News

Coronavirus sampling now for future analysis

May 5, 2020May 9, 2020

PHE Guest Investigator David Thaler co-published a letter in Nature “Coronavirus: sampling now for future analysis”

PHE during COVID-19: IQOE, COVID game, deep carbon science

May 3, 2020May 9, 2020

We all continue healthy and working long hours and hard, though mostly from our homes. We are catching up on lots of writing and editing but also trying to seize immediate, unique opportunities.

For example, COVID-19 may have created the reduction of additions of human noise that we dreamed about for the International Quiet Ocean Experiment. IQOE welcomes ideas about how the present quieting of the world economy may advance research in marine sound. High-quality observations of the ocean soundscape, as well as possibly related behavior of marine life during this period, may offer unique opportunities of exceptional value.

Resuming our interest in Serious Games, we are also please to encourage a team at the Indian Institute of Technology in Tirupati that is developing SurviveCovid-19 — A Game for Improving Awareness of Social Distancing and Health Measures for Covid-19 Pandemic

Jesse has also written a foreword for Simon Mitton’s forthcoming history of deep carbon science, From Crust to Core, to be published by Cambridge U. Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/from-crust-to-core/E0E2E8FC30B4C784B0FB268AC4AA8371

New genus and species of Bryozoan named for Jesse Ausubel

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020

Dating back to the Ordovician period about 450 million years ago, Bryozoa are small aquatic invertebrates with exoskeletons that typically sieve food particles out of the water with a crown of tentacles. The individual zooids live in colonies forming fans, bushes, and sheets.

Haeckel Bryozoa.jpg — “Bryozoa”, from Ernst Haeckel‘s *Kunstformen der Natur*, 1904

Dennis P. Gordon, distinguished taxonomist at New Zealand’s National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research, has described “New Hippothoidae (Bryozoa) from Australasia” in the journal Zootaxa.

Dennis and Jesse Ausubel worked together in the Census of Marine Life 2000-2010. Dennis has named a new genus of Hippothoidae Bryozoans the Jessethoa and the first species Jessethoa ausubeli.

*Jessethoa ausubeli,* ovicellate zooid, scalebar: 0.1 millimeter, photographed with scanning electron microscope; collected about 60 m deep NE of Spirits Bay, North Island, New Zealand

This brings the total of described hippothoid genera to nine (plus two fossil) and species to 83 recent (plus 15 fossil).

The Jessethoa page in the World Registry of Marine Species

The Jessethoa ausubeli page in the World Registry of Marine Species

On behalf of the entire Census of Marine Life, Jesse is greatly honored to be permanently associated with this fascinating taxon. Thank, Dennis Gordon!

Robert Bryce on electricity

March 13, 2020March 13, 2020

The lively mind and pen of Robert Bryce have authored the new book, A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. We were happy to talk with Robert about subjects in the book, for example, vertical cities. ‘Ausubel continued, “Basically, height is electrical.”‘ (p. 24)

eDNA in Wired magazine

February 23, 2020February 23, 2020

Journalist Eric Niler publishes a good feature in Wired magazine on eDNA that includes coverage of the work of PHE’s Mark Stoeckle:

‘Environmental DNA’ Lets Scientists Probe Underwater Life
With the help of a new kind of drone, marine biologists can sequence DNA found in the ocean to reveal what’s living in an ecosystem—and what’s missing.

Some Thoughts on Geophysical Prediction
In Policy Aspects of Climate Forecasting, R Krasnow (ed), pp. 97-109, Resources for the Future, Washington, DC, 1986

We also post the 2-page memo that Jesse wrote in 2016 about Limits to Knowledge for the Deep Carbon Observatory.