Disaster Research Center study reveals impact on health care, finances, mental health
The impact of the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has been profound for Delawareans living with HIV, according to a new report from the University of Delaware-based Disaster Research Center. (more…)
Q&A with DGS officials provides insight into sea level rise
Societal concerns about climate change, severe weather and rising seas are raising questions about readiness across the globe. Extreme weather events this year such as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria underscore the need to be prepared. (more…)
Professor Emerita Fleda Brown reads from her new collection
Fleda Brown, professor emerita of English and former poet laureate of Delaware, may have retired from the University of Delaware in 2007, but when she spoke on campus this week, she sounded at least as busy as any other working writer. (more…)
Combined research efforts by scientists involved in the Gulf of Maine Toxicity (GOMTOX) project, funded by NOAA’s Ecology and Oceanography of Harmful Algal Blooms (ECOHAB) program, and administered by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science (NCCOS), have led to enhanced understanding of toxic algal blooms on Georges Bank. This new information, coupled with an at-sea and dockside testing protocol developed through collaboration between GOMTOX and U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) investigators, has allowed fishermen to harvest ocean quahogs and surf clams in these offshore waters for the first time in more than two decades.
The shellfish industry estimates the Georges Bank fishery can produce up to 1 million bushels of surf clams and ocean quahogs a year, valued $10 – 15 million annually. “There is a billion dollars’ worth of shellfish product on Georges Bank that is property of the United States but that can’t be harvested because of the threat of toxicity, and 99.9% of the time, it is good wholesome product,” says Dave Wallace of North Atlantic Clam Association and a GOMTOX participant. “In an unusual and unique partnership, we worked with GOMTOX scientists, the FDA, and the states of Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Jersey and Delaware and now that huge resource can go into commerce, which helps the entire country.” (more…)
UChicago’s Angela Olinto leads U.S. collaboration on international project
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has awarded $4.4 million to a collaboration of scientists at five United States universities and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center to help build a telescope for deployment on the International Space Station in 2017.
The U.S. collaboration is part of a 13-nation effort to build the 2.5-meter ultraviolet telescope, called the Extreme Universe Space Observatory. UChicago Prof. Angela Olinto leads the U.S. collaboration. The telescope will search for the mysterious source of the most energetic particles in the universe, called ultra high-energy cosmic rays, from the ISS’s Japanese Experiment Module. The source of these cosmic rays has remained one of the great mysteries of science since physicist John Linsley discovered them more than 50 years ago. These cosmic rays consist of protons and other subatomic scraps of matter that fly through the universe at almost light speed. (more…)
Get Up and Do Something is source for optimal health
Mike Peterson believes that the best way to bring about changes in health behavior is to take an approach that’s fun, positive, and motivational.
So the website he developed and runs with the health promotion master’s students at the University of Delaware is “not about ‘guilting’ people into doing things — it’s about playing to their better angels.” (more…)
UD camera system records sea ice, identifies ideal walrus habitats
About the video: A University of Delaware research team led by Chandra Kambhamettu has developed a novel camera system to map the surface topography of Arctic sea ice, identifying the best “homes” for walrus.
Walrus use sea ice as a reproductive, migration and resting habitat. However, as sea ice melts and recedes, this marine mammal increasingly is threatened. (more…)
Bowden recounts hunt for bin Laden in President’s Authors Series talk
When a team of U.S. Navy SEALS entered the compound of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan in the early hours of May 2, 2011, it marked the successful culmination of a data-driven military and intelligence quest that began with the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
How it all happened and how it began was the topic of a talk given by Mark Bowden – author of The Finish: The Killing of Osama bin Laden and supplemental faculty in the University of Delaware’s Department of English — during the inaugural President’s Authors Series event held Tuesday, Dec. 4, in the Gore Recital Hall of the Roselle Center for the Arts. (more…)
