Student seminars

Today I traveled with the INRA team by bus to Chambery to the University Savoie Mont Blanc to listen to 19 student talks. Most of the talks were in French, but a few kind students presented in English. They had been encouraged to use English text in their presentations which was very kind and helpful + good practice for them. Here is a photo taken during a break.

Here are some things I learned (in no way ordered by importance):

1) One can model reasonably well the thermal regime of a large lake in 3 dimensions.

2) Diatom communities of French Alpine lakes generally fall into nine categories.

3) Peridibactor starrii is the most common predacious bacteria in French alpine lakes and during the "attack" phase of life they are highly mobile.

4) Year after year the same macrophytes are dominant in Lake Bourget.

5) Trianophorus nodulosus is a common parasite in the livers of perch in Lake Annecy & other French lakes.

6) Fish in Chasma Reservoir, Pakistan, eat some mud during winter when phytoplankton and macro-invertebrate numbers are low.

7) The mean temperature of the top 10 m of Lake Geneva has increased 2 degrees from 1970 to the present.

8) Phosphorous levels in Lakes Bourget and Geneva have been in steady decline.

9) Regime shifts in lakes can be large, abrupt & persistent.

10) Char eggs incubated at 5 degrees in a lab survive at higher rates than eggs raised @ 8.5 degrees.

11) Char egg survival declines with increasing turbidity in the lab.

12) The effect of copper & sulphamethoxazole on Char egg survival is under investigation.

13) Mayotte is an island near Madagascar.

14) Copper & arsenic can reduce benthic bacteria in lakes.

15) The effects of pharmaceuticals on lake microalgal communities is going to be studied.

16) Indices of stream water quality as measured with morphology and DNA bar codes provide similar   results. 

17) I wasn't the only scientist to have the warm winter of 2015-16 foil a study of ice in a large lake. It happened also on Lake Ladoga.  Thankfully the nearby Lake Onega did freeze.

18) I learned Mercedez Benz makes a very nice bus.

The students and their advisors can now judge how well I can learn from listening to French speakers. The students, everyone of them, did great in my opinion. It was a day to celebrate the great educations they are receiving!