At the new Martha’s Vineyard Film Center, Jesse hosted a well-attended viewing of the energy documentary Switch https://www.switchenergyproject.com on which he advised the film team of Scott Tinker and Harry Lynch. The Vineyard Gazette ran a helpful article, “Shades of gray in energy production,†about the film.
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Smithsonian exhibit about Census of Marine Life
The National Museum of Natural History of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington DC has added a small but excellent exhibit about the Census of Marine Life to the Sant Hall of Ocean Life. A couple of dozen CoML alumni participated in a ceremony to welcome the exhibit, which includes the splendid gold medal of the International Cosmos Prize awarded in 2011 to the Census Steering Committee.
European Barcode Conference
With about 130 other experts from 28 countries, Mark Stoeckle and Jesse Ausubel attended the European Consortium for the Barcode of Life (ECBOL), Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences, and Royal Museum for Central Africa 3rd ECBOL conference under the theme “Barcoding of Organisms of Policy Concern†at the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and the Arts in Brussels. Mark presented his work on very low frequency nucleotide variants. Among many excellent presentations were reports on the flora of Wales, on orchids, and on forensic entomology. Thanks to Marc de Meyer, Thierry Backeljau and Pedro Crous for organizing the meeting.
Forest work reported in The New Republic magazine
Science editor Judith Shulevitz wrote a very good piece covering a lot of our work about forests, farms, and land use titled “Defusing the War of Words Over Organic Food” posted 12 September 2012 in The New Republic magazine.
Change in relation to Sloan Foundation
On the 1st of September, Jesse Ausubel and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation changed their relationship. Jesse is now a Science Advisor to Sloan, responsible for the Deep Carbon Observatory as well as some follow through on projects for which Sloan grant-making has been completed (Barcode of Life initiative, Encyclopedia of Life, Census of Marine Life). Jesse served successively as a program officer, program director, and vice president for programs of Sloan from 1994-2012 and is enormously graceful for the opportunities Sloan has afforded.
Barcode – Frequency Matrix
PHE researcher Mark Stoeckle teamed up with Royal Ontario Museum ornithologist Kevin Kerr on a just published PLoS ONE paper “Frequency matrix approach demonstrates high sequence quality in avian BARCODEs and highlights cryptic pseudogenes.” Beginning with the Banbury conferences in 2003, a lot of effort has gone into ensuring the accuracy of DNA barcode databases, both in terms of minimizing sequencing error and having accurate taxonomic labels. How good are the resulting databases? Our paper confirms the high sequence accuracy of the avian BARCODE database (11,000 records), demonstrates significant quality improvement over the past decade, and flags 0.1% of records that are overlooked pseudogenes (which can be viewed as a kind of taxonomic error).
Bird Barcodes
We are delighted to learn that our 2004 PLoS Biology article, “Identification of birds through DNA barcodes,” is in the top 1% of Article-Level Metrics (ALMs) for all PLoS articles. ALMs are a “comprehensive set of metrics that track the reach and impact of published research” and are readily available for all PLoS articles. The ALMs for 2004 Birds show continuing interest over the past 8 years, with 38,141 article views, 8,516 downloads, and 630 citations in Web of Science.
Whole Wheat Woman
Considered the world’s first certified organic love song, Whole Wheat Woman is now available for your listening pleasure. In the spring of 1972 Jesse Ausubel had the fun of assisting fellow Harvard student Joseph Timko in writing the song, which they expected to be a short-cut to fame and fortune. After 40 years underground, the song has emerged in a fine version by the St. Louis-based country & western duo of Rick Brasington and Jerry Goldberg, who practice medicine by day. Joe went on to a career teaching and directing theatre, while Jesse continues to study wheat.
For some other rarely performed works by Timko and Ausubel, visit An Evening of Rational Entertainment.
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Living Lab radio
WGBH’s Living Lab radio program hosted by Heather Goldstone interviewed Jesse Ausubel for 30 minutes about his views on the global environment. The radio interview was stimulated by Jesse’s lecture on 13 July 2012 on “Earth at Seven Billion” at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole. Click here for a video of the hour-long lecture.
Jesse on the Indian Blackout
The Indian electricity blackouts of 30-31 July 2012 affected more than 600 million people. A National Public Radio story by correspondent Richard Harris quotes Jesse Ausubel on the increasing need for perfect power in the Internet era.