Signature and Emerging Areas

Underwater scene with tropical fish

Human-marine environment interactions crux of DMC director’s study

Heather Leslie, director of the University of Maine Darling Marine Center, is leading a research project to deepen her interdisciplinary investigations of ecological and human dimensions of small-scale fisheries in Mexico’s Baja peninsula. A $1.79 million award from the National Science Foundation’s Coupled Natural and Human (CNH) Systems Program funds the three-year project. “My studies […]

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Shrimp

Researcher finds it takes guts to locate elusive shrimp

Rachel Lasley-Rasher wanted to learn more about highly mobile shrimp that are important food for baleen whales and commercial fish along the continental shelf from Cape Hatteras to Nova Scotia. Because of their significance in the marine food web, she said a better understanding of shrimp migration patterns could fill knowledge gaps and help predict […]

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Leadership of PERL faculty, alumni recognized in physics education journal

In September, Physical Review, one of the premier physics journals, with a specific journal for physics education research, published a “focused collection” of articles focused on upper-division physics courses. UMaine is a leader in physics education research as it relates to upper-division physics courses. The university’s  nationally recognized leadership in education research, particularly in physics, […]

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Sea slug

DMC scientist: Sea slug sniffs out seaweed’s chemicals, then stalks its prey

An underwater sea slug has evolved chemical foraging and defense abilities that are functionally identical to those of terrestrial insects, despite being unrelated to their land-based counterparts and living in vastly different habitats for 400 million years. “Specialized herbivores on land and sea appear to make a living in similar ways,” says University of Maine […]

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Segee named Campus Champion for national science, engineering program

Bruce Segee, the Henry R. and Grace V. Butler Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Maine, has been named a Campus Champion by the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE). With Segee’s inclusion, the Campus Champions program, a collaborative effort between XSEDE and campus representatives to promote the use of […]

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World Ocean Radio program hails CCI, Mayewski

University of Maine researcher Paul Mayewski and the Climate Change Institute are lauded in the recent World Ocean Radio program “Climate Future Planning.” Host Peter Neill, director of the World Ocean Observatory, hails the work of Mayewski and CCI for creating a “software matrix that relates changes in the environment to plausible, scalable scenarios and […]

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Buoy data to inform how aquaculture fits into working waterfront

University of Maine scientists have deployed an ocean-observing buoy at the mouth of the Damariscotta River to help scientists understand how different types and scales of aquaculture can fit into Maine’s multi-use working waterfront. The buoy is part of a National Science Foundation’s Sustainable Ecological Aquaculture Network (SEANET) project geared to assist the aquaculture sector […]

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A view of Antarctica and Earth from space

‘What happens in Antarctica does not stay in Antarctica’

University of Maine geologist Gordon Bromley will study how Earth’s largest ice sheet has responded during past times of global warming to learn about how it may respond in the future to human-caused climate change. The answers have implications: If the East Antarctic Ice Sheet melts, sea level around the planet could rise about 180 […]

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