‘Scientists who made a difference’ series … Isaac Newton was born in 1642, the same year that Galileo Galilei died. He was born in a modest farmhouse in Woolsthorpe-by-Colsterworth, just north of London. His father died before he was born and his mother remarried when Isaac was three years old and she left him to be cared for by his maternal grandmother. When Isaac was ten years old, his step-father died and his mother moved back with three younger half-siblings.

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Recently IAN was asked to attend and present at the 16th Consultative Committee Meeting on Large Marine Ecosystems and Coastal Partners in Paris, France. I was lucky enough to be the one from IAN chosen to participate and I absolutely loved it! It’s unusual these days to attend a meeting and not know anyone, but this was the case for me at the UNESCO headquarters in the Invalides district of Paris.

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An interest to support community-based monitoring efforts around Long Island Sound motivates IAN’s work to develop a set of ecosystem report cards for that region. Long Island Sound is an estuarine embayment on the northeast coast of the United States, located directly east of New York City. The western portion of the Sound connects with the East River and New York harbor.

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On July 8, I attended a meeting organized by the Chesapeake Bay Program office and chaired by Joe Gill, Chair of the Principal Staff Committee and Maryland Secretary of Natural Resources. It was held on Wye Island on Maryland's Eastern Shore at a DNR conference center. The chairs of the six Goal Implementation teams, the leadership of the Chesapeake Bay Program were invited and the coordinators of the goal teams joined at lunch.

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At the Integration and Application Network, we have been developing video techniques for science communication. Most of our science communication has focused on print and web media, and we have recently begun developing video products. In the course of developing video products, we have been developing a variety of techniques which will be outlined here. Seminars:

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Over the past several weeks, I encountered various tributes to Rachel Carson (1907-1964), the environmental champion and author. It began in Pittsburgh, PA near where Rachel was born in 1927 and where she attended what is now Chatham University. I attended the River Rally, where Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. spoke about how courageous Rachel was to draw attention to the dangers of DDT and the vicious attacks that she received as a result.

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On April 29, I traveled to Cincinnati, Ohio for the National Water Quality Monitoring Conference. This year’s theme for the conference was Working Together for Clean Water, a true issue IAN tackles in almost all of our projects. Alex Fries in Cincinnati, Ohio for the National Water Quality Monitoring Conference. After meeting with Julie Vastine from Dickenson College, she asked me to attend the Volunteer Monitoring Gathering and Dinner.

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As an experiment in producing short videos describing Integration and Application Network products, we developed a video for the first eBook produced by IAN. The book is titled 'Dancing with Dugongs: Having fun and developing a practical philosophy for environmental teaching and research'. We shot this video on a chilly spring day on the Choptank River and Ali Schwaab, our Science a communication intern, edited the video to include various graphics from the book to appear as I was talking.

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As part of the biennial gathering of Cooperative Ecosystems Study Unit (CESU) council members and directors at the National Conservation Training Center (NCTC) near Shepardstown, West Virginia, the Integration and Application Network received the National CESU award for contributions to the national CESU network. This award was announced by Dr. Tom Fish, National Coordinator of the CESU network, as part of his State of the CESU address, and I accepted the award on behalf of the IAN team.

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I attended the 2014 River Rally which was held in downtown Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. My main reason for attending was to scope out this gathering as the appropriate venue to create the North American Riverprize. The International Riverfoundation which awards the Theiss International Riverprize every year at the International Riversymposium. The concept that has been gaining momentum over the past several years is to have a series of regional Riverprizes:

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