By Carol Peters, EOAS Communications At the 150th anniversary of the Rutgers Geology Museum, Mosasaurs, giant lizards who lived at the time of the dinosaurs, were explored and celebrated. Mosasaurs were enormous lizards and apex predators who ruled the Earth’s waters at the time of the dinosaurs, at the very end of the cretaceous period ~95-66 million years ago. The …
Rutgers Senior Studies the Ocean’s Impact on the World
Salvatore Fricano is helping plan for the first worldwide navigation of a new underwater ocean glider. Salvatore Fricano grew up spending summers on the Jersey Shore, where the vastness of the ocean captivated his imagination. “I just saw the horizon with nothing on it and it looked like an adventure waiting to happen,” he says. “I was interested in exploring …
“Fields of Devotion” Wins Best Short Documentary at Garden State Film Festival
On March 26, Fields of Devotion was shown to a packed house and won the Best Short Documentary Award at the 2023 Garden State Film Festival. This is the second award for the film, which was awarded Best Climate Film by the New York Science and Nature Feedback Film and Screenplay Festival in late 2022. In attendance at the Garden State Film Festival’s Awards Ceremony were the film’s associate …
Nature Favors all Creatures Great and Small Over Medium
Rutgers researchers conduct survey on the body sizes of Earth’s organisms. Life may come in all shapes and sizes, but in nature the most extreme size ranges predominate, according to Rutgers researchers. A survey of body sizes of Earth organisms, published Wednesday in the science journal PLoS ONE, shows that the planet’s biomass – the material that makes up all living organisms – is …
Preserving the High Seas and the Life Within
Rutgers professor participating in historic ocean treaty negotiations predicts it will increase ocean resilience to climate change. Climate change. Overfishing. Seabed floor mining. These are some of the epic challenges that would be addressed by a historic United Nations treaty protecting ocean biodiversity that gained backing in early March when a significant majority of nations agreed on language supporting it. …
Rutgers Scientists Identify Substance That May Have Sparked Life on Earth
Research could provide clues to extraterrestrial life. A team of Rutgers scientists dedicated to pinpointing the primordial origins of metabolism – a set of core chemical reactions that first powered life on Earth – has identified part of a protein that could provide scientists clues to detecting planets on the verge of producing life. The research, published in Science Advances, has important implications …
Microscopic Chalk Discs in Oceans Play Key Role in Carbon Cycle by Propagating Viruses
Rutgers-led research finds biomineral structures formed by marine algae foment viral infection, contributing positively to capture CO2. A Rutgers-led team of scientists studying virus-host interactions of a globally abundant, armor-plated marine algae, Emiliania huxleyi, has found that the circular, chalk plates the algae produce can act as catalysts for viral infection, which has vast consequences for trillions of microscopic oceanic creatures and …
Award-Winning Film Highlights Rutgers Efforts to Protect Basil From Blight
Fields of Devotion provides a window into the science behind developing disease- and climate change-resistant food crops. When a devastating disease wiped out New Jersey farmers’ basil fields, growers turned to Rutgers scientists for help. Now the public will be able to follow the unique partnership between local farmers and Rutgers scientists in Fields of Devotion, a science-in-action film and the winner of the …
Inaugural Rutgers Shellfish Research Symposium Brings Together Growers and Researchers
The inaugural Rutgers Shellfish Research Symposium, in partnership with the New Jersey Aquaculture Association and the Haskin Shellfish Research Laboratory, was held on January 18 at the NJAES Jacques Cousteau National Estuarine Research Reserve The symposium was organized by Michael DeLuca, director of the Rutgers Aquaculture Innovation Center, and Michael Acquafredda, (GSNB’19) a Rutgers graduate of the doctoral program in Ecology and …
Faculty Spotlight: Malin Pinsky
By: Carol Peters, EOAS Communications The U.S. Department of Defense has awarded EOAS faculty member Malin Pinsky and collaborators from Princeton University $1.3 million in funding for the project “Climate Change, Resource Reallocation and Great Power Competition.” The funding stems from the DoD’s FY2021 Minerva Research Initiative, which awarded a combined $28.7 million in grants to 17 university-based faculty teams. Describing …