News

On 26 October 2012, Monmouth University (New Jersey) named Jesse Ausubel the 2012 National Champion of the Ocean. We are honored to join lustrous company and appreciate that the award recognizes the work of the entire Census of Marine Life community. The award ceremony included an excellent seminar organized by Tony MacDonald of the Urban Coastal Institute featuring Admiral (Ret.) Paul Gaffney; Vice Admiral Richard Larrabee, USCG (Ret.), Port Commerce Director, Port Authority of NY/NJ; Lawrence Dickerson, President and CEO, Diamond Offshore Drilling; and Christopher Koch, President and CEO, World Shipping Council. We post Jesse’s talk on Wealth from Oceans.

National Ocean Champion awardees
2012 Jesse H. Ausubel, Co-Founder, Census of Marine Life; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and The Rockefeller University
2011 Jean-Michel Cousteau, Founder, Ocean Futures Society
2010 Carl Safina, President and Co-Founder, Blue Ocean Institute
2009 Lillian C. Borrone, Former Executive Director, Port Authority of NY/NJ
2008 Representative James Saxton (NJ) and Shirley Pomponi, Executive Director, Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute
2007 Jerry Schubel, President and CEO of the Aquarium of the Pacific, and Ted Ames, Director of the Lobster Hatchery in Stonington, Maine
2006 Robert Gagosian, past President and Director of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution
2005 Admiral James Watkins, Chair of the U.S. Commission on Ocean Policy and the Honorable Leon Panetta, Chair of the Pew Ocean Commission

Michael Ojovan, now at Imperial College (London), and Russian colleagues have published an excellent compact description of self-sinking capsules for disposal of hazardous waste and probing the deep Earth. See “The self-disposal option: Self-descending tungsten capsules could be used to dispose of heat-generating high-level waste tens of kilometers below the Earth’s surface.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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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