On Oct 26, graduate students Yezi Yang and Cece Wood organized a lab visit for Senator Mark Warner staffers, Adam Kubiske and Caroline Broom. During the one-hour visit, the staffers toured facilities of the VT Biogeochemistry Lab and the VT Chemical Hydrogeology Lab. They learned about the research projects that federal funding has made possible, from Ben's famous Alaska field trip, Rachel's two-meter-thick bat guano samples, to Fe/Mn cycling in Virginia's reservoirs. Ben Gill, Rachel Reid, Maddy Schreiber, Nick Hammond, Abby Lewis, and Mary Verne also contributed to the visit - team work!

Members of VT-Geosciences attended the GRACE Science Team Meeting in Potsdam Germany last week. The group gave five oral presentations during the 3-day conference: two by Khosro Ghobadi Far, two by Susanna Werth and one by Grace Carlson.

Those of you who receive the daily news email from Virginia Tech (VTX) probably enjoy the Daily Doodle at the bottom of the email, drawn by Steven White. Last week one of the doodles featured our own Dr. Brian Romans and his sed/strat class on a field trip to an outcrop on the Little River Dam. Brian cuts a rather imposing figure in the drawing (is that why the student on the right is trying to crawl away?).