University of Maine News

A Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention statewide health alert notes that flu activity is widespread with more reported cases this year than last, and more expected in the next few weeks. University of Maine Cooperative Extension experts are available to provide advice for avoiding the virus and coping with it. They also can offer considerations for parents of children who have to be out of school because of a flu outbreak.

Jason Bolton, a UMaine Extension food safety specialist, can be reached in his Bangor office at 207.942.7396 to discuss sanitization to reduce the spread of or contact with germs, including washing hands and using hand sanitizers.

Kathryn Yerxa, UMaine Extension’s statewide educator for nutrition and physical activity, can suggest healthy foods and nutritional advice to combat the flu. She can be reached in her Orono office at 207.581.3109.

Leslie Forstadt, a UMaine Extension child and family development specialist in Orono, can be reached at 207.581.3487 to discuss steps parents can take if children will be out of school for a long period of time. They include staying in touch with teachers to discuss making up schoolwork.

Contact George Manlove at 207.581.3756 for assistance reaching Bolton, Yerxa or Forstadt.

George Jacobson, University of Maine botany and Climate Chance Institute professor, was interviewed for a Channel 7 (WVII) report on warming temperatures in the United States. Jacobson, who also is the state climatologist, said the phenomenon could mean shorter winters and longer growing seasons in Maine.

The Bangor Daily News, Channel 6 (WCSH) and the Portland Press Herald covered a talk at a Portland Regional Chamber of Commerce Eggs & Issues breakfast by University of Maine President Paul Ferguson, who outlined the university’s Blue Sky Project, the mission of the university, and how it supports and strengthens the Maine economy.

Comments from George Kinghorn, executive director and curator of the University of Maine Museum of Art (UMMA), were included in news reports by the Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald and Channel 7 (WVII) about Bethel, Maine resident and longtime Kinghorn friend Richard Blanco, who has been selected to be the featured poet at President Barack Obama’s 2013 inauguration Jan. 21. In 2009, Kinghorn brought Blanco to UMaine, where the poet gave readings on campus and at UMMA in Bangor. It was at the museum that Blanco read “Looking for The Gulf Motel,” which was published in 2012 and was the title of his third book of poetry.

The agricultural website The Grower carried a news report on the University of Maine Cooperative Extension’s introduction of a Beginning Farmer Resource Network, a free online resource for new farmers with questions about starting a farming business.

More than 130 Maine high school students will be on campus Jan. 9 for the spring orientation of Academ-e, the University of Maine’s for-credit distance education program for high school juniors and seniors administered by the Division of Lifelong Learning.

High school principals, guidance counselors and teachers nominate students to participate in Academ-e. The students take online courses in mathematics, natural sciences, arts and humanities, and social sciences.

Academ-e was launched in fall 2006. Since then, almost 1,500 high school students have taken Academ-e courses online, establishing a UMaine transcript that enables them to apply their credit hours to a degree program at the University of Maine or elsewhere.

This semester’s Academ-e cohort is nearly 36 percent larger than last spring’s.  Students are enrolled from 59 high schools throughout Maine, including those as far away as Calais, Caribou, Jackman and Biddeford.

Beginning at 8:45 a.m., the students will have a full morning of orientation activities, including an introduction to the Academ-e faculty and sessions on UMaine’s intranet and electronic library.

Contact: Margaret Nagle, 207.581.3745

University of Maine geologist and research professor Ed Grew was interviewed by Channel 7 (WVII) for a 10 p.m. news report about two newly discovered minerals, edgrewite and hydroxledgrewite, named for him by two Russian geologists.

An article in the Bangor Daily News about the rising cost of milk production in Maine cited information from a University of Maine Cooperative Extension report that estimated the average cost to produce 100 pounds of milk is about $30, which is considered high according to Julie-Marie Bickford, executive director of the Maine Dairy Industry, who was interviewed for the report.

The Bangor Daily News carried a feature article on the UMaine Greens Project, a student run, year-round greenhouse operation supervised by Eric Gallandt, associate professor of weed ecology and chair of the UMaine Department of Plant, Soil and Environmental Sciences, which supplies the university dining commons with fresh salad greens. The project supplements the university’s Sustainable Agriculture Program.

The Bangor Daily News reported on the Maine Beginning Farmer Resource Network being introduced by the University of Maine Cooperative Extension this week at the Maine Agricultural Trade Show in Augusta to provide basic information and support services for beginning farmers in Maine.

Beach Night Money Madness will be the theme at the Harold Alfond Sports Arena Tuesday, Jan. 22, when the UMaine men’s basketball team takes on Vermont at 7 p.m. A $500 prize will be awarded to the best-dressed beach-attired fan, in addition to other runners-up awards. The first 500 UMaine students will receive free Black Bear-branded sunglasses. The Black Bears want to fill the sports arena for this America East-sponsored event, being broadcast nationally on ESPN3.

Click here to view the “How to Seal Windows for Winter and Summer” video on YouTube.

Click here to view the “Starting a Farm Business in Maine” video on YouTube.

Old Town Science Students Part of UMaine Research on Mercury Contamination

Old Town High School senior Andrew Brothers says the dragonfly larvae and zooplankton in teacher Ed Lindsey’s science lab are even more fun than the ant farm he had as a kid.

But the project Brothers is working on is far from child’s play.

Brothers, along with senior Samantha Emerson, and sophomores Christine Pollard and Jaime Lemery, are collaborating with University of Maine researcher Sarah Nelson, who is using dragonfly larvae as bio-sentinels for mercury in wetlands, stream watersheds and lakes across the Northeast.

In their classroom laboratory, the students have set up mesocosms — mini-ecosystems in the form of tanks of circulated stream water from Baker Brook in Sunkhaze Meadows National Wildlife Refuge in Milford, Maine — where 300 dragonfly eggs gathered from adult dragonflies they captured have hatched.

Now that the eggs have hatched and the dragonfly larvae are eating, growing and molting, the students are collecting data to find out how — and at what rate — mercury accumulates as the dragonfly larvae grow.

They’re periodically measuring mercury in the water, zooplankton, larvae and exoskeletons the young dragonflies shed. UMaine’s Sawyer Environmental Chemistry Lab will analyze the samples with a direct mercury analyzer. The goal is to shed light on the patterns of mercury accumulation as dragonflies grow from egg to adult, informing research on the use of dragonflies as local indicators of how mercury moves up food chains.

In humans, low-grade chronic mercury exposure can impair cognitive functions and diminish motor skills, says Nelson. People are predominantly exposed to mercury, a heavy, toxic metal, from eating contaminated fish.

This is an independent study project for the high students, who are pioneers of sorts for building the mini-ecosystems and raising dragonflies. Nelson says one of the only reference materials they could locate about the topic was a book written in the 1920s.

The dragonfly larvae are fed zooplankton that the students are growing in tanks of Baker Brook water. The zooplankton is raised on neon green phytoplankton, grown in an apparatus Brothers built.

“They’re cool little creatures,” Brothers says of the zooplankton, which are barely visible to the naked eye. “They corral around like dogs to a food bowl when they’re being fed.”

The dragonfly larvae are also interesting. Lemery calls them “tenacious and mobile little soldiers” that sometimes escape from their containers. Each larva is housed in a separate container in the water tanks. Nelson says they would devour each other if they were kept together. It typically takes between one and five years for a dragonfly egg to become an adult, she says.

The science students are mentored by Lindsey, one of 18 educators nationwide who received the 2012 Presidential Innovation Award. Lindsey, who teaches earth science and chemistry at Old Town High School, purchased equipment, including microscopes, with the award money he received. He described the research project as authentic and a public service.

Nelson is a scientist with UMaine’s Sen. George J. Mitchell Center for Environmental and Watershed Research and School of Forest Resources. Her research interests are watershed geochemistry, atmospheric deposition and mercury.

Last May, Old Town students joined more than 200 of their peers and science teachers from Bangor, John Bapst, Mount View and Sumner Memorial high schools in presenting findings from their research on mercury in local watersheds as part of Acadia Learning. A partnership among the Schoodic Education and Research Center (SERC) Institute at Acadia National Park, UMaine’s Mitchell Center, and Maine Sea Grant, Acadia Learning works to train and support teachers for research designed to engage high school students in sample collection and data analysis for mercury. UMaine’s Sawyer Environmental Chemistry Research Laboratory analyzes the samples.

Students use the data to investigate their own research questions about how mercury accumulates in food chains in local streams. The data have become part of a regional database coordinated by Nelson, adding to a regional picture of mercury in fresh waters across the Northeast. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Maine Department of Education, private donors and the Davis Foundation fund Acadia Learning.

The school-based program is the springboard for a newly launched citizen scientist project by the Nelson and the National Park Service to study mercury in dragonfly larvae. The nymphs collected in national parks nationwide are being sent to UMaine and Dartmouth College laboratories for analysis. According to the National Park Service website on the citizen scientist project, the goal is to better understand human-caused mercury contamination in national park environments and “characterizing the risk and potential transfer of mercury around food webs.”

UMaine Extension Launching Online Beginning Farmer Resource Network

This month, University of Maine Cooperative Extension is introducing a new Beginning Farmer Resource Network and a question-and-answer website.

Developed by a group of agricultural service providers, the Beginning Farmer Resource Network (BFRN) is a collaborative online effort to address concerns among beginning farmers about available services and provide answers to commonly asked questions. The website, which will be updated as feedback is received, will be accessible Jan. 8 through the UMaine Extension website. The free program will expand online informational resources now available on the UMaine Extension website.

UMaine Extension will launch the initiative with introductory sessions during the Jan. 8–10 Maine Agricultural Trade Show in Augusta. BFRN members will be available to answer questions, guide users on website content and receive feedback.

Initial topics will range from taxes, financing and U.S. Department of Agriculture programs to finding land or local large animal veterinarians, and how to balance farm and family life. No real one-stop-shop is available for new farmers in need of assistance with the huge variety of issues they face in the first few years, says coordinator Tori Jackson, UMaine Extension professor of agriculture and natural resources in the Androscoggin-Sagadahoc counties office. BFRN is hoping to help make it a little easier, she says.

In addition in February, UMaine Extension also is offering a four-week course, “So You Want to Farm in Maine?” on Tuesdays, Feb. 5–26, 6:30–9 p.m., at the University of Maine Learning Center, 75 Clearwater Drive, Suite 104, Falmouth. A $50 per-farm fee includes course materials. Topics of discussion include selecting and evaluating farm enterprises, keeping production and financial records with QuickBooks, and doing market research for farm products and services. Classes will include panel discussions about available resources for farmers. Attendance is limited to 25 participants and preregistration is required. For more information, to register or to request disability accommodations, contact Andrea Herr, 207.781.6099 or andrea.herr@maine.edu. Additional information is available on the UMaine Extension website.

Contact: Tori Jackson, 207.353.5550, or tori.jackson@maine.edu

The Coastal and Marine Mercury Ecosystem Research Collaborative (C-MERC), led by the Toxic Metals Superfund Research Program at Dartmouth College with support from the Maine Sea Grant College Program at the University of Maine, has released a report, “Sources to Seafood: Mercury Pollution in the Marine Environment,” focusing on the pathways and consequences of mercury pollution across marine systems. “Sources to Seafood” reflects findings from 11 scientific papers representing the work of nearly 70 mercury and marine scientists, including some at the University of Maine, studying ocean regions from the Arctic Ocean and San Francisco Bay to the Gulf of Maine. Maine Sea Grant staff designed and edited “Sources to Seafood,” which was presented as part of a C-MERC policy briefing in Washington, D.C., Dec. 4–6, that included representatives from the EPA, NOAA and the State Department. The report and more information about C-MERC are available online.

Feb. 22 is the deadline for preliminary proposals for Maine Sea Grant College Program research projects to be funded from February 2014 through January 2016. Through biennial request for proposals, Maine Sea Grant strives to sponsor a diverse research portfolio that links the scientific capacity of Maine with the needs of coastal stakeholders. More information is available online.

Contact: Catherine Schmitt, 207.581.1434

Channel 5 (WABI) covered the recent talk at the University of Maine Hudson Museum by Angela Thompson, an East Carolina University professor of Latin American history, about the ancient Mayan calendar and her belief that the world would survive a doomsday scenario predicted by some to occur when the calendar ended Dec. 21.

Channel 5 (WABI) interviewed University of Maine senior Samantha Laverdiere, an Auburn native majoring in psychology with a biology minor, about a fundraising project she is undertaking to make and sell candles, ribbons and bracelets to benefit children at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, where a gunman recently killed 20 students and six adults.

The Maine Public Broadcasting Network, Bangor Daily News and the Washington Post were among the news organizations reporting the death of former University of Maine President Lloyd Elliot at age 94. He was president of UMaine from 1958–65 and of George Washington University from 1965–88. The article included comments from UMaine President Paul Ferguson and UMaine professors emeriti John Battick and Richard Hill.