People

baby lobster

And the People’s Choice winner is … Jesica Waller

For some, a picture is worth a thousand words. For Jesica Waller, it’s worth $500, the opportunity to introduce people to her research through beautiful art and to be published in “Popular Science” magazine. Her photograph of a 3-week-old American lobster won the People’s Choice Award and its accompanying cash prize in the Vizzies, a […]

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dragonfly

National Park Service video features dragonfly mercury project founded at UMaine

The National Park Service recently released an “Outside Science (inside parks)” video featuring a dragonfly mercury research project that was founded at the University of Maine. “Episode 2: Blue Skies and Dragonflies” explores a research collaboration among UMaine, the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) and National Park Service to study mercury in dragonfly larvae. The project […]

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Travis Blackmer

Travis Blackmer: Finding educational gold in heaps of trash

For Travis Blackmer, the summer of 2011 was a summer of garbage. And it changed his life. While classmates at the University of Maine were waiting tables, pounding nails, or painting houses to make tuition money, the 20-year old undergrad was pawing through trash. Tons and tons of trash. But he didn’t really mind. After […]

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aaron putnam

Climate change and the rise of the Mongol Empire

Could the rise of the Mongol Empire, the greatest land empire ever on Earth, have been linked to climate change? Aaron Putnam thinks so. In 2010 and 2011, Putnam, previously at Columbia University and now an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Climate Sciences and the Climate Change Institute at the University of […]

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cross-laminated plywood

‘Plywood on steroids’ could help grow industry

Nicholas Willey once planned to be a lawyer. Then, at his mother’s suggestion, the then-Caribou High School student attended the free University of Maine Pulp & Paper Foundation program “Consider Engineering” that gives juniors insight into the field. “It really opened my eyes to what engineering encompassed,” says Willey. As well as persuasively made the […]

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Alaska fjord

UMaine marine science students dive deep in Alaskan fjords

Two marine science students at the University of Maine started off 2016 a little differently than they had previous years. For five days, Ashley Rossin and Elise Hartill collected red tree corals, Primnoa pacifica, from the Tracy Arm Fjord — a narrow, deep inlet of the sea nestled between high cliffs — located just south […]

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DNA class

Going viral: First-year students get hands-on experience in phage genomics course

There is a long list of learning objectives for the HON 150/155 phage genomics course, in which first-year undergraduates conduct hands-on research. They learn how to purify and isolate novel bacteriophages — viruses that infect bacterial hosts — from soil samples. The students learn how to characterize their individual phages — which have the miniscule […]

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potatoes

Mallory receives USDA grant for potato and grain research in Chile

Ellen Mallory, University of Maine Cooperative Extension specialist and associate professor of sustainable agriculture, was awarded $11,902 grant for food research from the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The project is supported by the USDA’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) and is titled, “Investigating Diversity as a Climate Resilience Strategy for Potato and […]

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Allyson Eslin

Allyson Eslin: Triple major aiming for public office

For University of Maine student Allyson Eslin, one major was not enough. Neither were two. It took three majors — political science, psychology and economics — as well as being a student in the Honors College to fulfill her academic pursuits. The Bangor native, who plans to graduate in 2017, also works as a research […]

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Peru

UMaine researchers study impact of melting glaciers in Peru

In the context of modern anthropogenic climate change, many Peruvian societies are experiencing the brunt of abrupt climate change impacts. The Peruvian Andes are home to 70 percent of the world’s tropical glaciers, which provide surrounding communities with water for drinking, agriculture and pastoralism, energy production and tourism. Recent studies indicate that glacier coverage in […]

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