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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The 2013 Chesapeake Bay report card provides an important insight into how stormwater runoff affects the Bay. The contrast between the Upper Eastern Shore report card scores which are degrading over time versus the James River report card scores which are improving over time provides important insights. Both regions experienced intense rainfall in 2013, yet the report card scores responded differently.

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As a follow up to the Arkansas/Red River workshop in Tulsa, OK where we facilitated a workshop associated with the development of a Mississippi River report card, five of us traveled to The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Nickel Preserve in Eastern Oklahoma. Jordy Jordahl, the Executive Director of America's Watershed Initiative, Patrick Brennan, the Sustainability Manager from Ingram Barge, along with me, Heath Kelsey and Bill Nuttle from the IAN team comprised the report card strategy group.

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As part of our continuing series of stakeholder expert workshops for developing a Mississippi River basin report card, a team of IAN Science Integrators and Science Communicators traveled to Tulsa, Oklahoma on 14-15 May 2014. Heath Kelsey, Bill Nuttle, Bill Dennison, Caroline Wicks, and Brianne Walsh. Anthony Kung, the visiting graduate student from the University of Queensland, came along as an observer as well.

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On May 11, replicas of two of the three ships that Christopher Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean were at the Chesapeake Bay Maritime Museum in St. Michaels, Maryland. These replicas of the Niña and the Pinta were made using authentic materials and constructed with historically appropriate tools. The Columbus Foundation sails these ships to different port calls as "floating museums".

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IAN was lucky enough to be invited to Charleston, South Carolina, to conduct a science communication course for the South Atlantic Fishery Management Council (SAFMC). Together with Jane Thomas, Brianne Walsh and Jane Hawkey, we had two wonderful days in the warm South, and were even greeted by an alligator on the lawn outside our hotel when we arrived. We were then greeted by a much more pleasant host, Amber Von Harten, who is the outreach specialist for SAFMC.

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On May 1-2, we held our annual UMCES faculty convocation- this year's convocation was hosted by Horn Point Laboratory. Our guest speaker was Bill Chameides, the Dean of the Nicholas School of the Environment at Duke University. The focus of this year's convocation was 'The future of graduate education at UMCES', as we have a new joint program and are in the midst of a curriculum revision for the multi-campus Marine-Estuarine-Environmental Sciences program.

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'Scientists who made a difference' series … This blog accompanying the biographical sketch of Johannes Kepler looks at a selection of his writing as poetry and a selection of his scientific sketches as art. The 'Poetry' use Kepler's exact words (translated into English) in prose form, using the title 'Absolutely Settled' to focus on the cadence and word choice. It was a strong statement in support of the Copernican view of the earth and planets revolving around the sun.

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I visited the late Peter Oliver (1957-2012) following his retirement lecture in Brisbane, Australia in August 2012. I stayed with Peter and his wife Ann in their home in Maleny and when Peter was feeling well enough, we would work together on our book 'Dancing with Dugongs: Having fun and developing a practical environmental philosophy for teaching and research'.

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'Scientists who made a difference' series … Johannes Kepler was a German Lutheran astronomer who created laws for planetary motion, developed an important improvements for telescopes, and laid the foundations for Newtonian physics. Kepler was born near Stuttgart, Germany in 1571. Johannes and his two older brothers and sister were raised by their mother, as their father left home to fight as a mercenary. Johannes was born prematurely and was sickly as a child.

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