Program for the Human Environment

In 24 February 2010 PLoS ONE paper ”Structural Analysis of Biodiversity”, PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle and colleagues at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine apply their recently-developed indicator vector technique to over 16,000 DNA barcode sequences from 12 diverse animal groups, with correct assignment in all 11,000 test cases. This approach generates “Klee diagrams” which represent affinities among large numbers of nucleotide sequences in condensed, single-page displays. The computationally-efficient indicator vector analysis could be applied to even larger datasets  (BOLD database at > 800,000 records, >67,000 species), an exciting prospect.

Kate Stoeckle and Louisa Strauss presented “DNA Barcoding reveals mislabeled fish in New York City market”   at the AAAS Annual Meeting  on February 19 in San Diego, CA. The talk highlighted the findings of their “Sushigate” project under the guidance of Dr. Mark Stoeckle.

The masterpiece of Jacques Perrin and Jacques Clouzaud, Galatee’s Oceans film, opened in Paris 27 January 2010.  We post five slides showing the posters for the film around the city and from the premiere.

With great photographs from researchers Mike Johnson, Rob Lasley, and Uwe Piatkowski, PHE’s Mark Stoeckle has created three beautiful Census of Marine Life stamps.  Simply click on each stamp to order sheets from Zazzle.

An article in the February 2010 issue of Physics Today highlights the recent Richard Lounsbery Foundation efforts in science & diplomacy whose underlying logic Jesse articulated in 2001 with Alex Keynan in a couple of short essays.