Lauren Adams of Belgrade has become the first Montana State University student to win a place at a Fulbright summer program in England designed to encourage young scholars.
 
Adams, who has just finished her freshman year majoring in English writing in the College of Letters and Science, will spend four weeks at the University of Sussex in Brighton as part of the Fulbright 2018 U.K. Summer Institute. Adams is also an MSU Presidential Scholar, the university’s most prestigious scholarship, and is enrolled in the Honors College,

 
Adams said she is looking forward to an opportunity that allows “history, economics and culture to meet imagination and creativity.”
 
“Ultimately, I hope this work will enable me to establish worldwide friendships and come home a better learner and teacher,” she said.
 
Adams is one of 60 students selected by the Fulbright Commission to “undertake a demanding academic and cultural summer programs  at (nine) leading institutions in the U.K.”  While at the University of Sussex, Adams will take a course in children’s literature, interact with students throughout the world and travel to destinations throughout England studying British culture. Adams said she plans to hike through South Downs National Park, attend Shakespeare’s “Hamlet” at the Globe Theater and tour London, Brighton, Bath and Stonehenge.

 
Ilse-Mari Lee, dean of MSU’s Honors College, said the Fulbright Summer Institute is one of the most prestigious and selective summer scholarship programs worldwide for young scholars. She said that the opportunity will allow Adams to immerse herself in the riches of British children’s literature and culture.

 
“Lauren is an excellent writer and also a tutor in the Writing Center,” Lee said. “We know that upon her return, her Fulbright experience will not only enrich her own writing but also her work with her peers.”
 
Likewise, the MSU English department is also proud of Adam’s Fulbright, according to Ben Luebner, English professor.
 
“The opportunity to study under these circumstances for a summer in England will be of inestimable value to Lauren and her education, and we’ve no doubt that it will have a positive effect on the department as a whole upon her return,” he said.
 
Adams said she learned of the institute from an email sent to Honors College students about scholarships and other opportunities.
 
“I’ve never been outside of the U.S. so I thought it would be perfect for me,” she said. The rigorous competition included a personal interview, which Adams conducted via Skype.
 
Adams said she came to MSU interested in English writing and teaching. However, she said her first year studies expanded her horizons. She became fascinated with her studies in government and became deeply immersed in the study of economics, which she now intends to declare as a minor.
 
“And, I’m very glad that I got involved in the Honors College because it offers so many opportunities to students inside and outside the classroom,” Adams said.
 
Adams said that when she returns from the institute she will work in the MSU Writing Center with the incoming students in the university’s Hilleman Scholars Program, an enrichment program for incoming Montana freshmen who demonstrate academic and leadership promise.
 
For more information on the Fulbright 2018 U.K. Summer Institute, go to: http://www.fulbright.org.uk/going-to-the-uk/uk-summer-institutes.

The Living History Farm at the Museum of the Rockies will open its 2018 season on Saturday, May 26, and more than 1,000 visitors are expected over the Memorial Day weekend.
 
The Living History Farm is free and open to the public daily from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission to the main museum building is separate and costs $14.50 for adults and $9.50 for children ages 5 to 17. Children age 4 and under get in free.
 
The historically accurate, working, 1890s Montana homestead treats visitors to the sights, smells and activities of Montana's long-ago homesteading era. The Tinsley House, centerpiece of the Living History Farm, is the original home of the Tinsley family. Built in 1889 in Willow Creek, it was moved to the museum's grounds in 1986. Skilled, costumed interpreters will take visitors back in time as they cook over a wood-burning stove, demonstrate cooking skills and recipes from the 1890s, tend to the Heirloom Garden and forge iron in the blacksmith’s shop.

 
The museum also hosts its adult-focused monthly event, Hops & History, at the Living History Farm. Now in its fifth year, Hops & History takes place the last Tuesday of every month from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Led by MOR’s curator of history, Michael Fox, this year’s programs will be filled with brewing history trivia. Mixed into the talks, participants can answer trivia questions to win prizes from the featured brewery of the month.

 
Admission to Hops & History is $10 and includes a free beer glass and beer tastings. Montana Ale Works Community Partnership and Sidecar Bar Service sponsor the event. Guests must be age 21 or older to participate. Admission is limited and tickets are pre-sold on the museum’s website.
 
As part of the Living History Farm's outreach, the museum will offer adult home garden workshops with MSU Extension horticulture specialist Toby Day. The classes are “Maintaining, Restoring and Caring for Garden Tools  ” on Thursday, July 5, and “Introduction to Herb Gardens” on Thursday, Aug. 2. With small class sizes and expert instruction, these workshops will help both new gardeners and experts build healthy and productive gardens. Pre-registration is available through the museum's website, museumoftherockies.org.

The Museum of the Rockies invites its visitors to take a journey through a motley crew of legendary guitars in its latest exhibit: “Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked The World,” opening May 26 and running through Sept. 9.
 
Visitors can explore the history of the world’s most recognized musical instrument, experience diverse genres of music and discover the science of pitch and tone. Crossing over cultural boundaries, the guitar has made a significant impact on a wide variety of groups from cowboys to teenage rebels.
 
“The guitar is the most enduring icon in American history,” said HP Newquist, executive director and founder of the National Guitar Museum. “It has been around longer than baseball, basketball, soft drinks and sports cars.”
 
On display will be more than 60 guitars as part of the 100 historical artifacts aimed to immerse visitors in the heart of music with an eye toward the science and history behind the instrument. Visitors will learn how the selection of different materials and strings, fused with electromagnetism and amplification, create an elaborate device that has revolutionized music. Visitors will also be able to play a Guinness World Record-breaking 43 1/2-foot-long guitar.


The exhibition will include “Guitar: Music Monday” events from June 11 to Aug. 20. In the music industry, Bozeman is world-renowned for its acoustic guitars. From the Gibson Guitar factory to individual guitar craftsmen, guitars made in Bozeman are played by famous musicians around the world. This all-ages weekly event will celebrate Montana’s luthiers and local musicians. The schedule each Monday is as follows:

 
    •    10 a.m.–noon — Make Your Own Recycled Guitar (included with admission)
    •    Noon–1:30 p.m. —Music on the Plaza (free to the public)
    •    1:45–2:45 p.m. — Guided tour of  “Guitar: The Instrument That Rocked The World” (included with admission)
    •    2–4 p.m. — Inside a Guitar (included with admission)
 
“Guitar: An Evening with an Expert” events will occur on June 18, July 2, July 23 and Aug. 13 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. in the museum’s auditorium. Attendees can meet some of the experts, collectors and luthiers that have made Bozeman’s guitar industry what it is today; hear their stories; learn about the nuances that make each guitar unique; and listen to their handmade guitars. Light appetizers will follow the presentations in the museum lobby. Tickets to the evening presentations cost $8 for museum members and $12 for non-members.

The “Guitar” exhibit is included with regular museum admission. Tickets cost $14.50 for adults and $9.50 for children ages 5 to 17. Children age 4 and under get in free.

A new partnership between the Montana State University and Bozeman police departments will form a joint Special Victims Unit that will allow detectives from both agencies to work together to investigate major crimes in the city and on campus, with an emphasis on investigating sex crimes.
 
According to MSU Police Chief Frank Parrish, detectives in the SVU are specially trained to handle the complex issues that arise when people become victims of violent crime. The team approach will help SVU investigators see patterns and trends, he said, while improving the thoroughness and consistency of investigations across jurisdictions.

“MSU is a safe campus and the development of the SVU will further enhance our ability to protect our students,” Parrish said. “As the largest university in Montana, we have the increasing responsibility and privilege to protect our community, not only today but also in the future. Our students deserve our best, especially when the worst happens.”

Bozeman Police Chief Steve Crawford said his department is excited to partner with MSU.

“This is all done with the intent to continue our victim-centered approach, strengthen our investigative capacities and adopt a best practice approach to conducting these types of investigations,” Crawford said.
 
Crawford added that the team will continue to work closely with community partners in the Gallatin County Sexual Assault Response Team, the Multi-Disciplinary Team and the Child Advocacy Center.
 
Working these cases as a team rather than as individual agencies will provide more consistent investigations and help victims recover, Parrish and Crawford said. 

The Big Sky Community Organization (BSCO) was awarded $45,000 from a recently submitted Recreational Trails Program grant which is administered through the Montana Department of Fish, Wildlife & Parks. The funds will be used for Beehive Basin trailhead improvements.
 
With the purchase of 7.5 acres to become open space parkland, on which the Upper Beehive Basin trailhead is located, BSCO is designing improvements to add additional parking and needed trailhead amenities like a bear proof trash can, a toilet facility and an updated trailhead kiosk. These improvements will enhance the existing trailhead facilities and safety by protecting the land and reducing the number of vehicles parking on the roadway, allowing better access for emergency services and the public.


BSCO is also pleased to report raising over $5,400 from 48 donors during this year’s Give Big Gallatin Valley fundraising event, which will support this project. Thanks to LUXE Sprits & Sweets and Compass Café, the BSCO was able to host two tremendously successful donor lounges highlighting our plans for the trailhead. The BSCO increased the amount raised by 200% this year, thanks to increased exposure and awareness about what the funds would be used for. Prior to these two funding successes, BSCO had raised $219,275 from private donors for this project. We thank all our supporters for their generosity and believing in our mission.

The final funding piece for this project to be completed is in BSCO’s annual Big Sky Resort Area Tax District grant request. Please help support our request by sending a letter or email to the BSRAD Board at PO Box 160661, Big Sky, MT  59716 or info@resorttax.org or attending the question and answer session on June 4th at 1:00 p.m. at the Warren Miller Performing Arts Center to make a public comment in support. More information about our full BSRAD request, Beehive Basin and ways to be involved with us can be found on our web site www.bscomt.org.

June Art Walk Featured Artist: David Lustig
Opening Reception:  Friday, June 8th 6-8pm

Mixed media artist David Lustig has quite literally come back to his roots. When still a young boy he discovered a love of nature and art as he played in and sketched the woods around him. He attended Montana State University and graduated with a degree in landscape design, which gave him both the language and the skills to work with the local flora. He tried his hand at many different types of art media over the years, but it wasn’t until recently that he attempted a long-pondered idea that became the art he creates today.

Using natural elements like roots, twigs and branches, David emulates the organic forms found in nature. The materials for each piece are sustainably collected locally and then carefully manipulated into simple yet elegant forms. In one piece, gnarled roots intertwine to form the branches of a tree, and in another willow twigs in shades of red and yellow recreate the deceptively simple interplay of color and texture found along a creek bank. Each piece speaks of a long held respect for and love of nature, and allows the collector to bring a bit of the natural world inside their home. David’s sculptural, organic art pieces will be on display at Altitude Gallery during downtown Bozeman’s June Art Walk.

The reception will be held in Altitude Gallery, at 134 E. Main Street. Call 406-582-4472 or info@altitudegallerybozeman.com for more information.

In the fight against an invasive fish that has decimated Yellowstone National Park’s iconic cutthroat trout, a technology developed at Montana State University could help park managers more effectively locate fish for removal.
 
During recent flights over Yellowstone Lake in a small aircraft, MSU’s device was able to identify clusters of two or more lake trout to a depth of at least 26 feet, according to Joe Shaw, professor of electrical engineering in MSU’s Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering and co-author of a May 20 article describing the findings in the journal Applied Optics.

The lidar technology — so called because it operates similarly to radar by measuring reflections of harmless, non-visible pulses of laser light — could be used to more easily determine areas to target with gill netting, the main method that park managers use to capture non-native lake trout in an attempt to reverse the decline of native Yellowstone cutthroat trout, according to co-author and Yellowstone fisheries biologist Patricia Bigelow.

“It has the potential to be a great tool,” Bigelow said.

 
Lake trout, thought to have been introduced illegally into Yellowstone Lake in the 1980s, are efficient predators that eat a significant number of cutthroat trout, whose native range in Montana, Idaho and Wyoming has shrunk considerably in recent decades. Since lake trout were first observed in 1994 in the park’s largest water body — considered a stronghold of the remaining cutthroat trout population — the number of spawning cutthroat trout has declined nearly 99 percent in some areas.

The National Park Service spends $2 million annually to remove hundreds of thousands of lake trout from Yellowstone Lake. Boats position gill nets on the lake bottom and then haul entangled fish aboard, where the lake trout are killed and cutthroats released. The most effective time to cull the largest and most voracious lake trout is during spawning, when the fish group in relatively shallow water near the shore, according to Bigelow.

Currently, park managers locate the spawning areas using small transmitters surgically implanted into about 200 large lake trout. The transmitters emit distinct sound frequencies that park staff detect with boat-mounted acoustic sensors as they circle the lake. But because the lake is large and the boats must go slowly to operate the sensors, it can take days to survey the lake and locate the spawning fish and then relay the information to the gill netting boats, Bigelow said.

“Two big plusses of using he lidar tool are that we could fly the whole lake in a couple hours and that we could detect any fish in shallow water, not just the ones that have transmitters,” which could save time and money, Bigelow said.
 
Shaw said he was excited to see the project come to fruition after more than a decade of research and development. Prior to joining the faculty in MSU’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2001, he collaborated with National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration physicist and co-author Jim Churnside on the use of lidar for detecting ocean fish. When Shaw presented the research shortly after arriving at MSU, someone mentioned that it might also be applied to lake trout in Yellowstone, he recalled.

In 2004, Shaw borrowed NOAA’s fish-detecting lidar device — which was so large that it had to be flown in a multi-propeller plane — and conducted a trial run over Yellowstone Lake. The results were promising enough that park managers decided to send gill netting boats to a remote part of the lake where they otherwise seldom operated, according to Bigelow. The boats captured many lake trout in a short time, she said.

Contracting the large plane was expensive, however. So Shaw began to design a much smaller version of the lidar device that would be more affordable and more appropriate for flying over the lake. “The goal was to build something that would fit in a single-engine Cessna,” he said.
 
Shaw’s team, which included then-MSU doctoral student and co-author Michael Roddewig, succeeded in doing that by using an efficient laser produced by local photonics company Quantel. During flights in a small aircraft over Yellowstone Lake in 2015 and 2016, the team demonstrated that the new device could effectively locate groups of spawning lake trout. The publishing of the results, Shaw noted, coincided almost to the day with the invention of the laser 58 years ago.

Shaw said the tool could continue to be improved and incorporated into Yellowstone’s operations. For instance, producing maps of the spawning locations currently requires sophisticated data processing, but a more user-friendly interface could be developed. The tool could also be adapted for other uses, including studying layers of plankton or sediments suspended in lakes or even rivers, he said.

“I’m delighted that we can do something useful for the Yellowstone ecosystem, because it’s a special place,” Shaw said.

Montana State University scientists have found a new lineage of microbes living in Yellowstone National Park’s thermal features that sheds light on the origin of life, the evolution of archaeal life and the importance of iron in early life.

Professor William Inskeep and his team of researchers published their findings May 14 in the scientific journal Nature Microbiology.

"The discovery of archaeal lineages is critical to our understanding of the universal tree of life and evolutionary history of the Earth," the group wrote. "Geochemically diverse thermal environments in Yellowstone National Park provide unprecedented opportunities for studying archaea in habitats that may represent analogues of early Earth."

Archaea is one of the three domains of life, the others being bacteria and eukaryotes. Like bacteria, archaea are single-cell organisms. The eukaryote domain contains more cellularly complex organisms, such as humans, other animals, plants and fungi.

The scientists called the new archaeal lineage Marsarchaeota after Mars, the red planet, because these organisms thrive in habitats containing iron oxides. Within Marsarchaeota, they discovered two main subgroups that live throughout Yellowstone and thrive in hot, acidic water where iron oxide is the main mineral. One subgroup lives in water above 122 degrees Fahrenheit, and the other lives in water above 140 to 176 degrees. The water is about as acidic as grapefruit juice. Their microbial mats are red because of the iron oxide.

"It's interesting that the habitat of these organisms contains (iron) minerals similar to those found on the surface of Mars," Inskeep said.

He added that microbes produce iron oxide, but the Marsarchaeota do not. They might be involved in reducing iron into a simpler form, "which is important from an early Earth standpoint. Iron cycling has been implicated as being extremely important in early Earth conditions."

The Marsarchaeota live fairly deep in microbial mats, but they still require low levels of oxygen, Inskeep said. The subgroups are so abundant that, together, they can account for as much as half of the organisms living within a single microbial mat.

The scientists studied microbial mats throughout Yellowstone. Microorganisms in these “microbial beaver dams” produce iron oxide that creates terraces, which, in turn, block streams. As water (only a couple of millimeters deep) runs over the terraces, oxygen is captured from the atmosphere and supplied to the Marsarchaeota.

"Physics comes together with chemistry and microbiology," Inskeep said. "It's like a sweet spot of conditions that this group of organisms likes."

In addition to learning more about life on early Earth and the potential for life on Mars, Inskeep said the research can help scientists understand more about high-temperature biology.

"Knowing about this new group of archaea provides additional pieces of the puzzle for understanding high-temperature biology," he said. "That could be important in industry and molecular biology."

The work that resulted in the Nature Microbiology paper was the culmination of research that took place over the past decade, said Inskeep, who has studied the geochemistry and microbiology of Yellowstone's high-temperature environments for the last 20 years. Inskeep is a professor of geomicrobiology in MSU's Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences in the College of Agriculture and co-founder of MSU's Thermal Biology Institute.

The lead authors of the Nature Microbiology paper earned their doctorates at MSU and were part of NSF's Integrative Graduate Education and Research Traineeship (IGERT) program while at MSU. Zackary Jay is now a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering in the Norm Asbjornson College of Engineering and the Center for Biofilm Engineering at MSU. Jacob Beam is now a postdoctoral researcher at Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences at East Boothbay, Maine.

“In the end, after many years of work, it’s exciting, and a relief, to have our team’s work recognized and published, particularly in a high impact journal,” Jay said.

Other co-authors were Mensur Dlakic from MSU's Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the College of Letters and Science and College of Agriculture; Douglas Rusch from the Center for Bioinformatics at Indiana University; and Mark Kozubal from the Thermal Biology Institute, MSU's Department of Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, and Sustainable Bioproducts in Bozeman.

The Yellowstone research was a collaboration involving the Thermal Biology Institute, the Montana Agricultural Experiment Station (MAES) and the Yellowstone Center for Resources (National Park Service). Funding came from IGERT, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and MAES. The U.S. Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute in Walnut Creek, California, sponsored the genetic sequencing.