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Streamlining Computational Methods In Industrial Hygiene, Rebecca Baiman, Miriam Rodón-Vachon Oct 2017

Streamlining Computational Methods In Industrial Hygiene, Rebecca Baiman, Miriam Rodón-Vachon

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Industrial Hygiene office is tasked with identifying health hazards and implementing programs to protect employees at NASA Armstrong as outlined in NPR 1800.1. Common health hazards at the center include noise, oxygen depletion, ionizing radiation, and non-ionizing radiation. Two methods are utilized for analyzing hazards: computation and surveying. Industrial hygienists employ computational methods to check their survey results, to analyze hazards where measurement is impossible, and to analyze future scenarios. Theoretical calculations provide hazard distances for industrial hygienists to avoid harmful radiation when surveying radio frequency (RF) instruments. The process of finding hazard distances for RF instruments is tedious …

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Pixl X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, Naomi K. Bacop Oct 2017

Pixl X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer, Naomi K. Bacop

STAR Program Research Presentations

PIXL (Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry) is an instrument that will be aboard the MARS 2020 rover. This X-Ray Fluorescence Spectrometer will have the ability to identify the chemical elements of a soil or rock sample at a sub-millimeter scale with the help of a software program called PIQUANT which will be used for quantitative analysis of the elemental distribution of the rocks and soils. In order to quantify the elemental composition, ECF’s (element calibration factors) are created and derived from the measurements made from the PIXL instrument. Glass standards (BIR1, BCR2, BHVO2, NIST_610, XRF_U27, XRF_U34, BR_U38) are used in …

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Determination Of Inconel-625 Corrosion Rate In Nakmg-Cl Molten Salt Via Linear Sweep Voltammetry, Breanna Blackwell, Judith Vidal Oct 2017

Determination Of Inconel-625 Corrosion Rate In Nakmg-Cl Molten Salt Via Linear Sweep Voltammetry, Breanna Blackwell, Judith Vidal

STAR Program Research Presentations

Concentrating solar power (CSP) systems focus light energy from the sun to generate heat. Heat transfer fluids (HTF) act as thermal energy storage in CSP systems. The HTF flows through the system in a containment material; molten salts have served as HTFs in CSP systems. As the molten salts move through the system, the containment material is subject to corrosion_Üîlessening the lifetime of the system. To create affordable CSP, various compositions of molten salts and containment materials have been tested. Via linear sweep voltammetry (LSV), the corrosion rate of Inconel-625 was studied. A NaKMg-Cl molten salt composition_Üî24.5-20.5-55 %wt NaCl-KCl-MgCl2_Üîwas utilized …

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Monitoring Fog Potential On Santa Rosa Island, Patrick Costa, Kathryn Mceachern, Ken Niessen Oct 2017

Monitoring Fog Potential On Santa Rosa Island, Patrick Costa, Kathryn Mceachern, Ken Niessen

STAR Program Research Presentations

Fog moisture on Santa Rosa Island plays an integral role in its ecosystems. It is important to understand how fog patterns could potentially effect the flora and fauna. I hypothesized that north facing side of the ridge will have more potential fog moisture due to the predominant wind direction coming from the north. This study used Fog capturing Screens to determine relative amount of fog on the north and south sides of the main ridge of the island. Three locations along the ridge had two Fog Screens placed on the north and south side of the ridge at similar elevations. …

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To Improve Heating, Ventilation And Air-Conditioning By Measuring The Consumption Of Energy In The Buildings., Steffany De La Torre Oct 2017

To Improve Heating, Ventilation And Air-Conditioning By Measuring The Consumption Of Energy In The Buildings., Steffany De La Torre

STAR Program Research Presentations

Finding the parameters of our lab building and creating a model that simulates the energy that is being used, can help improve Heating, Ventilation and Air-Conditioning. The lab building will be a representation of buildings and or homes. These results will improve the efficiency of buildings within its thermostat setpoints by being able to adjust to the change of weather for creating more consistent systems. They are many different approaches, using thermal networks is by far the simplest approach. Creating the thermal modeling network elements of the lab building will show the heat flow path through which energy is transferred …

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Dark Matter Search, Ramiro O. Garcia, Noah A. Kurinsky, Mike Kelsey, Richard Partridge Oct 2017

Dark Matter Search, Ramiro O. Garcia, Noah A. Kurinsky, Mike Kelsey, Richard Partridge

STAR Program Research Presentations

The SuperCDMS SNOLAB is the first low-mass dark matter detector in the cryogenics system at SLAC. It is designed to be sensitive to detect dark matter down to 300 MeV in mass and resolve individual electrons-hole pairs from low energy scattering events in high purity Ge and Si crystals. The purpose is to simulate electrostatic fields within the detector medium and run detailed particle physics simulations to attempt to match simulation to observed detector response for the first time with detectors of this size using the GEANT4 simulation package, and SuperCDMS solid-state simulations. The simulation code is written in C++, …

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Crystallography Data Analysis At Lcls, Cristina E. Garcia, Chun H. Yoon Oct 2017

Crystallography Data Analysis At Lcls, Cristina E. Garcia, Chun H. Yoon

STAR Program Research Presentations

Serial femtosecond crystallography is the process for which an ultrafast free-electron x-ray laser diffracts a protein crystal into its atomic structural basis. From these atomic structures, scientists can better understand the functions of the diffracted proteins. This is important because the protein structures obtained from this process can also provide valuable information that can help redesign medicinal drugs that will target diseases caused by certain proteins. One of the objectives for this research project is to work with a computational crystallography toolbox (CCBTX) that is still in development towards becoming an automated data analyzing software. We collect data by manually …

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Differential Growth In Santa Rosa Island’S Restoration, Marisol Gonzalez, Ken G. Niessen, Morgan A. Eales, Kathryn Mceachern Oct 2017

Differential Growth In Santa Rosa Island’S Restoration, Marisol Gonzalez, Ken G. Niessen, Morgan A. Eales, Kathryn Mceachern

STAR Program Research Presentations

Restoration biology is a relatively new branch of biology and many restoration practices, while transferable, require some degree of tweaking. This is because the same plant ecosystem might be at different levels of ecological ruin and heavily influenced by everything from soil quality, to mountain aspect and sunshine levels, to fog-interception rates. Additionally, different plants of the same ecosystem might respond differently to varying treatments. The plants of this study are located on Santa Rosa Island, off the coast of Santa Barbara in Southern California. For the restoration at Soledad Ridge, the treatments include three combinations of drip-irrigation lines, erosion-control …

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Searching For Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea, Alexandra D. Gutierrez, Emily L. Cardarelli, Natalie Wright Oct 2017

Searching For Ammonia-Oxidizing Archaea, Alexandra D. Gutierrez, Emily L. Cardarelli, Natalie Wright

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Colorado River Basin runs through multiple states in the West of the United States and is a prime water source for about 30 million people in our nation and is used for much of the farmland and agricultural needs in this area. Using cultures derived from the Colorado River Basin a multitude of tests were run in order to determine more about the microbes that are thriving within the river, specifically from archeal phylum Thaumarchaeota. These are ammonia-oxidizing archaea (AOA) who perform nitrification by converting ammonia into nitrite, a process that was previously thought to only be achieved by …

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Is Dna Available For Analysis In Convict Fry, Convict Wrigglers, Dead And/Or Preserved Fish?, Yasamin Haider Oct 2017

Is Dna Available For Analysis In Convict Fry, Convict Wrigglers, Dead And/Or Preserved Fish?, Yasamin Haider

STAR Program Research Presentations

A coastwide bloom of the toxigenic diatom Pseudo-nitzschia in 2015 resulted in the largest reCryptoheros septemfasciatus is a species of cichlid fish (family Cichlidae) that varies phenotypically from population to population. We do not know the relatedness of the different populations of C. septemfasciatus in the many geographically close rivers of northern Costa Rica. To determine this, we will ultimately need to collect many fish and/or tissues at many sites in the wild. It is critical that we know whether we are able to obtain DNA from various tissues (e.g fin clips) and/or from fish fry. I assisted in creating …

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Investigating The Cause For The Increase In The Atmospheric Methane Burden From 2007 To Present, Philip M. Hatcher, Ed Dlugokencky, Sourish Basu Oct 2017

Investigating The Cause For The Increase In The Atmospheric Methane Burden From 2007 To Present, Philip M. Hatcher, Ed Dlugokencky, Sourish Basu

STAR Program Research Presentations

The global atmospheric methane burden approached equilibrium from 1983 until 2006, after which there was an increase in the rate of change that’s been sustained since then. It’s uncertain if this change was due to an increase in emissions, or a decrease in the rate of sink, or a combination of both. Our method attempted to provide evidence to show whether or not this change was due to a decrease in the sink, corresponding to an increase in the lifetime of methane. A one-box model of methane was employed to determine what the lifetime of methane would need to be …

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Investigation Of The Superlubricity Of Graphene Coatings On The Macro Scale, Alex Joanis, Akm Newaz Dr., Jonathan Pont Oct 2017

Investigation Of The Superlubricity Of Graphene Coatings On The Macro Scale, Alex Joanis, Akm Newaz Dr., Jonathan Pont

STAR Program Research Presentations

The superlubricity of graphene, a two-dimensional allotrope of carbon, has been experimentally confirmed in ultralow friction studies. Studies were carried out on a nanoscopic scale, and their results implicated the possibility of using graphene for frictionless coatings. In an attempt to observe reduced friction on the macro scale, we studied 2-3 mm diameter metal spheres coated with monolayer and multilayer graphene via chemical vapor deposition. Graphene-coated and control spheres were dropped through water, isopropanol, and glycerol. The motion of these spheres was recorded using a high-speed camera. Videos were analyzed frame-by-frame to determine the speeds of coated and uncoated metal …

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Microorganisms Associated With Mars-Bound Spacecraft: Preservation, Identification, Characterization, Jamie N. Lehnen, Shara Chopra, Jonathan Diab, Arman Seuylemezian, Parag Vaishampayan Oct 2017

Microorganisms Associated With Mars-Bound Spacecraft: Preservation, Identification, Characterization, Jamie N. Lehnen, Shara Chopra, Jonathan Diab, Arman Seuylemezian, Parag Vaishampayan

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Biotechnology and Planetary Protection Group (BPPG) at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) focuses on avoiding forward and backward contamination between Earth and extraterrestrial bodies, ensuring that planetary bodies can be studied in their natural state in the future. This endeavor involves sampling organisms from Mars bound spacecraft during assembly, testing, and launch operations, archiving the organisms for long-term storage, and identifying the organisms through MALDI-TOF (matrix-assisted laser desorption and ionization time of flight) mass spectrometry. Because the MALDI-TOF database is primarily composed of clinical samples, it is necessary to continuously update the database with isolates collected from Marsbound spacecraft …

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Is El Niño Driving Poleward Range Expansion Of Marine Organisms?, Marilla R. Lippert, Justin Palmer, Danielle Zacherl, Maurice Goodman, Crow White Oct 2017

Is El Niño Driving Poleward Range Expansion Of Marine Organisms?, Marilla R. Lippert, Justin Palmer, Danielle Zacherl, Maurice Goodman, Crow White

STAR Program Research Presentations

Climate change correlates with a poleward shift in the biogeographic ranges of species all around the world1. For coastal marine species, a hypothesized mechanism behind the observed range shift may be transport of marine larvae up coasts by poleward ocean currents driven by El Niño Southern Oscillation (hereafter El Niño) events, which are predicted to become more frequent and intense with climate4. We test this hypothesis with a case study of Kellet’s Whelk (Kelletia kelletii), a predatory marine gastropod and emerging fisheries species that has recently expanded its biogeographic range up the California, US coast2,3. We hypothesize El Niños to …

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Flight Readiness Review (Frr): Are You Ready To Fly?, Lindsay Miller, Andrew Mercier, Olivia Lockhart, Aaron Drake Oct 2017

Flight Readiness Review (Frr): Are You Ready To Fly?, Lindsay Miller, Andrew Mercier, Olivia Lockhart, Aaron Drake

STAR Program Research Presentations

A Flight Readiness Review evaluates the readiness to begin and safely conduct flight tests or flight operations. FRR approval is necessary in order to determine that the system under review can proceed into its test environment having met the standards to be considered airworthy. These standards require that the aviation system be under configuration management, have flight clearance, approved flight test plans, discrepancy tracking, and appropriate risk assessment processes in place. As an Autonomous Flight Lab we are interested in developing a protocol that will make this processes more accessible to individuals trying to utilize UAVs for various research projects. …

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Using Fscans To Detect Combs In Ligo Detector Characterization Channels, Joseph M. Milliano, Gregory Mendell Oct 2017

Using Fscans To Detect Combs In Ligo Detector Characterization Channels, Joseph M. Milliano, Gregory Mendell

STAR Program Research Presentations

One goal of LIGO (the Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory) is the detection of gravitational waves from continuous sources, such as those produced by an asymmetric rotating neutron star. The LIGO detectors are sensitive to a number of environmental and instrumental sources of noise. These noise sources provide a challenge when observing, and need to be identified and ignored when considering potential astrophysical signals. The Fscan algorithm uses Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) to create spectrograms and time-averaged power spectra to identify noise lines. Fscans can be used to search for coincidence lines between environmental sensors and the gravitational wave channel …

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Understanding Cost-Of-Care Conversations, Erica Oberg, Susan L. Perez Oct 2017

Understanding Cost-Of-Care Conversations, Erica Oberg, Susan L. Perez

STAR Program Research Presentations

Healthcare costs are increasing for patients. Choosing Wisely is an initiative of the American Board of Internal Medicine (AIMB) Foundation in partnership with Consumer Reports to promote conversations between physicians and patients to avoid unnecessary tests, procedures, and medications. The Choosing Wisely Initiative developed the resource “Five Questions to Ask Your Doctor” to support patient engagement in cost conversations and empower patients to ask questions about what care is right for them. The purpose of this study was to understand patients’ response to the “Five Questions”. Four focus groups were conducted in English and Spanish in rural and urban communities …

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Effects Of Habitat Restoration On Santa Rosa Island’S Soil Retention, Michael Perez, Kathryn Mceachern, Ken Niessen Oct 2017

Effects Of Habitat Restoration On Santa Rosa Island’S Soil Retention, Michael Perez, Kathryn Mceachern, Ken Niessen

STAR Program Research Presentations

Ranching began on Santa Rosa Island in the 1840’s, consequently introducing nonnative megafauna that put novel selective grazing pressures on endemic plant species. Their movement patterns also altered substrate integrity as the land became denuded of any stabilizing vegetation. Dense groves of island oak (Q. tomentella) are known to aid in sediment deposition and retention. The groves also function to collect water during periods of intense fog common to the island. This experiment sought to determine whether sediment is being lost or deposited on a ridge in the middle of the island containing a grove of Q. tomentella. The slope …

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The Origin And Propagation Of Cosmic Rays, Melida Paz Oct 2017

The Origin And Propagation Of Cosmic Rays, Melida Paz

STAR Program Research Presentations

Cosmic rays (CRs) are the most energetic particles in the Universe. They reach us at nearly the speed of light mostly from outside the Solar System. They carry the information of their sources and of our Galaxy, while propagating through the medium. CRs leave their footprint behind that allows astrophysicists and astronomers to learn about the Galaxy content and interaction processes. However, these interaction processes cause CRs not to trace back to their original direction thereby hampering the search for their origin. Their origin and their propagation are far from being fully understood. I have been performing studies on CRs …

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Snowfall Simulator Quick-Release Retrofit, Nicholas M. Runyan, Scott Landolt Oct 2017

Snowfall Simulator Quick-Release Retrofit, Nicholas M. Runyan, Scott Landolt

STAR Program Research Presentations

In the early 1990s, UCAR fabricated a snowfall simulator that they have used to test deicing fluids for aircraft, among other applications. Ice cores are actuated by a stepper motor and travel along a linear guide rail feeding it into an auger bit. This bit shaves the ice core, creating conditions that simulate snowfall. Currently, the simulator is in satisfactory operating condition, however upgrades have been proposed to make the simulator more user friendly. When one ice core has been exhausted, the motor controlling the carriage must be actuated in reverse to move the mount along a lead screw back …

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Dynamics Of Terrestrial Ecosystems, Water, And Climate In The United States, Jorge Stimans, Guo-Yue Niu Oct 2017

Dynamics Of Terrestrial Ecosystems, Water, And Climate In The United States, Jorge Stimans, Guo-Yue Niu

STAR Program Research Presentations

Water, climate, and vegetation all play major roles in keeping ecosystems alive. By looking at satellite gathered data through NCL, (a unix based coding language) patterns, trends, and change over time, or a lack thereof, were observed. A warming trend in the United States was noticed. The Leaf Area Index suffered an important drop in the American South, Eastern Texas, and the Bay Area, California. Precipitation, overall, stayed about the same, seeing drops in some areas, like the American South West, or increases,in the American Midwest as well as the North East. Oddly, Texas and the American South had significant …

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Optimization Protocol For The Ssrl In-Situ Crystallization And Automated Data Collection Plate, Joanna Siegfried, Brooke Connell, Aina Cohen, Silvia Russi Oct 2017

Optimization Protocol For The Ssrl In-Situ Crystallization And Automated Data Collection Plate, Joanna Siegfried, Brooke Connell, Aina Cohen, Silvia Russi

STAR Program Research Presentations

Typically when researchers want to collect data from protein crystals, those crystals must be flash-frozen using liquid nitrogen. This keeps the crystals stable for data analysis, however, can damage crystals and does not give the best possible data. Ideally, crystals can be analyzed at room temperature, which would allow for more modulation of the shape and give researchers a better picture of the shape of the protein. Room temperature data analysis can be difficult, because protein crystals are fragile and will dehydrate quickly if not kept in the proper conditions. The purpose of this research was to develop and optimize …

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Synthesis Of Ms-Labile Crosslinker To Determine Protein- Protein Interaction Networks In Various Biological Systems Using Crosslinking Mass Spectrometry, Parisa Tavakoli-Dehaghi, Isil Hamdemir, Jie Luo, Jeff Ranish Oct 2017

Synthesis Of Ms-Labile Crosslinker To Determine Protein- Protein Interaction Networks In Various Biological Systems Using Crosslinking Mass Spectrometry, Parisa Tavakoli-Dehaghi, Isil Hamdemir, Jie Luo, Jeff Ranish

STAR Program Research Presentations

The purpose of this research is to synthesize a crossinker that is MS-labile and that produces fragments under MS (mass spectrometry) conditions that allows masses of the peptides determined by the name of LXR-SEB (Labile Crosslinker Reagent-Succinic Ethanolamine Biotin). The samples were prepared in a wet lab at the Institute for Systems Biology, tested using crosslinking MS methods, and finally purified using FPLC (Fast Protein Liquid Chromatography). The results were further analyzed by myself and my mentor, Dr. Isil Hamdemir. The final results showed that we did successfully obtain pure tEB and LXR-Amine, however, SEB was not obtained in the …

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Comparative Analysis Of Zero-Order Hillslope Carbon And Nitrogen Heterogeneity Using Solid And Liquid Samples, Corinne K. Webb, Ed Hunt, Eunice Villasenor, Katerina Dontsova Oct 2017

Comparative Analysis Of Zero-Order Hillslope Carbon And Nitrogen Heterogeneity Using Solid And Liquid Samples, Corinne K. Webb, Ed Hunt, Eunice Villasenor, Katerina Dontsova

STAR Program Research Presentations

The Landscape Evolution Observatory (LEO) at Biosphere 2 near Tucson, AZ is a unique and singular experimental setup in which scientists are able to tackle large-scale earth science questions involving soil formation, nutrient cycling, and chemical weathering in a way that is unavailable in true Earth systems. Three identical zero-order 330 m^2 drainage basins are each filled with 330 m^3 of ground basaltic tephra with a loamy sand texture sourced from northern Arizona for its capacity for carbon sequestration. To obtain information on accumulation of carbon/nitrogen on LEO slopes as a result of biological and abiotic processes, six soil cores …

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Fast Motion Planning Of Uavs, Kaixi Wang Oct 2017

Fast Motion Planning Of Uavs, Kaixi Wang

STAR Program Research Presentations

Fast motion planning (FMP) of autonomous vehicles has been advanced rapidly for robotics research, particularly for trajectory planning of spacecraft. The FMP team at JPL and Caltech has developed an algorithm for autonomous vehicles in environments with many fixed obstacles. The spherical expansion and sequential convex programming (SE-SCP) algorithm is computationally efficient and guarantees any-time local optimality for a given function on top of being faster than other sampling-based motion planning methods. Spherical Expansion (SE) is randomized sampling to explore the workspace of the autonomous vehicle and it finds an initial cost-minimized path. Sequential convex programming (SCP) then optimizes this …

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Diversity, Distribution And Dynamics Of Larval Cephalopods Off Northern California, Anacena Zander, Eric P. Bjorkstedt Oct 2017

Diversity, Distribution And Dynamics Of Larval Cephalopods Off Northern California, Anacena Zander, Eric P. Bjorkstedt

STAR Program Research Presentations

Cephalopods are the fastest growing invertebrate, often putting on 3- 5 % of their body weight each day. Due to the nature of their diet, their body mass can be up to 80% protein, offering humans an easy and fast source of protein. This offers fisheries a new option to explore. The main problem behind wild-catching Cephalopods, is the issue of where they are. This study examined retrospective larval Cephalopod samples collected from 2009-2017 to examine trends in the diversity and distribution of the larvae. Notably, some of the collected data was taken during the warm water event that started …

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Chemical Gardens: The Effects Of Organic Compounds On Inorganic Precipitates, Michelle R. Hooks, Laura M. Barge, Paul Webster Oct 2017

Chemical Gardens: The Effects Of Organic Compounds On Inorganic Precipitates, Michelle R. Hooks, Laura M. Barge, Paul Webster

STAR Program Research Presentations

Chemical gardens are inorganic, self-organizing precipitates that form when metal salts are added to a solution of another precipitating ion, e.g. adding iron (II) chloride crystals to sodium silicate solutions. The self-assembly of these inorganic membranes, the maintenance of gradients across them, and the effects of organic compounds on their mineralogy / morphology are of particular interest in understanding similar geological structures at hydrothermal systems in Earth’s early oceans, as well as in putative hydrothermal vents elsewhere in our solar system (such as on Saturn’s moon, Enceladus). Chemical gardens provide a method of recreating these geological “hydrothermal chimneys” which are …

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Regeneration Of Blood Vessels Within Diabetic Wounds After Treatment With Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Angel V. Contreras Cardenas, Tomas Rojo-Castro, Alan Alex, Gabriel Bascara, Rosalyn Isseroff, Thomas R. Peavy Oct 2017

Regeneration Of Blood Vessels Within Diabetic Wounds After Treatment With Mesenchymal Stem Cells, Angel V. Contreras Cardenas, Tomas Rojo-Castro, Alan Alex, Gabriel Bascara, Rosalyn Isseroff, Thomas R. Peavy

STAR Program Research Presentations

Diabetes is a chronic disease that affects more than 30 million Americans. This disorder leads to a variety of acute and chronic complications, including diabetic ulcers (chronic wounds). Chronic wounds often persist due to poor regeneration of the blood supply which is essential to bring nutrients for healing. Particularly, diabetic individuals are prone to damage in their peripheral tissues which leads to a high prevalence of ulcers in their extremities, often leading to limb amputations. The aim of this study is to improve healing outcomes for diabetics through the use of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) to stimulate healing, in which …

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Detecting Seasonal Volatile Transport On Triton Through Photometric Observations, David M. Dombroski, Bonnie Buratti, Michael Hicks Oct 2017

Detecting Seasonal Volatile Transport On Triton Through Photometric Observations, David M. Dombroski, Bonnie Buratti, Michael Hicks

STAR Program Research Presentations

More than 35 million people in the western United States depend on the Colorado River as a Broadband Photometry will be obtained to provide data on Triton. Our data will be collected over a series of nights of time-resolved Bessel BVRI photometry using the 0.6-m telescope at the JPL Table Mountain Observatory (TMO) located in Wrightwood, California. The objective of these observations is to detect and measure volatile transport on Triton. The vapor pressures of nitrogen and methane vary over the seasonal cycles of Triton and Pluto. The seasonal migration of frost can be detected by a combination of changes …

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O1 Haplotype Diversity Of The Invasive Colonial Tunicate Didemnum Vexillum In Drakes Estero And Bodega Bay, Cecilia Hernandez, C. Sarah Cohen, Rachel Weinburg Oct 2017

O1 Haplotype Diversity Of The Invasive Colonial Tunicate Didemnum Vexillum In Drakes Estero And Bodega Bay, Cecilia Hernandez, C. Sarah Cohen, Rachel Weinburg

STAR Program Research Presentations

The colonial ascidian Didemnum vexillum is an invasive species with detrimental economic and ecological impacts on ecosystems where it is newly introduced. Populations of this recent marine pest are rapidly expanding along the North American coasts and provide the opportunity to assess whether population proximity and shared environmental factors influence genetic relatedness. The population in Tomales Bay, CA is the most diverse measured to date on the Northeast Pacific coast with the population composed of six different haplotypes; other locations are composed of three or four haplotypes. The diversity in Tomales Bay suggests it be an anomaly or possibly a …

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