Time for change

senprog1

Schematic of the life of a blogging PhD. Source: http://www.sidthomas.net/SenEssence/Genes/omics.htm

By Kelly

It’s the end of the week, the near end of a season, and it’s time to spring clean a little. As leaves senesce and fall off the trees…so do bloggers. OnCirculation has been going strong for well over a year now, but many of our regular bloggers, including myself, are transitioning into ‘finishing students’. The words, when they come, need to be put to theses and papers for at least the next little while. But the last thing any of us want is for the joys of Earth Science to be taken from our regular readers. And so, we as a group, have decided to change our format a little, to ease the workload, and ensure OnCirculation’s longevity. We will be posting three times a week from here on in (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday) and will bring in some new voices to this space. We hope that this new format will allow a new quality of post to emerge, things that have been pondered upon a little more, that can be communicated with a renewed sense of enthusiasm.

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Reminder: “Do The Maths” Tour is coming!

By Claire

In two weeks time, Bill McKibben is coming to Canberra to present his “Do The Maths” tour (he’s also going to Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne for those of you not in Canberra).

I have bought tickets to his Canberra seminar on the 5th of June, and I am dragging my husband along to introduce him to science and challenges of climate change (my hubby is a tradie and is slowly being converted into a greenie. mwa ha ha).

I am really excited to hear what Bill McKibben has to say and I hope that you will be able to come along as well! The tickets to the Canberra seminar are only $13.70 each, so I encourage you to use it as an opportunity to indoctrinate your friends!

Bill will be presenting the maths from his now famous Rolling Stones article, which I posted about last year. To try to get you excited for his tour, here is a reminder of that blog post… Continue reading

Write that journal article in 7 days

Peer-Review-Cartoon2By Claire

I have spent the afternoon at a seminar titled, “Write that journal article in 7 days”, put together by the Research Skills and Training Centre at ANU and wanted to share some of the wisdom I’ve soaked in. The seminar was presented by Inger Mewburn, a.k.a. The Thesis Whisperer and hopefully will yield at least one journal article over the next few months (I have at least three that I really should be writing up now!).

The article writing process is spread out over seven days, with quite manageable chunks to do on each day.

(As a caveat to the “7 days” promise, you need to already have data etc ready to go and at least some preliminary ideas on what the article will be about)

The presentation can be viewed online via the Thesis Whisperer blogsite, but here is my interpretation of the process. Continue reading

Dynamics of the rotation of the inner core

By Chops

Some research came out of RSES last week regarding the rotation of the inner core, and how it speeds up and slows down. This research, made by Hrvoje Tkalcic and others, has got a little bit of publicity (http://rses.anu.edu.au/news-events/news/earth039s-centre-out-sync) and also was published in Nature Geoscience last week. In this post, I want to explore a bit of background on how we know what’s happening deep down inside our planet, how this particular research was performed and finally, what sort of significance this sort of work has.

Cutaway of the earth's interior
(Image from iStockphoto/Baris Simsek)

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Google “Timelapse”: Images of destruction

By Claire

Google (in conjunction with NASA and the USGS) has just released a series of timelapse movies, showing the changes occurring to the surface of our planet since the 1970s.

These videos use images taken by the LandSat satellite over the last 40 years to stitch together the best quality images for key regions around the world, providing a time lapse view of the changes occurring over this time.

Google undertook the mammoth task of sifting through the millions of images taken by Landsat over this time, in order to produce high quality videos, free of clouds and blemishes (wherever possible) allowing a clear view of changes occurring at the surface.

The video below explains the methods used to produce these incredible images, as highlights some of the key regions that have been focussed on.

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Not-so-serious Sunday 48: Ring of Fire

By Kelly

Although it’s in the news again, this is not the Pacific Ring of Fire. Instead I’m here to say that there is more to the Pilbara than just what is in the ground. Look what happens above. 

I  hope you have enjoyed your weekend.

 

Volcano Tourism – Mt. Aso

Aso Caldera

Aso Caldera

By Evan

As mentioned in my last post, I currently am spending some time in Japan, in Kumamoto, Kyushu (i.e. southern Japan). The major attraction of Kumamoto, besides the ubiquitous Kumamon, is without a doubt Mt Aso. The Aso caldera (essentially a giant hole caused by the collapse of a volcano after an eruption, or more violently from an actual eruption) is one of the largest in the world. The signs on the volcano claims this is the largest caldera in the world, but I suspect that Toba is actually larger. Being inside of the caldera is impressive, like the inside of a steep bowl. The caldera formed in four major eruption episodes between 300,000 and 90,000 years ago, with the final eruption causing the majority of it. Here are some pictures of my visit from last weekend. Continue reading