Colloquium Call For Abstracts
Graduate Program in Marine Biology
College of Charleston, Grice Marine Laboratory
Student Marine Biology Research Colloquium
February 23-24, 2007
Call For Letters of Intent and Abstracts
The Colloquium Committee is pleased to announce the Tenth Annual Student Marine Biology Research Colloquium of the Graduate Program in Marine Biology (GPMB), to be held Friday and Saturday, February 23 and 24, 2007, in the auditorium of the Marine Resources Research Institute at the Fort Johnson campus. This year, the keynote speaker will be Dr. Peter Wainwright of the University of California at Davis.
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 encouraged to give oral presentations at the Colloquium. Priority will be given to second year Marine Biology students, and selection will depend upon the number of responses. Poster presentations are sought from students and faculty of any institution associated with the Fort Johnson campus.
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 (presentations will not be judged on results and conclusions in order to provide every opportunity for success for students in early phases of actual research implementation); 2) oral and visual quality of the delivery; and 3) demonstration of confidence and depth of understanding of the material. The award will be presented at the Saturday evening social event.
The number of slots for both oral and poster presentations is limited.
Key dates for the Colloquium are summarized as follows:
- Friday December 1, 2006: Due date for letter of intent to give a presentation (see instructions below). Deadline 5:00 p.m.
- Wednesday January 17, 2007: Due date for abstracts (see instructions below). Deadline 5:00 pm.
- February 23-24, 2007: Colloquium
INSTRUCTIONS
(Also available on the Graduate Program in Marine Biology web site at http://www.cofc.edu/~marine/colloquium.htm)
December 1, 2006 (Deadline 5:00 p.m.) Final Due Date for Letter of Intent to Participate
Send a letter of intent that includes a tentative title and brief description (two to three sentences) of your presentation to Erik Sotka via email at sotkae@cofc.edu. Please put “LETTER OF INTENT” in the subject line, include contact information for the presenting author (i.e. provide a telephone number and your preferred email address), state whether you are 1st, 2nd, or 3rd year graduate student, and indicate your preference for an oral or poster presentation.
January
17, 2007 (Deadline 5:00 p.m.) Final Due Date for Abstracts
Please submit as following:
Email your abstract as an attached file (Word document or plain text file, using
the filename ‘yourlastname_abstract’) to Erik Sotka (sotkae@cofc.edu)
AND hand deliver a hard copy to Shelly Brew at the Grice Marine Laboratory.
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 (in parentheses). The abstract must be 250 words or less and should not be more than two paragraphs. 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 TIFF 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.