Lis has been studying, investigating, deconvoluting, cross-correlating, referencing, inverting, plotting, database searching … and whatnot. With just a few synapses still firing at all cylinders and demonstrating an uninterrupted dispense of productivity, she wonders: Should I start my own (geodynamics…?) online video channel? Dear Lis, Why not? Everyone’s not working properly anyways in this day- ...[Read More]
In this weeks Wit & Wisdom, revisit some cybersecurity 101 nuggets! We are not even half-way through 2021 and I can list more than a handful of occasions where my cyber-safety, both private and professional, was jeopardised (that I have been made aware of, the actual number is probably much higher). The Dutch research council was hacked1 (ransomware; documents leaked after refusal to pay; fund ...[Read More]
Sitting here and enjoying the view on the third rock from the Sun, Nana wants to get into the details. The whole may be more than the sum of the parts, but those parts can be pretty interesting too: What’s the most important rock? Dear Nana, I so value your decision to contact me; I decided to take your question very seriously and do some actual research. Method: how many abstracts were subm ...[Read More]
Due to huge difference between the time scale of the mantle convection and the outer core convection, they are modelled separately. In this week’s News and Views, Masaki Yoshida from the Volcanoes and Earth’s Interior Research Center, Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC), Japan, put forward the recent development on the modeling of the whole solid-Earth. The E ...[Read More]
PhD students’ struggles are alike; each succeed in their own way[1] It was a Friday morning, and nearly 3 years had passed since I arrived at Sydney. This meant, I only had one month left to submit my thesis! No sooner had I entered my office than a feeling of anxiety had found me. I had no time to dig deep into my own thoughts to discover what was happening, although it was obvious. Instead, I re ...[Read More]
After a year of being glued to screens, Matej can sadly only keep up with one tab at a time and asks with intense FOMO: What have I missed from vEGU 2021? Dear Matej, Oh, dear! This week has been truly intense, and I do not blame your Internet bandwidth for not keeping up with all the parallel discussions and science from vEGU. In fact, it turns out that on Monday the conference platform was taken ...[Read More]
We are still in a lockdown and we can still use some entertainment for when we stare at the same four walls for hours on end or go on our daily walk. Fear not, dear reader, I have got just the thing for you in these troubling times: the new podcast Geology Bites hosted by Oliver Strimpel: www.geologybites.com. Don’t fret about the name, there’s plenty of geodynamics content as well. In ...[Read More]
Maddie is in the final stretch of her PhD track. Whilst finalizing the last couple of figures and jotting down the last couple of paragraphs for her thesis, she checks the institutional web pages for job opportunities ferociously. Coming up blank, she mutters: How important is a social network for obtaining a future job in academia? Dear Maddie, It is absolutely paramount. You don’t seriously thin ...[Read More]
Geodynamists usually do at least a bit of programming, but in many cases a lot of programming, although that might just be my academic bubble. Most of that programming is done in programming languages that have been around at least since the 80’s (Fortran, C and C++) or early 90’s (Python). These programming languages have of course evolved considerably over time, but new languages keep popping up ...[Read More]
First the worst, second the best, third the one with a hairy chest! Gemma used to chant that in the playground, but now she wonders if it also applies to PhDs. I am not happy with my PhD. Should I do a second? Dear Gemma, That sounds like a great idea! Everyone who’s finished a PhD knows they could do it again in half the time, unless you had a supervisor with supernatural managerial abiliti ...[Read More]
