The University of Hawaiʻi Commission on the Status of Women is hosting the Healthy Living–Mind, Body, Career conference on Friday, September 27, 8:45 a.m.–2 p.m. 2013 at the UH Mānoa Campus Center Ballroom.

The goal of the conference is for participants to join the university in promoting and implementing healthy living strategies within their own professional and personal lives. Participants will have an opportunity to gain insights from outstanding women leaders in the business, higher education and alumna communities regarding cultivating leadership, knowledge and skills through professional development; building knowledge of emerging issues at the national, state, higher education levels; and discovering how to perceive personal vulnerabilities as positive assets.

The conference welcomes UH faculty, professional and clerical staff members (male and female included) to participate.

Registration will open on August 5. For more information, go to the conference website.

The conference is sponsored by the UH Mānoa Student Life and Development, Hawaiʻi State Commission on the Status of Women, Women’s Campus Club, UH Mānoa Women’s Studies, Honolulu Community College Design Center and UH Mānoa Bookstore.

Kapʻolani CanSat team

Kapiʻolani Community College’s CanSat team took home the top prize for designing, building and launching a space-related mission at the annual CanSat International Competition held June 7–9 in Abilene, TX. Known as Team Mod 6, Kapiʻolani CC students prepared for eight months for this final showdown in Texas, out-performing stiff competition from top universities from Iran, Canada, India and the United States.

Members of the 2013 CanSat team are Diamond Tachera, Kelsey Kawaguchi, Rae-zan Raposas, Joshua Tamayo, Logan Tamayo, McClyde Gaborno and Taylor Viti.

A reception honoring the winners will be held on Friday, June 14, 5:30 p.m. at Kapiʻolani Community College STEM Center, Kokiʻo 202.

Chancellor Leon Richards congratulated the team on its monumental win. “Having an intrepid leader at the helm makes the team indomitable,” said Chancellor Richards. “The college applauds the team’s hard work and courage to stand up to stiff competition.”

“Most of the students in the CanSat team are students recruited through our summer bridge program sponsored by one of Kapiʻolani’s grants from the National Science Foundation,” said Hervé Collin, the team’s faculty advisor and Kapiʻolani CC professor. “The summer bridge program’s goal is to increase the number of Native Hawaiian students into the STEM fields.”

The project was supported by the National Science Foundation, Space Grant Hawaiʻi, and in collaboration with Windward Community College, which provided support to the Kapiʻolani team with two test launches.

For more information on the competition, read the Kapiʻolani CC news release or visit the STEM Center website.

David Karl

David M. Karl, a microbial biologist and oceanographer in the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoaʻs School of Ocean and Earth Science and Technology, has been selected to serve on the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Gulf of Mexico program advisory group. The 24-member NAS group will create a strategic vision and guide the program’s development and implementation.

Karl is the director of the Daniel K. Innouye Center for Microbial Oceanography: Research and Education on the UH Mānoa campus. He was elected to NAS in 2006 and in April 2013, he received NAS’ Alexander Agassiz Medal for “leadership in establishing multi-disciplinary ocean-observing systems, for decadal regime shifts in pelagic ecosystems, and for paradigm-shifting insights on biogeochemical cycles in the ocean.”

NAS Gulf of Mexico program

The $500-million, 30-year NAS Gulf of Mexico program was established as part of the settlements of federal criminal complaints against British Petroleum and Transocean Ltd. following the 2010 Deepwater Horizon explosion, which resulted in 11 deaths and 17 injuries. It was the largest oil spill in U.S. history.

The program will focus on human health, environmental protection and oil system safety in the Gulf of Mexico and the United States’ Outer Continental Shelf. It will fund and carry out studies, projects and activities in research and development, education and training, and environmental monitoring.

Serving for one year, the NAS Gulf of Mexico program advisory group will articulate the program’s mission, goals, and objectives—including preliminary thinking about metrics to measure its impacts—and outline how the program will operate in the first three to five years.

For more information, read the full text of the advisory group announcement, including a list of all 24 appointees.

—A UH Mānoa news release.

The cosmic microwave background, shown at left, is a flash of light that occurred when the young universe cooled enough for electrons and protons to form the first atoms. It contains slight temperature fluctuations that correspond to regions of slightly different densities, representing the seeds of all cosmic structure seen today. The universe then went dark for hundreds of millions of years until the first stars shone and the first black holes began accreting gas. A portion of the infrared and X-ray signals from these sources is preserved in the cosmic infrared background, or CIB, and its X-ray equivalent, the CXB. At least 20 percent of the structure in these backgrounds changes in concert, indicating that black hole activity was hundreds of times more intense in the early universe than it is today. (Illustration by Karen Teramura, UHIfA)

University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa astronomer Guenther Hasinger, along with a team of international astronomers, has discovered evidence of a significant number of black holes that accompanied the first stars in the universe. Hasinger discussed the findings at the 222nd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Indianapolis. A paper describing the study was published in the May 20 issue of The Astrophysical Journal.

Using data from NASA’s Chandra X-ray Observatory and NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which observes in the infrared, researchers have concluded one of every five sources contributing to the infrared signal is a black hole.

“Our results indicate black holes are responsible for at least 20 percent of the cosmic infrared background, which indicates intense activity from black holes feeding on gas during the epoch of the first stars,” said Alexander Kashlinsky, an astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.

The cosmic infrared background (CIB) is the collective light from an epoch when structure first emerged in the universe. Astronomers think it arose from clusters of massive suns in the universe’s first stellar generations, as well as black holes, which produce vast amounts of energy as they accumulate gas.

Guenther Hasinger

“We wanted to understand the nature of the sources in this era in more detail, so I suggested examining Chandra data to explore the possibility of X-ray emission associated with the lumpy glow of the CIB,” said Hasinger, who is director of the UH Institute for Astronomy.

“This is an exciting and surprising result that may provide a first look into the era of initial galaxy formation in the universe,” said another contributor to the study, Harvey Moseley, a senior astrophysicist at Goddard. “It is essential that we continue this work and confirm it.”

For more, go to the Institute for Astronomy news release.

Researcher Angelo Vermeulen looks out the window of the HI-SEAS habitat (photo by Sian Proctor)

Researchers enjoy a celebration meal (photo by Sian Proctor)

NASA has awarded $1.2 million to the Hawaiʻi Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS) program to continue its work studying the human factors that contribute to astronaut crew function and performance during long-duration space travels, such as those anticipated for a manned mission to Mars.

The new contract award builds upon an ongoing HI-SEAS study, led by Cornell University and the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, that is analyzing new types of food and novel food preparation strategies to keep astronauts well-nourished for long-duration space exploration. Both grants are funded by the NASA Human Research Program.

“Our HI-SEAS site on the Big Island is unique among space analog locations, because it is easily accessible year-round, allowing for longer-duration isolated and confined environment studies,” said UH Mānoa Associate Professor Kim Binsted, principal investigator for the new program.

“The Mars-like environment at 8,000 feet elevation on Mauna Loa offers the potential for high-fidelity space analog tasks, such as geological field work by human explorers or robots,” Binsted continued. ”It’s an ideal location to model the challenging conditions that astronauts are likely to encounter during their stay on Mars.”

More than 700 applicants vied for six spots in the original HI-SEAS mission, which began in April 2013 and is expected to run until August 2013. These Earth-based researchers are now living and working like astronauts, including suiting up in space gear whenever they venture outside a simulated Martian base and cooking meals from a specific list of dehydrated and shelf-stable food items. The public is invited to follow along with the videos, researcher blogs and test recipes featured on the HI-SEAS website or on Twitter or Facebook.

The new NASA funding will fuel three additional space analog missions over the next three years: four months, eight months and one year in duration, respectively.

Recruiting for the next HI-SEAS mission will begin shortly, with the first of the three new studies expected to begin in January 2014.

For more information, read the UH Mānoa press release.

President Greenwood and Maya Soetoro-Ng traveled to Pagar Jurang village to hear stories about communities that were rebuilt after the Mount Merapi volcanic eruptions. The visit provides context for this week’s Asia Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction and Resilience (APDR3) Symposium in Yogyakarta, Indonesia.

President M.R.C. Greenwood and Mānoa assistant professor Maya Soetoro-Ng are leading a delegation from the University of Hawaiʻi to Yogyakarta, Indonesia this week to represent UH interests in the APDR3 (Asia Pacific Disaster Risk Reduction Resiliency) Indonesia Symposium. This visit is a result of APEC 2011, when Greenwood vowed to renew the university’s commitment to expand international partnerships, especially in the Asia-Pacific region.

Greenwood, Soetoro-Ng and Denise Konan, dean of UH Mānoa’s College of Social Sciences are meeting with various universities and colleges to develop institutional partnerships on faculty research, student exchange and recruitment. The UH delegation is also working to develop new study abroad opportunities and is meeting with UH alumni and friends in the Yogyakarta region.

Learn more about the visit on Greenwood’s blog, UH Matters.

• Outreach visit to Indonesia – Day 1
• Outreach visit to Indonesia – Day 2
• Outreach visit to Indonesia – Day 3
• Outreach visit to Indonesia – Day 4
• Outreach visit to Indonesia – Day 5

Jack McDermott and colleague Naleen Andrade

The American Psychiatric Association presented The Alice Purcell McGavin Award to Jack McDermott, MD, at its annual meeting in San Francisco on May 18, 2013. The APA’s highest award recognized McDermott’s distinguished career in child and adolescent psychiatry.

McDermott is Emeritus Professor and Chair of Psychiatry at the University of Hawaiʻi’s John A. Burns School of Medicine. He is publisher of several textbooks in the field and the former editor-in-chief of psychiatry’s main scientific journal in child and adolescent psychiatry.

He is also recognized by his peers for having made singular contributions to advance the health—particularly the mental health—of Hawaiʻi’s people and to promote the recruitment of Native Hawaiians in the field of academic medicine.

For more information, read the UH Mānoa press release.

“Basically, it is to look into what is required to get Maui on the way to adopting electric vehicles,” said Anne Ku, the director of the Maui EVA and lecturer at UH Maui College.

The alliance started with 14 partners but has since grown to more than 60, including the county government, Maui Electric Company, hotels, automobile dealerships and car rental companies.

“Our grid is going to get greener over time,” said Shaun Stenshol, president of Bio-Beetle ECO Rental Cars. “We are getting more wind farms, more solar energy so over time, the electric vehicle becomes greener and greener.”

A critical step was giving Maui residents the chance to look under the hood and get behind the wheel of an electric vehicle—a first for most.

“When we first started, I can count on one hand how many people have driven one,” said Ku. “And now I can say there are a lot more people. I think it is very important that you try driving and charging an electric vehicle and not just look at it.”

The travel industry’s participation is also key considering Maui averages more than two million tourists a year.

“They really need charging at hotels and a good public charging infrastructure, because they don’t know the geography, and this is what we are trying to offer,” said Ku.

Maui College is already preparing a workforce to fix and maintain electric vehicles by adding hybrid and electric vehicle care to its automotive technology curriculum.

“We’ve been training for the last four years on the hybrids and we are trying to tie with the EVA cars because the future is the electric car, “ said Thomas Hussey, department chair of the vocational and CT programs at UH Maui College.

Before Maui EVA was formed, there was one charging station on the Maui. Now there are more than 20. The push towards electric vehicles is helped by the fact that Maui consistently has some of the highest gas prices in the country.

“It is really sad to see that we have so much renewable energy but we are still 90 percent dependent on oil,” said Ku.

Maui EVA’s efforts are expanding and the alliance now supports electric vehicle initiatives on Molokaʻi, Kauaʻi and the Big Island. For more information, go to the Maui Electric Vehicle Alliance website.

How to Get to Candybar is part of UH Mānoa’s KIDS FIRST film festival

The University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Outreach College presents the 7th Annual KIDS FIRST! Film Festival, a free event that promises wholesome, quality fun for the whole family! KIDS FIRST! gives kids and families the thrill of attending a film festival without the gratuitous violence, stereotypical bias and other inappropriate content.

The KIDS FIRST! Film Festival 2013 screens on Sundays, June 23 and 30 and July 14 and 21 at 3 p.m. at the UH Mānoa Art Auditorium.

The festival line-up includes feature-length films as well as award-winning shorts that appeal to everyone from toddlers to grown-ups.

• June 23—World premiere of Sharks and Rays, a half-hour ocean education film, followed by four-minute short Home was the Sailor and half-hour Gus Outdoors: Lizard Town, which follows a six-year-old naturalist as he explores the Bahamas.
• June 30—Nine inspirational short films for ages 8 and up, including a film inspired by Shel Silverstein’s famous poem “Falling Up.”
• July 14—Short film I Wish I Went to Ecuador and feature-length film My Best Friend, both award-winning, discuss environmental issues through a child’s point of view.
• July 21—Seven short films, for ages 10 and up, that celebrate the many facets of life.

For more information, visit the KIDS FIRST website or call (808) 956-9883.

Ember parrotfish (photo courtesy or Keoki Stender)

For a time, biologists believed that marine animals who arrived in Hawaii and evolved into unique Hawaiian species were living in what they called an “evolutionary graveyard,” meaning the species had hit the end of the line.

However new research is showing that Hawaiian marine animals are radiating back across the ocean, spreading their genes and adapting to new environments as part of a complementary process of biodiversity feedback.

“What we’ve shown with genetics—by finding out who’s related to who across the Pacific—is that Hawaiʻi can export biodiversity, and that it does contribute to the overall biodiversity of the Indo-Pacific,” said Professor Brian Bowen of the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa’s Hawaiʻi Institute of Marine Biology (HIMB).

Bowen and his colleagues at HIMB and the California Academy of Sciences have identified a growing body of evidence that oceanic archipelagos are actively exporting genetic and biological diversity.

The yellow tang (lauʻīpala) is Bowen’s favorite example of a Hawaiian species on the move. This bright yellow reef fish is spotted by snorkelers on all of the major Hawaiian Islands. HIMB researcher Jeff Eble (now at University of West Florida) found that yellow tang ecology, historical demography, and genetics point to a Hawaiian origin several hundred thousand years ago. Now they occur as far away as Japan.

Other Hawaiian creatures venturing out to ply new waters include the ember parrotfish (uhu), the Hawaiian pink snapper (opakapaka), and the lollyfish sea cucumber (loli).

“When species forged in the flames of competition arrive in an area of ecological release like Hawaiʻi, they have the space to try new things,” Bowen said. “It’s called niche expansion. These new capabilities allow the species to in turn expand out and contribute to high biodiversity elsewhere in the Pacific.”

Lead author Bowen and his colleagues recently published their findings on biodiversity feedback in the scientific journal Trends in Ecology & Evolution. The paper also highlights how physical isolation is not the sole avenue for marine speciation—many species diverge along ecological boundaries.

The discovery of these evolutionary pathways has applications to the conservation of coral reef ecosystems. In 2006, the entire 2,000 kilometers of the northwestern Hawaiian Islands was protected as the Papahānaumokuākea Marine National Monument. This sanctuary was designed to protect the unique biodiversity of Hawaiʻi, but the new research shows that Papahānaumokuākea incubates new biodiversity as well.

UH Mānoa is taking a lead role in genomics research to explore the origins of marine biodiversity. “Genomics will reveal which genes are responsible for evolutionary divergences that are the foundation for biodiversity,” Bowen said.

Learn more.