Next Tuesday (19th June) the POLAR18 Open Science Conference kicks off in Davos, Switzerland. We have put together a quick guide about events that might be of interest to you during the week! Conferences are about the science, of course, but the social side is just as important :) What is POLAR18? The eagle-eyed among you will have spotted that the POLAR18 conference is, in fact, a collection of d ...[Read More]
Many polar scientists who have traveled to Svalbard have heard several times how most of the stuff there is the “northernmost” stuff, e.g. the northernmost university, the northernmost brewery, etc. Despite hosting the four northernmost cities and towns, Svalbard is however accessible easily by “usual-sized” planes at least once per day from Oslo and Tromsø. This is not the case for th ...[Read More]
We’ve all attended conferences with those dreaded 15-minute talks and we have no problem picking out which talks were amazing and which talks were abysmal. However, when it comes to our own talks, it’s hard to judge them, find out how they can be improved or break away from long-established habits (such as our layout or talking pace). This week, Matthew Herman, postdoc at the Tectonoph ...[Read More]
Name of proxy Levoglucosan Type of record Biomass burning Paleoenvironment Lake and marine sediments and ice cores Period of time investigated Present to approximately 130,000 years ago How does it work? Levoglucosan is a molecule that is exclusively formed during the combustion of vegetation at low-temperature. It is therefore considered to be a source-specific tracer for biomass burning. During ...[Read More]
At some point in your career, usually, sooner than later, you will need to write a grant proposal to ensure yourself a paid research position. Funding agencies are out there waiting to receive your great and original ideas and possibly grant you some money to transform these ideas into actual science. One can spend an entire day just researching on the internet the best funding scheme. To h ...[Read More]
Early career scientists studying polar climate are one lucky group! The 29 young scientists who took part in the 10 day Polar Prediction School this year were no exception. They travelled to Arctic Sweden to learn and discuss the challenges of polar prediction and to gain a better understanding of the physical aspects of polar research. The Year of Polar Prediction The Year of Polar Prediction (YO ...[Read More]
Congratulations again to Sara Bruni for receiving the Geodesy Division Outstanding Early Career Scientist Award 2018! A summary of her research on new findings in the gravity field time series from Medicina is posted below. Maybe you know an Early Career Scientist who does as outstanding work as Sara Bruni does? Nomination is the first crucial step in order to receive an award, don’t let this oppo ...[Read More]
Mind Your Head is a blog series dedicated towards addressing mental health in the academic environment and highlighting solutions relieving stress in daily academic life. Research has shown that almost 50% of people working in academia suffer from mental health issues (e.g. Winefield et al. 2003; The Graduate Assembly at the University of California Berkeley 2015; Levecque et al. 2017). Factors li ...[Read More]
Being a stratigrapher or not, there’s one stratum you have all trod upon if you ever went to the General Assembly (GA), without probably noticing it. The uppermost unit of EGU’s GA floor, a ca. 5 mm thick layer with a soft rubbery texture and peculiar light-grey colour, outcropping over the whole poster halls: Carpet! Yes, the focus of this post is the carpet draping the GA’s floor wit ...[Read More]
View of the Medicina observatory. The site hosts a superconducting gravimeter (SG) installed in a dedicated building next to a piezometer. Local height variations are monitored by means of two GPS stations, located at the end of the N-S segment of the “North Cross” radio telescope. The two GPS stations are about 30 m apart and are close to a VLBI antenna. ...[Read More]
