International GeoBiology Summer Course - A Renewal

一群科学家、教育家和专家将于2008年主持一个夏季课程，为来自美国各地的15名研究生提供地理生物学入门课程。这门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寻常的地方，那里的能源供应稀少，但生命却蓬勃发展，那里的矿化正在积极地捕捉生物和非生物过程的证据，那里存在现代和化石生物特征。在实地考察之后，课程参与者将在科罗拉多矿业学院进行4-5天的实验室工作，学习分子生物学、克隆和序列分析。该小组将搬到卡塔利娜岛的南加州大学箭牌实验室。从绿河地层采集的精选样品将提取有机化合物。学生也将有机会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镜。学生的项目将由访问教师指导，并将编写最终报告/海报/演示文稿。在此期间，将有更多客座教授的讲座和项目的实验室工作。学生们在卡塔琳娜的课程将包括热力学和建模。总的来说，2008年的暑期课程将持续三周。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、在卡塔利娜岛海洋实地站的学院氛围中以及在实验室工作台上的密切互动，促进了学生与教师和学生之间的互动。

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.