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Dèlia Arnold Arias will present "Emergency response activities and modeling at ZAMG," 12 p.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 2. The talk will be held in the Globe Room in the Elvey Building, 903 Koyukuk Drive at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Arias is an academic consultant with the Austrian Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, known as ZAMG.

She will give examples of how the ZAMG would respond to airborne radioactive transmissions or volcanic ash using timely weather information and atmospheric dispersion calculations. In addition, the backtracking response systems ZAMG provides as Regional Specialized Meteorological Center will be discussed.

For more information, contact: Dèlia Arnold Arias at Delia.arnold arias [at] zamg.ac.at or Gerhard.wotawa [at] zamg.ac.at

On the web: www.zamg.ac.at or https://www.facebook.com/zamg.at

Indigenous people in Canada (First Nations, Inuit and Métis) experience significant health disparities on every major health indicator, including lower life expectancies and higher infant mortality rates while Indigenous peoples continue to be under-serviced for health care, and do not have the same access to healthcare providers as other Canadians.

To address some of these needs, we have created the Indigenous Health Conference which is an interdisciplinary event that will take place November 20th and 21st 2014 in Toronto. The Conference Committee primarily consists of members who are Indigenous healthcare providers and/or individuals with extensive experience working with Indigenous populations.

This conference would be of interest to healthcare providers (physicians, nurses, nurse practitioners, social workers, community health representatives, rehab, etc.), but also to policy makers, and public health specialists. The conference objectives are to facilitate the translation and dissemination of knowledge and improve cultural sensitivity about Indigenous health in Canada. In addition the Job Fair would help match providers with working opportunities with Indigenous peoples, both rural and urban.

It is believed that through examining the evidence and creating dialogue with Indigenous peoples, experts in the field and healthcare providers, we can help create better educated, more culturally competent health care providers for Indigenous peoples. In turn, this will improve the health care service, improve the understanding of healthcare needs, help formulate community-based research questions and improve advocacy for Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Conference objectives include:

• Discuss health disparities & burden of disease among Indigenous peoples in Canada, highlighting certain conditions with a high burden of disease.
• Start a dialogue about potential long term solutions towards health equity.
• Challenge stereotypes and misperceptions about Indigenous peoples in Canada.
• Discuss cultural competencies and safety in working with First Nations, Inuit and Métis populations.
• Job Fair to facilitate matching healthcare providers with working opportunities with Indigenous populations.

We would like to inform you about the 6th EUMETSAT Ocean and Sea Ice SAF Users Workshop will be held in Toulouse, France, on 19th and 20th November 2014. The objectives of the Workshop are to provide a forum for users to present and discuss experiences and requirements on satellite based products and services, and to present and discuss the provision of products and services by the OSI SAF.

This is a great opportunity for users to meet OSI SAF teams and discuss about our current and future products.

For those of you not familiar with the OSI SAF products, you can have a look here:

• http://www.osi-saf.org/ (main portal, all products)
• http://osisaf.met.no/ (high latitude portal)

Since 2002, the OSI SAF produces, controls quality and distributes, in near real-time, operational ocean observation products, with the necessary users support activities. The OSI SAF provides also some long term data records through reprocessing activities.

Permanent Research and Development activities allow to enhance the algorithms and products, and to take into account new satellites. The OSI SAF organizes regular User Workshops to stimulate the discussion between users and OSI SAF partners, and to collect input and guidance for future evolutions of its products and services.

For more information about the workshop, please visit the workshop link above.

The Alaska Ocean Observing System (AOOS) is celebrating their 10th anniversary. The celebration will include: drinks and hors d'oeurves, short films from the AOOS Film Contest and guest speakers, and highlights from 10 years of ocean monitoring in Alaska.

When: Wednesday, November 19, 6:30 - 8:30 PM
Where: Anchorage Museum, 625 C Street, Anchorage, AK
Questions: Email Darcy Dugan at dugan [at] aoos.org.

Jackie Grebmeier (UMCES) and Sue Moore (NOAA/Fisheries) will present a webinar for the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy (ACCAP) on "A Tale of Two Synthesis Efforts: The PacMARS and SOAR Programs".

Over the past 2-3 years, the PacMARS and SOAR programs have focused the efforts of a suite of researchers, Arctic residents and resource managers on providing a synthesis of existing information regarding the state of the Pacific Arctic marine ecosystem. While the two programs have similar goals, the approach taken by each can be likened to the ‘tortoise/SOAR and hare/PacMARS’ story.

The Synthesis of Arctic Research (SOAR/5 year program), supported by the BOEM, Alaska Region, was initiated in 2011 with the overarching goal to increase scientific understanding of the relationships among oceanographic conditions, benthic organisms, lower trophic prey species (forage fish and zooplankton), seabirds, and marine mammal distribution and behavior in the Pacific Arctic – with results of this effort the publication of peer-reviewed papers as a ‘special issue’ of a science journal coupled to outreach communications to local residents, resource managers and the public (http://www.arctic.noaa.gov/soar/).

The Pacific Marine Arctic Synthesis (PacMARS/2 year program), supported by the North Pacific Research Board (NPRB), was initiated in 2012, with the overall goal to provide guidance for scientific research needs in the region, as well as to serve stakeholder needs for understanding this important ecosystem and its vulnerabilities – with results of this effort the publication of a final report listing all relevant data sources and the establishment of a data portal to provide efficient access to these data for scientists, resource managers and the public (http://pacmars.cbl.umces.edu/).

Jackie Grebmeier (UMCES) and Sue Moore (NOAA/Fisheries) will provide a joint presentation on the PacMARS and SOAR programs, including the intent from the outset that the two synthesis efforts be complimentary.

Pre-registration for webinars is strongly encouraged. The audio portion of the call is through a toll-free phone line and the slide presentation is streamed via computer. For instructions on participating through your home office or at a satellite viewing location with others in your community, please see our webinar information page (https://accap.uaf.edu/?q=webinars).

The theme for this year's Symposium will be Worldwide Chokepoints and Maritime Risks. "Chokepoint" is a common military strategy term that refers to any enclosed space, corridor, or area where large numbers of personnel and/or resources are forced to pass through, with no reasonable alternate routes. Within the maritime environment, geographical features such as a strait or canal are considered chokepoints. The event is hosted by the Homeland Security Center of the University of Southern California.

The NOAA Marine Debris Program provides funding to catalyze the implementation of locally-driven, community-based marine debris prevention, assessment, and removal projects that will benefit coastal habitat, waterways, and NOAA trust resources. Funding for this purpose comes through the NOAA Marine Debris Program as appropriations to the Office of Response and Restoration, National Ocean Service. The funding is, in part, administered through a grant competition with the NOAA Restoration Center’s Community-based Restoration Program. Projects awarded through this grant competition have strong on-the-ground habitat restoration components involving the removal of marine debris, including derelict fishing gear. Projects also provide benefits to coastal communities, and create long-term ecological habitat improvements for NOAA trust resources. Through this solicitation NOAA id entifies marine debris removal projects, strengthens the development and implementation of habitat restoration through community-based marine debris removal, and fosters awareness of the effects of marine debris to further the conservation of living marine resource habitats, as well as contribute to the understanding of debris types and impacts. Successful proposals through this solicitation will be funded through cooperative agreements. Funding of up to $2,000,000 is expected to be available for Community-based Marine Debris Removal Project Grants in FY2015. Typical awards will range from $50,000 to $150,000.

Proposals are due by November 17, 2014.

This is the last of three in-person meetings over the course of the year which were focused on implementation and final recommendations. Final recommendations will be reviewed and the report finalized.

All meetings are webcast live at www.AKL.tv. For more information, contact Nikoosh Carlo, Executive Director at nikoosh.carlo [at] akleg.gov.

The 2nd Workshop on Sustainable Software for Science: Practice and Experiences is to be held in conjunction with SC14, Sunday, 16 November 2014, New Orleans, LA, USA.

Progress in scientific research is dependent on the quality and accessibility of software at all levels and it is critical to address challenges related to the development, deployment, and maintenance of reusable software as well as education around software practices. These challenges can be technological, policy based, organizational, and educational, and are of interest to developers (the software community), users (science disciplines), and researchers studying the conduct of science (science of team science, science of organizations, science of science and innovation policy, and social science communities).

The WSSSPE1 workshop (http://wssspe.researchcomputing.org.uk/WSSSPE1) engaged the broad scientific community to identify challenges and best practices in areas of interest for sustainable scientific software. At WSSSPE2, we invite the community to propose and discuss specific mechanisms to move towards an imagined future practice of software development and usage in science and engineering. The workshop will include multiple mechanisms for participation, encourage team building around solutions, and identify risky solutions with potentially transformative outcomes. Participation by early career students and postdoctoral researchers is strongly encouraged.

We invite short (4-page) actionable papers that will lead to improvements for sustainable software science. These papers could be a call to action, or could provide position or experience reports on sustainable software activities. The papers will be used by the organizing committee to design sessions that will be highly interactive and targeted towards facilitating action. Submitted papers should be archived by a third-party service that provides DOIs. We encourage submitters to license their papers under a Creative Commons license that encourages sharing and remixing, as we will combine ideas (with attribution) into the outcomes of the workshop.

The organizers will invite one or more submitters of provocative papers to start the workshop by presenting highlights of their papers in a keynote presentation to initiate active discussion that will continue throughout the day.

Areas of interest for WSSSPE2, include, but are not limited to:

• defining software sustainability in the context of science and engineering software
• how to evaluate software sustainability
• improving the development process that leads to new software
• methods to develop sustainable software from the outset
• effective approaches to reusable software created as a by-product of research
• impact of computer science research on the development of scientific software
• recommendations for the support and maintenance of existing software
• software engineering best practices
• governance, business, and sustainability models
• the role of community software repositories, their operation and sustainability
• reproducibility, transparency needs that may be unique to science
• successful open source software implementations
• incentives for using and contributing to open source software
• transitioning users into contributing developers
• building large and engaged user communities
• developing strong advocates
• measurement of usage and impact
• encouraging industry¹s role in sustainability
• engagement of industry with volunteer communities
• incentives for industry
• incentives for community to contribute to industry-driven projects
• recommending policy changes
• software credit, attribution, incentive, and reward
• issues related to multiple organizations and multiple countries, such as intellectual property, licensing, etc.
• mechanisms and venues for publishing software, and the role of publishers
• improving education and training
• best practices for providing graduate students and postdoctoral researchers in domain communities with sufficient training in software development
• novel uses of sustainable software in education (K-20)
• case studies from students on issues around software development in the undergraduate or graduate curricula
• careers and profession
• successful examples of career paths for developers
• institutional changes to support sustainable software such as promotion and tenure metrics, job categories, etc.

Submissions:

Submissions of up to four pages should be formatted to be easily readable and submitted to an open access repository that provides unique identifiers (e.g., DOIs) that can be cited, for example http://arXiv.org or http://figshare.com.

Once you have received an identifier for your self-published paper from a repository, submit it to WSSSPE2 by creating a new submission at https://www.easychair.org/conferences/?conf=wssspe2, and entering:

• Author information for all authors
• Title
• Abstract (with the identifier as the first line of the abstract, for example, http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.791606 or http://arxiv.org/abs/1404.7414 or alternative)
• At least three keywords
• Tick the abstract only box Do not submit the paper itself through EasyChair; the identifier in the abstract that points to the paper is sufficient.

Deadline for Submission:

14 July 2014 (any time of day, no extensions)

Travel Support

Funds are available to support participation in WSSSPE2 by 1) US-based students, early-career researchers, and members of underrepresented groups; and 2) participants who would not otherwise attend the SC14 conference. Priority will be given to those who have submitted papers and can make a compelling case for how their participation will strengthen the overall workshop and/or positively impact their future research or educational activities.

Submissions for travel support will be accepted from September 1st to September 15th 2014 following instructions posted on the workshop web site.

Financial support to enable this has been generously provided by
1) the National Science Foundation and
2) the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.

Important Dates:

• July 14, 2014 Paper submission deadline
• September 1, 2014 Author notification
• September 15, 2014 Funding request submission deadline
• September 22, 2014 Funding decision notification
• November 16, 2014 WSSSPE2 Workshop2

IARPC Collaboration Teams meet on a regular basis to implement the Arctic Research Plan: FY 2013-2017. Most meetings are open to the Arctic research community. Collaboration teams facilitate communication and collaboration between Federal agencies, the academic community, industry, non-governmental organizations, and State, local and tribal groups.

Contact Sara Bowden, bowden [at] arcus.org, if you would like to join this meeting.