This isn’t strictly a photograph but an artist’s impression of a new satellite launching soon that will hopefully change the pace and advancement of a satellite remote sensing technique I use in my PhD, InSAR. Sentinel-1 will be the first of five European Space Agency (ESA) satellites to be launched as part of Europe’s Global Monitoring for Environment and Security (GMES) ‘Coper ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
GfGD National Conference – Two Weeks To Go!
For those of you attending our National Conference, taking place at the Geological Society in two weeks time (limited tickets are still available), we would like to draw your attention to some important reading material. A number of the articles we have selected are available to read online. Others may be found in your university libraries. Based on this reading material we are very keen to hear t ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
Green tea and Velociraptors turns into beer and dwarf crocodiles
I’m in Berlin. I’ve just managed to find a chicken donner kebab, and am pausing research briefly to write this. I’m currently on leave from London, with a ridiculously hectic couple of months ahead: I’ve just been to Munich to see a dwarf crocodile specimen, Alligatorellus beaumonti (from Bavaria), which conveniently happened to coincide with Oktoberfest, and am now here to ...[Read More]
Polluting the Internet
An aerosol is born: solving the nucleation recipe
One of the most fundamental aspects of aerosols that we are continually striving to understand is how they are actually born. One pathway that aerosol particles can take is a process known as “nucleation“. This nucleation process is where new particles are formed by gaseous molecules getting together and deciding that they’ve had enough of the gas-phase and would prefer to be tin ...[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Conference diaries: Goldschmidt 2013
Following on from Mel Auker’s report on her visit to Japan for the The IAVCEI Scientific Assembly, Bristol PhD students Kate Hibbert and Sorcha McMahon tell us about their recent trip to Florence for Goldschmidt 2013. What? The annual Goldschmidt conference is a major geochemistry conference, alternating between Europe and North America each year. With over 4,000 delegates from all over the ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Blog Competition (Highly Commended) – Ekbal Hussain: In the Name Of Allah, the Most Merciful
For our Blog Competition 2013, we asked for people to submit articles addressing one of two topics. Ekbal’s article discusses the role of religion in disaster management, and his entry was highly commended by our judging panel. Ekbal is currently a PhD student at the University of Leeds. His work involves geodetic monitoring of strain accumulation along the North Anatolian Fault in Turkey. ...[Read More]
Geology for Global Development
Friday Photo (99) – Fitting Life Around Geology
Geology exerts a strong control on landscape, agriculture and infrastructure in Ladakh, India. Here the road (left hand side) is cut into softer glacial moraines, rather than the igneous and metamorphic bedrock. Agriculture is centered on alluvial material from a river predominantly fed by glacial meltwater. (c) Geology for Global Development 2013
Polluting the Internet
The role of aerosol uncertainty in climate change
For those who follow [pun intended] the world of climate science on Twitter, you’ll very likely have noticed a string of tweets from a meeting at the Royal Society on the “Next steps in climate science“. The programme (PDF here) has included a wide range of topics relating to climate science and has included a number of scientists who heavily contributed to the recent IPCC Workin ...[Read More]
Between a Rock and a Hard Place
Science Snap (6): SEM images of a high-pressure experiment
Sorcha McMahon is a third year PhD student in the School of Earth Sciences at the University of Bristol. Sorcha is investigating how strange igneous rocks called carbonatites may have formed, using both natural samples and high-pressure experiments. These back-scattered electron (BSE) images are a typical view of one of the high-pressure experiments that I run on the piston-cylinder apparatus, her ...[Read More]
Green Tea and Velociraptors
That’s one small step for dinosaur-kind..
This is a guest post by Collin VanBuren. He’s currently starting his PhD at the University of Cambridge researching the effects of climate change on living and fossil frogs, as well as the relationship between the shape of anatomical structures and their function. He loves the outdoors, biomechanics, and conservation, and regularly tweets about these subjects on his Twitter account (@CollinV ...[Read More]