cabrerad

Thanks for the heads up Dimitri. Sometimes I forget about my automatic access to journals. Try this: http://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/scivis/winners_2012.jsp Scroll down to almost the bottom. Coral video is available there. This is hosted by NSF/Youtube, so no journal charges. David

Follow the link to a video of coral under a confocal laser microscope. Scroll down to first honorable mention in the 2012 International Science and Engineering Visualization Challenge. I should have brought some corals in while I had access to one of these in a previous job! Pretty cool and also hard to do with something that isn't sliver thin under one of these scopes. http://scim.ag/UJwFrL David

Interesting research on changes in pigmentation to allow new coral polyp growth.

Link Interesting study on how coral may cope with increased water temperature. I think a good follow up study would be to look at captive corals. David

frag killing? I think you are projecting!

By the way..where are my frags?

You probably need to only feed 1-2X per week. What are you feeding it? With forceps?

Have your son don mask, fins, and snorkel and paddle around! Who needs Tunzes... Actually the idea for the low placement towards the top sounds like it might be worth trying (or you could alternate placement during cleaning to help get rid of detritus that isn't out in the open).

I have various things available as I am shutting down my smallest (20 gallon) tank: 3 Green Caulastrea-3-4 polyp frags- trade I also have pink caulastrea that I could frag if anyone is interested.- (guppychao, notajr.fan, bk market) 3 Zooanthids frags (multiple polyp) of white center, green and purple zooanthids- (notajr.fan) 1 Torch Coral- 3 polyps- (notajr.fan) 1 Pavona decussata -trade 1 Acro frag (mounted ) tan with blue tips that faded when I fragged it.- 1 green sinularia frag and many white colt coral frags, and other things I will place on the free stuff table, unless someone wants to reserve them-just pm me. (HBH, Davelin) I also have a large piece of live rock overgrown with tan zooanthids I don't know what to do with (around 8 X8" with a hole in the middle). - (guppychao) Light strip ( 24" 2 X14W coralife thingy)- (HBH) Anyone want a free 20 gallon tank and stand- (fry_school101, second in line HBH) hang on powerfilter, powerhead (zoomed powersweep), heater- (Davelin315) Let me know if interested. I will be at the symposium for the first part of the day, but will have to leave early to continue car shopping. FYI, I do not recommend getting rear ended by a Lincoln Navigator and then getting slammed into a Trail Blazer a second later. My Sentra fared poorly, but at least all were ok and their insurance gets to pay. David

I Imagine quite a few of the locations suggested have all inclusives, or you could put your own package together using hotwire, travelocity etc. They have hotel +flight packages also. I think you could go to most of these places on your budget except maybe the Caymans. I just looked at packages real quick on one of the sites and they seem plenty reasonable for flight +hotel. You could check out the island, activities and diving and choose a location you like, then worry about budgeting. St Maarten/St Martin, for example, is fantastic for top level food. You can also go to scubaboard.com and do a search to get lists of all inclusives and additional info on these locations. here's an all inclusive in Curacao: Sunset Waters David

Matt, I would not recommend Jamaica for diving. It is far from the best. The person giving advice on RC is right on the money. If you can swing it, I would strongly recommend getting certified before your honeymoon. The reason I say this is twofold. First, I don't think you will want to be taking class and studying books on your honeymoon. Even a compressed resort style open water course is going to take a big chunk of time to complete (think 2.5 to 3 days all day). Second, I am not a big fan of the quick compressed resort courses you would have to take on your honeymoon (and I'm an Instructor). You will get a better experience and end up a better diver taking a course at home that last several weeks. One thing you can do is take all the course work and confined water (pool) before you go and get your instructor to certify what you have completed. You can then do your open water checkout dives (usually 4 dives) on vacation with another instructor (you will need to contact the dive shop in the honeymoon destination ahead of time). There is also the possibility of doing a resort course (not a complete cert and you have to dive under supervision) where you get to experience scuba diving in shallow water. If you have questions on the different possibilities just ask me. What are you looking for topside ( good food, night life or not so much night life, lots of activities, good beaches)? If you give me the answers to some of those questions I can give you better advice on where to go. Some places have great diving and are more laid back, some are more fast pace. It depends on what you are into. I'll list some additional places (In addition to those Jake mentioned, but if you give some details on what you are looking for I can narrow it down for you): British Virgin Islands (located very close and in ferry range to St. John's (one of the US Virgin Islands)- I used to work there so I know it pretty well.: St Martin/St. Maarten Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, turks and Caicos, St Lucia/St Vincent/Grenadines And there is always Key Largo/Keys/Miami There are some others, but they may be cost prohibitive David

Sounds good to me.

The discussion we had before centered on the possibility of funding academic research projects. The concerns raised in that thread concerned the potential complexities involved in establishing a small grant system. In addition there were also suggestions that members of the club would be more ammenable to funding research directly related to the hobby. This suggestion is not the same thing. Here we have a single very modest request for help for a project directly related to our hobby. They are asking for $2500 total to fund work that may impact the entire hobby. That's 1/6th the amount that the club has earmarked to build a tank for the National Aquarium in DC. If I recall correctly from our last meeting, we have a surplus of funds raised through MACNA (beyond that set aside for the tank build) that are supposed to be earmarked for projects/uses to help the hobby/and or education. If I am wrong about this, let me know. I am suggesting we as a club consider spending some fraction of $2500 to help get this study completed. I believe that we should also fund some initiatives in addition to the tank build with the money set aside for educational purposes. As such, I think our club has the capability to do more than just ask individual members for donations. As for enacting a policy to deal with how the club handles donations, I think that is a good idea and one I think we can handle. David

How about a donation/grant whatever you want to call it from the club?

And I explained, ad nauseum, that it doesn't because Wegman fails to take into account the hypothesis being tested (this is the applied part of statistics) or the errors made by MM (mainly because he was never asked to). Here's another another perspective http://www.pewclimate.org/what_s_being_don...ess/7_27_06.cfm Some pertinent excerpts:

Yeah, that is a bit of a stretch.