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Earth system science bachelor's degree approved Students at UAHuntsville can earn a bachelor of science degree in Earth system science starting this fall. The program proposal cleared its final hurdle -- approval by the Alabama Commission on Higher Education -- on June 27. Earth system science (ESS) includes the interconnected disciplines of atmospheric science, meteorology, environmental science, oceanography and geography. One of the program's goals is to teach scientists who understand the dynamic forces that influence the environment, weather, climate and the oceans. "We see our niche as the intersection and overlap of disciplines, and our role as providing the bridges between them," said Dr. Ron Welch, chair of UAHuntsville's Atmospheric Science Department. The University of Alabama in Huntsville has offered masters and doctoral degrees in atmospheric science since the mid 1990s. The new degree program gives students the flexibility to specialize in any of several areas, including atmospheric science, atmospheric chemistry, satellite remote sensing, ecosystems, hydrology, and human/environmental dynamics. The ESS curriculum integrates classroom work with real-world research. Students in the BSESS program will participate in research through UAHuntsville's Earth System Science Center, and may have opportunities to participate in joint UAHuntsville research with NASA or the National Weather Service. Information about the new degree program in Earth system science is available at the program website at: www.nsstc.uah.edu/ESS Palazzo protein research  Protein Crystal Workshop  Neurons research at UAHuntsville   Stallsmith searches for vanishing stippled studfish A UAHuntsville biologist's research is helping to determine whether changing land use, farm chemicals and other factors are driving a tiny Alabama fish toward extinction. With funding through a grant from the Walter Coxe Fund of the Birmingham chapter of the Audubon Society, Dr. Bruce Stallsmith is taking a kind of census of the stippled studfish in creeks and streams feeding into the Tallapoosa River in Central Alabama. 
"There is reason to believe it is disappearing from a lot of its range, which wasn't that large to begin with," said Stallsmith, a lecturer in the UAHuntsville Biology Department. "It has already disappeared from Georgia."
With no known commercial value, the little fish's principal value would seem to be that of canary in the coal mine, Stallsmith said. "It does seem to be an indicator of declining stream quality." That played out in two streams Stallsmith checked in mid-June. Working with biology student Travis Newby and a volunteer, Joe Scanlan from near Montgomery, Stallsmith seined for fish in the Emuckfaw and Sweetwater creeks in Tallapoosa County. This complete story is available on-line at uahnews.uah.edu. Ultraviolet radiation research  Longyear named to All-Academic Team  LED Research  Has global warming research misinterpreted clouds? Climate experts agree that the seriousness of manmade global warming depends greatly upon how clouds in the climate system respond to the small warming tendency from the extra carbon dioxide mankind produces. To figure that out, climate researchers usually examine natural, year-to-year fluctuations in clouds and temperature to estimate how clouds will respond to humanityıs production of greenhouse gases. When researchers observe natural changes in clouds and temperature, they have traditionally assumed that the temperature change caused the clouds to change, and not the other way around. To the extent that the cloud changes actually cause temperature change, this can ultimately lead to overestimates of how sensitive Earth's climate is to our greenhouse gas emissions. This seemingly simple mix-up between cause and effect is the basis of a new paper that will appear in the "Journal of Climate." The paperıs lead author, Dr. Roy W. Spencer, a principal research scientist at The University of Alabama in Huntsville, believes the work is the first step in demonstrating why climate models produce too much global warming. Spencer and his co-author, principal research scientist William (Danny) Braswell, used a simple climate model to demonstrate that something as seemingly innocuous as daily random variations in cloud cover can cause year-to-year variation in ocean temperature that looks like -- but isn't -- "positive cloud feedback," a warmth-magnifying process that exists in all major climate models. The complete story is available at uahnews.uah.edu.  UAHuntsville helps NASA study cosmic explosions The most powerful explosions in the cosmos still hide a few secrets, despite decades of intensive study. A team of five scientists at UAHuntsville helped design (and will lead the ground team keeping track of) NASA's new GLAST Burst Monitor, an instrument rocketed into orbit in early June to help astrophysicists learn more about the star crushing (or merging?) explosions that create gamma ray bursts. 
"The UAH contingent is responsible for most of the software, as well as much of the calibration testing and system integration," said Dr. Bill Paciesas, a UAHuntsville physics research professor and the GRM ground system manager. "We will support the GBM Instrument Operations Center here in Cramer Hall, where we will do all the planning for operating the instrument. We will do the first stage data analysis, determining some of the parameters and putting the data in a form that can be studied by other scientists."
UAHuntsville teamed with NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Germany in proposing and developing the burst monitor, which is a secondary instrument on board NASA's Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope (GLAST). Gamma ray bursts are flashes of the most powerful energy in the electromagnetic spectrum -- stronger than X-rays and at least 1,000 times as powerful as visible light. The complete story available at uahnews.uah.edu. |
Wednesday, June 25 Study day, first five-week session Thursday, June 26 Final exams, first five-week session Friday, June 27 Final exams, first five-week session Monday, June 30 Classes begin for second five-week session Friday, July 4 Independence Day holiday, UAHuntsville closed |
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