International GeoBiology Summer Course - A Renewal

一个由科学家、教育工作者和专家组成的小组将在2008年领导一个暑期课程，向来自美国各地的15名研究生介绍地质生物学。该课程包括将地球历史与现代系统研究相结合，反之亦然。夏季体验将从科罗拉多州的戈尔登开始，然后参观黄石温泉及其周围的景点，以及怀俄明州西部的绿河地层。学生们将看到一些不同寻常的地方，那里的能源供应稀少，但生命却欣欣向荣，矿化正在积极地捕捉生物和非生物过程的证据，以及现代和化石生物签名的存在。在实地考察之后，课程参与者将在科罗拉多矿业学院聚集4-5天，做实验室工作，学习分子生物学、克隆和序列分析。该小组将搬到位于卡塔琳娜岛的南加州大学箭牌实验室。从绿河组收集的精选样本将被提取有机化合物。学生还将获得薄片的岩石学分析(提前获得)，并将使用一种新的环境扫描电子显微镜。学生专题将由客座教师指导，并将收集期末报告/海报/演示文稿。在此期间，将有更多客座教师的讲座和项目的实验室工作。在卡特琳娜学院，学生们将学习热力学和模型方面的课程。2008年夏季课程总共为期三周。通过以团队为导向、以研究为基础的课程，以及他们在实地考察期间、卡塔琳娜岛海洋野战站的大学氛围中以及实验室台面上的密切互动，促进了学生与教师和学生与学生的互动。

A group of scientists, educators and experts will lead a summer course in 2008 that will provide 15 graduate students from around the US an introduction to Geobiology. The course includes integrating earth history into studies of modern systems, and vice versa. The summer experience will start in Golden, Colorado and then visit sites in and around Yellowstone Hot Springs and also the Green River Formation in W. Wyoming. Students will be seeing unusual sites where energy supplies are rare yet life thrives, where mineralization is actively capturing evidence of biotic and abiotic processes and where modern and fossil biosignatures are present. Following the field trip, course participants will convene for 4-5 days at the Colorado School of Mines to do lab work and learn about molecular biology, cloning and sequence analysis. The group will move to the USC Wrigley lab on Catalina Island. Select samples, collected from the Green River Formation, will be extracted for organic compounds. Students will also have access to petrologic analyses of thin sections (obtained ahead of time) and will use a novel environmental SEM. Student projects will be guided by visiting faculty and a final report/poster/presentation will be assembled. During this time, there will be more lectures from visiting faculty and lab work on projects. Among the instruction that will occur while students are at Catalina will be lessons on thermodynamics and modeling. In total, the 2008 summer course will be three weeks in duration. The student-instructor and student-student interactions are facilitated through a team-oriented, research-based curriculum and by their close interactions during field trips, in the collegial atmosphere of the marine field station on Catalina Island, and across the laboratory bench-top.