 15 minutes, 24 hours per day year-round. The Oklahoma Climatological Survey (OCS) at OU receives the observations, verifies the quality of the data and provides the data to Mesonet customers. It only takes 10 to 20 minutes from the time the measurements are acquired until they become available to users, such as schools.

Antarctic Ozone Hole Provided by: James Conder, Washington University This map produced by NASA's Total Ozone Mapping Spectometer (TOMS) on September 6, 2000 shows the largest ozone hole (blue color) ever observed over Antarctica. It's three times the size of the US and covers an area about 11 million square miles. The previous record ozone hole was recorded two years earlier on September 19, 1998 and covered 10.5 million square miles. The lowest ozone readings are typically observed in September or early October when sunlight returns to the Antarctic stratosphere. Ozone molecules, which are made up of three atoms of oxygen, comprize a thin layer of the atmosphere that varies in altitude between 6 miles and 18 miles above the Earth's surface. This ozone is essential in absorbing ultraviolet radiation from the Sun, which in high levels can be harmful to nearly all forms of life.

Jefferson Memorial Provided by: Space Imaging The photo above is a satellite view of the Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC and was taken by the IKONOS satellite on September 30, 1999. With a resolution of approximately 1 m, IKONOS can easily detect objects such as automobiles. Thomas Jefferson, our 3rd president, was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, which was approved on July 4, 1776, by members of the Continental Congress. The Jefferson Memorial in Washington DC was erected to honor Jefferson's many achievements in addition to being President of the US, including, Minister to France, Secretary of State, Governor of Virginia, and member of the Continental Congress.

Blue Sky, Blue Sea Provided by: Jim Foster, NASA/GSFC On the photo above, taken from the harbor in Khania, Greece (Crete), the color of the Mediterranean Sea appears a deeper blue than that of the sky. On a clear day, the blue color of the Mediterranean and many other seas can be striking. Pure water has an intrinsic pale blue color, which is neither due to scattering (like the sky), nor to dissolved impurities. Water absorbs most of the red wavelengths of light, but its peak transparency in the blue-green part of the spectrum. Thus, when observing light that has passed through several meters of water, the colors we see are the wavelengths of light that aren't as readily absorbed, namely blue and green. Additionally, the color of the sea results from a number of other factors, including how deep it is, reflections from the sky and the smoothness of the sea surface. On an overcast day, the sea won't look as blue as it does on a clear, sunny day. On the other hand, the color of the sky is a result of molecules of air preferentially scattering the shorter blue wavelengths of incoming sunlight. Note on the photo above, that the sky near the horizon is rather bright. The reason for this is that scattering is greater here since sunlight reaching our eyes from the direction of the horizon must travel through more of the atmosphere than light that approaches our eyes directly overhead.

Sinkhole Signature Provided by: USGS On occasion, sinkholes can suddenly open up and swallow cars and homes. However, quite often their presence isn't so obvious. On the photograph above, a group of mature trees appear to be growing in a depression, but they're actually sinking into a pit just beneath the surface, which is in the act of collapsing. The photo was taken in southern Missouri and is an example of karst topography. Sinkholes are common where the rock below the surface is limestone - rocks that can naturally be dissolved by ground water circulating through them. As the rock dissolves, small pits or large caverns may form underground. Eventually, when there's insufficient support for the land above the pit, it'll collapse. Sinkholes are commonly found in parts of Florida, Texas, Alabama, Missouri, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Pennsylvania.

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