Have you ever wondered how results from scientific studies make their way into policy and influence government decisions? Read about the experiences of Sammie Buzzard, University of Reading, who spent her summer working for a government body in Westminster, London, UK. This summer I had the opportunity to take some time away from my usual Ph.D. work and spend 3 months working for the Government Of ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Cruising the Mediterranean: a first-hand account of a month at sea – Part 2
This week we feature the second instalment in this series, which follows the adventures of Simona Aracri, a PhD student at University of Southampton, and her colleagues. as they spent a month aboard a research vessel, cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Simona and the team of scientists aboard the boat documented their experiences via a blog. This time we discover that chemists are always kept busy on ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
Getting into open science
This was originally posted at: https://thewinnower.com/papers/2301-my-open-science-story It never really occurred to me not to be open. From the moment I started my PhD, I made a promise to myself that everything I did would be open and transparent. By this, I don’t just mean access to published papers – I wanted the data, and the information that I was generating to be freely available, and under ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Introducing the new EGU logo!
As part of a long-term effort to modernise EGU’s overall look, today we are introducing a new EGU logo. You will find the new logo on all EGU websites (including General Assembly and journal websites) and social media pages, as well as in Vienna in April, at the EGU 2016 General Assembly. The new logo retains elements of the previous one, including the circle with a tilted axis representing the Ea ...[Read More]
GeoSphere
Photo of the Week #49
This week’s photo is from my personal research and shows a precipitate that I generated in the lab one day of AgI (silver iodide) for analysis of 129I by accelerator mass spectrometry. I felt though that I wanted to verify the purity of the AgI so I quickly threw in on our scanning electron microscope to a) check the chemistry and b) take a picture. The image below shows an amalgam of AgI cr ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Imaggeo on Mondays: What a thin section has to say about the deformation of the Zagros Mountains
The impressive Zagros Orogeny, as seen from a bird’s-eye view, has featured on Imaggeo on Monday’s blog posts a few times recently. From its fluvial dissection features, through to a false colour LANDSAT 7 image which reveals a velociraptor hiding among fold and thrusts, we’ve looked at the broad scale structures which shape the Zagros mountains. This week, the scale changes entirely: we zoom righ ...[Read More]
GeoLog
GeoPolicy: What science policy & the European Union mean to EGU members
Since joining the EGU over a month ago as the Union’s Policy Fellow, Sarah Connors, has been hard at work getting to grips with the political landscape of the European Union and the role Earth scientists and EGU members at large can play in policy making. This is post the first of the new GeoPolicy Column. During her one year term Sarah will regularly contribute content to GeoLog on all things pol ...[Read More]
Cryospheric Sciences
Image of the Week: Under a Glacier
What is happening under a glacier? This is a difficult questions to answer as accessing the glacier bed is usually not that easy. Here, we are getting a rare glimpse of the different processes and materials that are often found at the ice-bed interface. The photograph shows both sediments and hard rock, clear ice and dirty ice, and of course flowing water. No wonder these processes are complicated ...[Read More]
GeoLog
Cruising the Mediterranean: a first-hand account of a month at sea – Part 1
Simona Aracri, a PhD student at University of Southampton, spent a month aboard the research vessel, R/V Minerva Uno, cruising the Mediterranean Sea. Simona and the team of scientists aboard the boat documented their experiences via blog. Over the coming weeks we’ll feature a few of the posts the team shared over the one month voyage: you can expect to find out what life aboard a large research ve ...[Read More]
An Atom's-Eye View of the Planet
Meteorite impact turns silica into stishovite in a billionth of a second
The Barringer meteor crater is an iconic Arizona landmark, more than 1km wide and 170 metres deep, left behind by a massive 300,000 tonne meteorite that hit Earth 50,000 years ago with a force equivalent to a ten megaton nuclear bomb. The forces unleashed by such an impact are hard to comprehend, but a team of Stanford scientists has recreated the conditions experienced during the first billionths ...[Read More]