Year In Review
Timeline: July 2007 – September 2008
July 2007
The University Office of Sustainability moves to the Office of
the Provost and Executive Vice President to strengthen its across-campus
mission and reflect its leadership role in continuing the University’s
national presence in sustainability-based education and research.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Jul/25sustain.cfm
Lights ... camera ... escarole! “Ciao Italia,” America’s longest-running
cooking television program, visits the Organic Garden Club. Host Mary Ann Esposito
discusses growing – and cooking – escarole with students.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Jul/25pbs.cfm
Research report: Many of the things that define New England—from knee-high
snow drifts to lobster rolls—could disappear if global warming continues
at its current pace.
www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/07/12/report_quintessential_ne_at_risk/
New research proves the existence of a new type of electron wave on metal
surfaces: the acoustic surface plasmon, which will have implications for
developments in nano-optics, high-temperature superconductors, and the
fundamental understanding of chemical reactions on surfaces.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/july/bp05electron.cfm
August 2007
EcoLine project—a first among universities—is launched.
The project will pipe enriched and purified gas from Waste Management’s
landfill in Rochester to the Durham campus, replace commercial natural
gas as the university’s
primary fuel, enable UNH to receive most of its energy from a renewable
source, and lower its greenhouse gas emissions an estimated 57% below 1990
levels.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/aug/kb14landfill.cfm
Sorry, Charlie: UNH researchers find that the quality of giant bluefin
tuna caught in the Gulf of Maine has declined significantly since the early
1990s. Potential changes in food sources, shifts in reproductive or migratory
patterns, or the impact of fishing may be the cause of this decline.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/aug/bp23tuna.cfm
What costs nearly half-a-million dollars and can detect elements of the
periodic table down to levels of a few hundred parts-per-quadrillion or
the equivalent of one particle in 9,999,999,999,999? An Inductively Coupled
Plasma Mass Spectrometer, the first of its type to be installed anywhere,
is now housed at its Institute for the Study of Earth, Oceans, and Space
(EOS).
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/aug/ds09science.cfm
UNH constructs the first major pervious concrete parking facility in New
England. Researchers from the UNH Stormwater Center, will study its effectiveness
as a stormwater management tool. Nonpoint source pollution carried by stormwater
is one of the greatest threats to water quality nationwide.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Aug/08parking.cfm
UNH research finds that US Food Stamp recipients cannot typically afford
to eat the healthy meals recommended by the US Department of Agriculture.
www.nhpr.org/node/13560
Four acres of sunflowers at Kingman Farm are in bloom. They are part of
a larger experiment testing the feasibility of using locally grown plants
to make biodiesel to easy energy costs, improve farm income, and lower
greenhouse gas emissions.
www.sustainableunh.unh.edu/climate_ed/projects.html#BiocropBiofuel
and unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Aug/08flower.cfm
September 2007
UNH is a significant partner in a $6.7 million Research Infrastructure
Improvement grant from the National Science Foundation.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/sep/mg14grant.cfm
An interdisciplinary research team conducts work on the ecology and risk
factors of Lyme disease in N.H. and neighboring states, identifies “hot spots,” and
issues early warning to help prevent human exposure and disease.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Sep/12lyme.cfm
October 2007
Gay men working in management and traditional blue-collar, male-dominated
jobs make less than straight men because they are discriminated against
by their employers, according to research released by the Whittemore School
of Business and Economics.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/oct/lw24research.cfm
Right Whales, Wrong Place: Only 300-350 right whales remain along the continental
shelf of North America, making them the most rare of all whales. UNH researchers
track the effects of their perilous trip across Boston Harbor’s international
shipping routes en route from their breeding grounds off the Florida coast
to the feeding grounds in the Gulf of Maine.
www.ceps.unh.edu/news/news_releases08/whales.html
The nation’s first commercial offshore mussel farm—both environmentally
sustainable and economically viable—becomes a reality. The farm’s
blue mussels — “Isles of Shoals Supremes” — are
now a staple in local markets and restaurants.
www.amac.unh.edu/shellfish/shellfish_about.html
UNH scientists release a report proposing performance measures to address
overfishing in U.S. waters and establish effective catch limits.
www.seacoastonline.com/articles/20071021-BIZ-710210338
November 2007
An international team of space scientists led by UNH researchers examines,
a mystery that involves electron acceleration during magnetic explosions
in the Earth’s magnetosphere.
www.mirl.sr.unh.edu/
A research team of scientists estimates that Hurricane Katrina killed or
severely damaged approximately 320 million large trees in Gulf Coast forests.
Katrina’s
huge footprint affected five million acres of forest across Mississippi,
Louisiana, and Alabama. They forecast that the felled trees will end up
being the largest ecological disaster in U.S. history.
www.csmonitor.com/2007/1119/p01s03-usgn.html
The New England forecast for the economy is not good. It is expected to
experience slow growth over the next six months as the region struggles
with the broadening effects of the housing credit crisis and rising energy
prices.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/nov/lw13cool.cfm
UNH research scientists share the laurels with former Vice President Al
Gore in receiving a Nobel Peace Prize for work on global warming.
fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071103/GJNEWS_01/711030030
December 2007
SeagrassNet, a global monitoring program receives a multi-million dollar
gift to provide a global assessment of coastal marine seagrasses and increase
government and public awareness of the importance of the seagrass habitat.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2007/dec/bp19seagrass.cfm
An analysis of demographic trends reveals that New Hampshire, with a total
population of 1.3 million, gained 79,000 residents between 2000 and 2006,
and that most of this growth—51,000 residents—came from net
migration. The net migration also brought economic gains.
www.carseyinstitute.unh.edu/snapshot_south_migration.html
Houston, we have a mission: Scientists, engineers, and technicians at the
UNH Space Science Center get the go-ahead (and a $61 million award) from
NASA to begin building instruments for a four-satellite Magnetospheric
Multiscale Mission, which will study little-understood, fundamental processes
of Earth’s magnetosphere.
mirl.sr.unh.edu/
Slippery slope: UNH research reveals that city dwellers are less likely
to head to the slopes when their backyards are bare, even if New England
ski resorts have many feet of packed power and ideal skiing conditions.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Dec/05slopes.cfm
Big Kahuna: Scientists from the UNH Large Pelagics Research Center (LPRC)
join colleagues from 25 countries at the first Climate Impacts on Oceanic
Top Predators (CLIOTOP) Symposium in La Paz, Mexico to launch a 10-year
project to investigate the impact of climate variability and change on
top predators in the world's oceans, including the tunas that support major
global fisheries, as well as billfish, sharks, marine mammals, sea turtles
and sea birds.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2008/Jan/16marine.cfm
Students in the Research & Discover program present their findings
to more than 15,000 participants from around the world at the 2007 American Geophysical
Union meeting, where scientists share the latest research in the Earth
and space sciences.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2007/Dec/12interns.cfm
January 2008
Working as part of the National Science Foundation's West Antarctic
Ice Sheet Divide (WAIS Divide) Ice Core Project, a team of scientists,
engineers, technicians, and students from multiple U.S. institutions recover
a 580-meter (1,900-foot) ice core—the first section of what is hoped
to be a 3,465-meter (11,360-foot) column of ice detailing 100,000 years
of Earth's climate history, including a precise year-by-year record of the
last 40,000 years.
www.waisdivide.unh.edu/
A study from the Whittemore School of Business and Economics examines the
changes affecting New Hampshire homeowners over the past three decades.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/jan/lw22england.cfm
The snow of our childhood really was deeper. A student-led comprehensive
analysis on changes in winter climate across the Northeast United States
found that winters have been warming over the past four decades and that
snow-covered days have been decreasing at a rate of 2.6 days per decade.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/jan/bp11warmwinters.cfm
February 2008
Contrary to stereotype, most Internet sex offenders are not adults
who target young children by posing as another youth, luring children to
meetings, and then abducting or forcibly raping them. Rather, most online
sex offenders are young adults who target teens and seduce victims into
sexual relationships.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/lw18internet.cfm
Low sodium diet? Salt may make road conditions safer after a snowstorm,
but it's tough on the environment, contaminating groundwater, wells, and
freshwater streams and lakes.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/bp14storm.cfm
New Arctic sea floor data suggests that the foot of the continental slope
off Alaska is more than 100 nautical miles farther from the U.S. coast
than previously assumed and could support U.S. rights to natural resources
of the sea floor beyond 200 nautical miles from the coast.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/bp11mapping.cfm
The nation’s poorest cities experienced a substantial drop in poverty
rates during the economic boom from 1992 to 2003, but not enough to lift them
out of their relative positions as the most impoverished communities in America.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/lw07poverty.cfm
The Campus Greenhouse Gas Emissions Inventory Calculator, a greenhouse
gas inventory tool developed at UNH and used by nearly 700 American colleges
and universities and emissions undergoes its fifth revision and is ready
for testing.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/feb/jr05energy.cfm
March 2008
The modeling results of highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) subtype
H5N1 outbreaks in Southeast Asia suggest improved ways to predict where
outbreaks will most likely occur, providing significant implications for
disease surveillance, risk management, and policymaking.
www.eos.unh.edu/news/indiv_news.shtml?NEWS_ID=981
Small streams play a significant role in retaining human-generated nitrogen,
serving as the kidneys of watersheds by removing nitrogen before it ends
up in estuaries and oceans.
www.unh.edu/news/campusjournal/2008/Mar/12dead.cfm
New research from the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center finds that child sexual abuse cases in the criminal justice system take an unusually long time to be prosecuted and resolved. This is concerning because a prolonged court process has been shown to be detrimental to a child victim's recovery and ongoing mental health. www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/mar/lw27abuse.cfm
April 2008
UNH scientists head to Denali National Park on the second leg of a
multi-year mission to recover ice cores from glaciers in the Alaska wilderness,
where small villages are slipping into the sea due to coastal erosion,
and soggy permafrost is cracking buildings and trapping trucks as a result
of climate change.
www.postchronicle.com/cgi-bin/artman/exec/view.cgi?archive=68&num=144982
and
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080429120817.htm
UNH business and engineering students win first place in their task at
the 2008 Environmental Design Contest at New Mexico State University in
Las Cruces, N.M. The team, Retrolutions, retrofitted an existing commercial
building to reduce its environmental footprint. The 14-member team is invited
to present their project at the EPA Science Forum in Washington, DC.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/April/lw17werc.cfm
UNH and Durham team up to conduct a yearlong study on a small population
of black bears that have taken up residence in Durham’s back yards.
www.tnhonline.com/media/storage/paper674/news/2008/04/25/News/Black.Bears.In.Wildcat.Country-3349528.shtml
The Undergraduate Research Conference—the largest conference of its kind—celebrates
the results of student research from every UNH school and college.
www.unh.edu/urc/
May 2008
Students release finding from their research at Willand Pond to local
and state officials and area residents that will help to remedy a public
health hazard resulting from an explosion of blue-green algae.
www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080510/GJOPINION_01/382030682
UNH professor and state public health veterinarian helps N.H. launch an
ambitions collection and monitoring program for ticks and mosquitoes, some
potentially bearing the West Nile Virus and Eastern Equine Encephalitis.
www.fosters.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080518/GJNEWS02/22801777
UNH receives a grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to study the
organic dairy farm as a sustainable closed agroecosystem.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/june/bp3sare.cfm
June 2008
Regional scientists, industry experts, and policymakers share the latest
innovations in alternative energy at the first UNH Energy Conference.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/june/bp4energy.cfm
UNH, Durham and the Strafford Regional Planning Commission receive funding
from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to identify the road culverts
in the Oyster River watershed that are subject to failure during extreme
storm events.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/june/dk11project.cfm
Findings on yeast mutations bring researchers closer to understanding the
role of evolutionary genetics in human diseases and cancer.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/june/bp19yeast.cfm
July 2008
UNH researchers tag one male and two female leatherback turtles— the
first free-swimming leatherbacks ever tagged in New England—off Cape
Cod.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/July/bp31turtle.cfm
An undergraduate research project by UNH students leads to a new state
law that supports the use of residential wind energy.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/July/lw23law.cfm
From waving wheat fields to shuttered manufacturing plants... from the
majestic Rocky Mountains to the impoverished Mississippi River Delta ...
rural America is as varied and nuanced as the landscape it inhabits.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/July/bp16rural.cfm
August 2008
Back to school special: School districts face an often complicated
and confusing legal landscape on how to deal with cyber-bullies in their
schools.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/aug/lw25cyber.cfm
Such projects as the solar edition of the Stirlin engine, wind turbine,
solar radios, electrocardiogram (ECG) and pulse oximetry, electromyography
(EMG) vs. joint angular position measurements, and autonomous robots are
not your typical junior high and high school experiments.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/aug/dw19tech.cfm
The possibility of eternal damnation has no sway over whether men stay
faithful to their wives, but the possibility of getting caught sure does.
These are among the results found in new research released today by the
University of New Hampshire about the economic costs and benefits of cheating
on a spouse and how they differ for men and women.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/aug/lw12infidelity.cfm
September 2008
A $75,000 grant creates a new study abroad program for students in
Ghana. It will be the university's first formal study abroad program in
Africa.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/sept/lw17grant.cfm
It’s a deal: A licensing agreement with Itaconix LLC to commercialize
green chemistry developed by the University's Nanostructured Polymers Research
Center gives Itaconix full rights to a process for creating a new generation
of environmentally friendly polymers derived from renewable resources.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/sept/em10green.cfm
When the Large Hadron Collider, a particle accelerator that is the world's
most eagerly anticipated physics experiment, starts up near Geneva, Switzerland,
a University of New Hampshire undergraduate is among the 7,000 scientists
worldwide to claim credit for the creation of this landmark scientific
instrument. www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/sept/bp9collider.cfm
A new brain imaging study led by a UNH cognitive neuroscientist finds that
there are optimal times when we are better suited to multitask.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/sept/lw3multitask.cfm
A groundbreaking EcoGastronomy program that takes students to the field,
the kitchen, the lab and Italy to study the complexities of sustainable
food systems is launched. It is the first such program at any U.S. university.
www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/sept/bp2eco.cfm
October
The CSDC's
new natural playground, the first of its type in the state, designed by
Concord-based Natural Playgrounds Company in close collaboration with CSDC
teachers, parents, and children created a space that reintroduces children
to the joys and creative possibilities of the natural world.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/oct/bp7playground.cfm
UNH Dining serves up science—as squash. The butternut
squash served in the University of New Hampshire's dining halls shows that you
can do your science —and eat it, too. Long before it hit
the steam table, the orange fall favorite helped a UNH researcher develop a better
strain of squash for regional farmers.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/oct/bp21squash.cfm
The Carsey Institute at the University of New Hampshire opens its third year of the Policy Leadership Initiative with 24 leading practitioners addressing energy issues faced by low-income families in communities in Vermont, Maine, and New Hampshire. http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/oct/as28energy.cfm
November
Associate Professor of Geography Blake Gumprecht explores the
distinctive character and culture of the American college town that are
so prominently held in the American mind in the first book of its kind
to be published.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/nov/lw10collegetown.cfm
High credit score? You must be a good, responsible person. Average credit
score? You're a decent person but could use some improvement. Low credit score?
You're probably irresponsible and morally questionable, according to findings
by Josh Lauer, assistant professor of communication, who researches credit reporting
and the invention of financial identity in the United States.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/nov/lw6credit.cfm
A study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
finds that forests may play overlooked role in regulating climate. Forests
with high levels of foliar nitrogen have a two-fold effect on climate by
simultaneously reflecting more solar radiation and by absorbing
more CO2 than their low-nitrogen counterparts.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/nov/ds17forest.cfm
December
A report from the Carsey Institute finds that as men's employment rates
have dropped over the past four decades, more rural women are working to keep
the lights on at home.
"The rural America of our collective imagination is changing. Mom is no
longer home in the kitchen, and dad is no longer on the tractor or in the mines," says
Carsey Institute family demographer and report author Kristin Smith." Rural
women are just as likely as their urban counterparts to work for pay, but they
earn less, have fewer occupational choices, and have seen their family income
decline as men's wages have not kept pace with inflation,” says Smith.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/dec/as16study.cfm
Jason Goldstein checks his lobster traps in New Hampshire's Great Bay
Estuary once a week, but not for tasty crustaceans to sell. Instead, the
University of New Hampshire Ph.D. candidate is fitting these lobsters with
transmitters and tracking their migrations year-round. http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/dec/rz9lobster.cfm
UNH professors at the Whittemore School of Business and Economics discuss
the continuing crisis of the national and world economies with research
rom several perspectives: macroeconomics and monetary theory; early stage
equity financing of high growth ventures, trends in the angel market, and
entrepreneurship; and governance, and analyst forecast issues.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2008/nov/lw25economic.cfm
January
Dennis Meadows, professor emeritus of systems policy at the University
of New Hampshire, is one of two American scientists to be awarded the 2009 Japan
Prize by the Science and Technology Foundation of Japan; one of the world's most
prestigious awards in science and technology.
Meadows, 66, was recognized for "his contribution towards a sustainable
world founded in the 1972 report titled 'The Limits to Growth.'"
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2009/jan/em19meadows.cfm
The National Science Foundation (NSF) Office of Polar Programs (OPP)
announces the signing of cooperative agreements with teams from the University
of New Hampshire, University of Wisconsin (UW), and Dartmouth College that create
two new entities to support, advise, and conduct ice coring and drilling used
in polar research.
Effective ice-core drilling is vital to NSF's polar research. Through the OPP
the federal agency manages the U.S. Antarctic Program, which coordinates all
U.S. research on the southernmost continent. OPP also oversees NSF's research
and scientific stations in the Arctic.
http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2009/jan/ds6ice.cfm
UNH/NOAA Report finds that Arctic Region underprepared For maritime accidents
A new report released by the University of New Hampshire and the National Oceanic
and Atmospheric Administration finds that the existing infrastructure for responding
to maritime accidents in the Arctic is limited and more needs to be done to
enhance emergency response capacity as Arctic sea ice declines and ship traffic
in the region increases.http://www.unh.edu/news/cj_nr/2009/jan/dh29accidents.cfm