Colloquium Call For Abstracts
Graduate Program in Marine Biology
College of Charleston, Grice Marine Laboratory
Student Marine Biology Research Colloquium
February 6-7, 2009
Call For Letters of Intent and Abstracts
The Colloquium Committee is pleased to announce the Research Colloquium of the Graduate Program in Marine Biology (GPMB), to be held Friday and Saturday, February 6 and 7, 2009, in the auditorium of the Marine Resources Research Institute at the Fort Johnson campus.
The goals of the Colloquium are to:
- increase awareness of ongoing marine biological research by GPMB and MES students,
- give students experience with formal scientific presentations, and
- promote interaction among faculty and students.
All GPMB students beyond their first year of study and all MES students conducting research in marine biology are invited to participate in the Colloquium. Priority will be given to Marine Biology students in their second or third year, and selection will depend upon the number of responses. Students are also encouraged to make poster presentations.
Again this year, an award will be given for the best overall oral presentation. Presentations will be judged on the basis of: 1) scientific content based on the articulation of the problem, soundness of hypothesis testing, methodologies, and analyses; 2) oral and visual quality of the delivery; and 3) demonstration of confidence and depth of understanding of the material. We hope to encourage a significant increase in the number of posters this year, and so we anticipate presenting an award for the best overall poster. The award(s) will be presented at the Saturday evening social event.
The number of slots for both oral and poster presentations is limited, so be sure to submit both the Letter of Intent and the Abstract before the deadlines:.
- Wednesday, November 19, 2008 at 5pm: Deadline for Letter of Intent.
- Friday, January 9, 2009 at 5pm: Deadline for Abstracts.
Application instructions are below, and are also available on the Graduate Program in Marine Biology web site (http://www.cofc.edu/marine/colloquium.htm)
INSTRUCTIONS FOR LETTER OF INTENT (Due November 19, 2008 at 5pm)
Send an email to Guy DiDonato (guy.didonato@noaa.gov) with “LETTER OF INTENT” in the subject line. In the text of the email, state the presentation title (tentative title is fine), co-authors, and your contact information (i.e. provide a telephone number and your preferred email address). Then, state whether you are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd year graduate student and in which program (MES or GPMB), and indicate your preference for an oral or poster presentation. Lastly, please state whether you expect to present data you have collected as part of your thesis work, or whether your presentation will highlight proposed work only (no data collected yet).
INSTRUCTIONS FOR ABSTRACTS (Due January 9, 2009 at 5pm)
Email your abstract as an attached file (Word document or plain text file, using the filename ‘yourlastname_abstract’) to Melissa Hughes (hughesm@cofc.edu) AND hand- deliver a hard copy to either Shelly Brew (for GPMB students) or Mark McConnel (for MES students). The hard copies are important for checking for any electronic transfer problems (e.g., with special characters, symbols, formulae, etc.). The title (all words bold and capitalized) should be followed by the authors’ names and affiliations (i.e., GPMB or MES, and your institutional affinity). The abstract must be 250 words or less. An example is provided below:
ON THE USE OF TEXTURE ANALYSIS AS A TOOL TO AUTOMATE
CALCULATION OF CORAL COVER FROM VIDEO TRANSECTS
Pante, E. (GPMB, College of Charleston) and Dustan, P. (College of Charleston)
The widespread degradation of coral reefs throughout the world urges the need of monitoring techniques on a global scale. While in situ monitoring programs accumulate high quality information on discrete areas and the use of satellite imagery is limited to shallow areas, automated calculation of coral cover may provide a cost and time effective way to assess changes in benthic communities on a large spatial scale. It
is hypothesized that texture analysis can contribute to the automated analysis of video transects. Texture is defined as the spatial relationship between the pixels of an image, and has been previously used in pattern recognition studies. Digital images from the USEPA Coral Reef Monitoring Project were used to run the texture analysis. TIFF images frame-grabbed from video transects were point-counted to provide a robust estimate of coral cover. Eleven measures of texture were then calculated using a 3 by 3 kernel, and a stepwise multiple regression model was used to determine the relationship between coral cover and texture measures. Coral cover and texture were positively correlated (whole image: n=20, F=4.177,adjusted R squared=0.54; green band: n=20, F=7.2, adjusted R squared=0.70; blue band: n=20, F=8.629, adjusted R squared=0.71; red band: n=20, F=10.75, adjusted R squared=0.72). Despite the enlightened
relationship between coral cover and texture, it remains challenging to automate coral cover calculation, mainly because of the amount of variation within images and transects. Current research directions include the use of larger kernels (larger in situ measures of variation), and tools of pattern recognition.