Is it your goal for the end-of-year holidays to learn more about microbes? @IowaStateU students in Microbial Ecology have written or revised 20 Wikipedia articles with @WikiEducation about microbes!! @ISU_Micrograd @GeoAtmo_ISU — Elizabeth D. Swanner (@betsyswanner) November 27, 2022
Zackry Stevenson recently authored an ISU Extension publication with Mia Riddley and Betsy Swanner about rusty soils and filmy water. It describes some environmental occurrence of iron common to Iowa, and also how microbes mediate transformations of iron between its different forms.’ It is available for download here: https://store.extension.iastate.edu/Product/16548
Our study on growing edible plants in a simulated Martian regolith is out today in PLoS One! Alfalfa grew well, and its compost enhanced the growth of turnip, radish, and lettuce. Nicer fertilizer than what Matt Damon used in the Martian? I finally saw the Martian this week because reporters kept asking me what I … Continue reading Matt Damon, we have a new idea for farming on Mars!
Students in GEOL 406/506 in Spring 2022 made a series of 3 YouTube videos about our research question, methods, and results: What is a meromictic lake? Methods to investigate lake meromixis Are four lakes in Itasca State Park meromictic? Students were mentored on this project by Dr. Sajjad Akam.
Check out the new Wikipedia page on Deming Lake, drafted by Liza Bryant-Tapper, Lauren Netz, Pratik Poudel, and Heeyeon Sun. They were all students in GEOL 406/506, which went to Itasca State Park in Minnesota to answer the question of whether four lakes in the park are meromictic. Deming is!
Zak was selected as a NASA fellowship awardee at Iowa State University from the NASA Iowa Space Grant Consortium (ISGC). This fellowship will aid his training in Microbial Ecology and Astrobiology. Congratulations, Zak!!
A story on our research project on Arco, Budd, Deming, and Josephine lakes in Itasca State Park was featured in the publication “Upstream“. The publication is a newsletter for the Itasca Biological Station and Laboratories, which is a field station operated by the University of Minnesota College of Biological Sciences. The article highlights our work … Continue reading Itasca Research featured in “Upstream” publication
Dr. Swanner’s Microbial Ecology course (MICRO/BIOL/GEOL 487/587) drafted Wikipedia articles as part of a Wiki Education assignment. Topics were environmentally-significant microbial species. Below are some links to a few of the articles: Read about the genus Afifella, anaerobic bacteria living in shallow marine and estuarine environments. Strains of Acidithrix ferrooxidans oxidize Fe(II) in acidic waters, … Continue reading Microbial Ecology course adds to Wikipedia
Elizabeth Swanner is part of a multi-institution award from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to form an Interdisciplinary Consortium on Astrobiology Research (ICAR). The project is lead by Dr. Betül Kacar from the University of Arizona. The project,” Metal Utilization and Selection Across Eons”, or MUSE, and will explore life’s selection of elements … Continue reading Swanner is part of an Interdisciplinary Consortium on Astrobiology Research
PI Betsy Swanner was recently awarded an NSF CAREER award for a project entitled, “Quantifying the Extent and Biogeochemical Impact of Modern Ferruginous Lakes”. You can find Betsy’s Twitter summary of this project here, or read the NSF summary here. Betsy was one of 10 ISU researchers to receive this prestigious award in FY 2020. … Continue reading Betsy Swanner receives NSF CAREER award