Perception

Texas is a big state.
Note: I have been to more places in Germany than Texas.

Image courtesy Reddit.

Antarctica is bigger than Texas.

Note: Someday Antarctica...someday.
Image courtesy NASA.

The South Pacific Convergence Zone (SPCZ), a band of rainfall - bigger than Antarctica?

Note: Unlike the Wiki article claims, the SPCZ is not part of the ITCZ.

Image courtesy Jud Partin.

Introducing: Academia Bizarro

At the Institute for Geophysics (my workplace), we have a tradition of weekly Brown Bag talks and I volunteered to host the seminar this year:

The UTIG Brown Bags are informal talks at noon each Wednesday at the Seminar Conference Room and they are a platform for faculty, scientists and students alike to update everyone on their current research and associated research activities (field work, workshops etc.) Though the talks convey scientific results and generate discussion amongst colleagues, they can (note: not must) be light-hearted and fun in nature. A few examples of past talk titles:

• Has it Ever Rained Cats and Dogs in a Climate Model?
• Will Work For Food, Fuel, and a Groomed Ski-way: ICECAP Season 1
• Spring in Greenland: How I learned to stop worrying and love global warming
• Scenery and Tectonics of Spain
• Moonquakes: Who said the moon was dead?
• Tales from the western tropical Pacific: Search for the "Golden" Samples
• One Rock to Change the World: The Story of the Chicxulub Impact Crater

This year, in order to make the Brown Bags a little more fun, I decided to include a section (haphazardly named after this and especially this) entitled Academia Bizarro. So, what is it you ask? Well, I consider anything that falls under or in between the following brackets to qualify:

• Scientifically outdated articles 
• Historically relevant research 
• Controversial science
• Witty/sarcastic literature (see also: this)
• Plain bizarre science

Research on the fluid dynamics of penguin pooh?
Definitely Academia Bizarro material!

In essence, I propose to have a 1-2min segment before each Brown Bag talk presenting a paper/research which falls under the Academia Bizarro umbrella (preferably geoscience based and related to the talk, of course). I will archive the material as the talks go on and ultimately, I hope to write up a semester's worth of material into a blog post. Thus far, I have already had support and suggestions from many researchers/faculty. Since there were no takers for today's Brown Bag, I gave a small presentation on the whole idea. Here is my presentation in full (chockful of Seinfeld references). As I am pitching this as a collaborative effort, I welcome any/all suggestions for Academia Bizarro from the blogosphere too. If you have any ideas/comments/suggestions, please let me know in the comments (your contribution will merit due credit)!

Best reply-to-comment ever...

That is all.

Jumping on the #1000words bandwagon...

Chris Rowan and Anne Jefferson at Highly Allochthonous, inspired by Randall Munroe (of xkcd fame) decided to try and explain their geoscience research using only the 1000 most common English words (find the list here). I think they both did fantastic jobs. Inspired by them, I give it a shot:

I study the bodies of small, water-animals that lived in the past (~several hundred years ago) and use them as keys to understand how the water they grew in was like: was it hotter or colder back then? Was that body of water heavier or lighter than it is today? How did it come to be what it is like today? These questions matter because water is a very important part of our lives (it gives us food and it plays with the wind and the rain). We can study the past changes in the water and then expect how it will change in the time to come.

I think exercises like this go a long way. So try it out yourself: The Up-Goer Five Text Editor.

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Others that I enjoyed:

Kim Cobb, Paleoceanographer

Benjamin Cook, Climate Scientist

Jacquelyn Gill, Paleoecologist

Kelly Heried, Climate Scientist (& ex-lab mate)

Suvrat Kher, Sedimentary Geologist
Brian Romans, Sedimentary Geologist

Generation Anthropocene

Generation Anthropocene (or GenAnthro) is a new podcast that a good friend of mine, Michael Osborne, started along with a bunch of other Stanford students about a year ago. I've been meaning to write a post on their fantastic podcast, but alas, time and laziness took their toll. In any case, I've never particularly been 'into' podcasts (though I've been an avid listener of the radio) - especially for science communication and journalism. GenAnthro is a near-perfect amalgamation of both that lured me in: the podcast gets the science across in a digestible, coherent manner and at the same time contains a much desired 'human element' that is lacking (in my opinion) in many avenues of scientific media.

So what exactly do the folks at GenAnthro do? Essentially, they interview people (mainly scientists) who are actively involved with the anthropocene. The term 'anthropocene', as many of you might be aware, was coined by Eugene Stoermer, a researcher who specialized in diatoms and made famous by Dutch Nobel Prize medalist Paul Crutzen, referring to the current geologic era that we live in. As you can imagine, apart from anthropogenic global warming, various human activities from hydraulic fracturing to overfishing can drastically affect diverse realms of the natural system and have potentially devastating, far-reaching effects and ultimately, affect the way we live. Therefore, it is very important to understand and study the effect of human activities. This can be achieved in various fields of study. For example, a researcher studying Venus, such as astrobiologist David Grinspoon to a political strategist such as Michael Shellenberger can have equally valuable inputs on the anthropocene and the kind of expectations for it that we should set.

Generation Anthropocene's mission statement:

History is accelerating.  Global population has crossed seven billion, the planet’s temperature continues its abrupt rise, and scientists warn we are in the midst of a new mass extinction.  Transformations this enormous are rare in earth’s 4.6 billion year history and humankind’s planetary impact is geologic in scale.  We have caused a new geologic age, and it has a name: The Anthropocene.

In addition to our extensive physical and chemical influences on our planet, the Anthropocene has come to symbolize a cultural shift.  The concept has spread from academic circles to popular media and we at Generation Anthropocene want to cast our butterfly net as wide as possible to capture the conversations about this new age.  We seek out cross-generational stories from our changing environmental and cultural landscapes, discussing all things Anthropocene with thought-leaders like geologists and historians, ecologists and philosophers.  We’re grappling with our realization that we’re a geologic force and confronting the new reality with investigative storytelling.

We hope you enjoy the podcast and continue the story of our evolving planet with those around you.

All in all, I would highly recommend tuning into Generation Anthropocene as it's a fun, rewarding and science-packed listen.

5 Interviews I really enjoyed (in no order):

1. Ben Santer, climate scientist - 'Balance of evidence revisited'

2. Richard Alley, paleoclimatologist - 'Earth's tipping point and abrupt climate change'

3. Margaret Lowman, ecologist - 'A View from the treetops'

4. Mark Zoback, geophysicist - 'F**cking science: the science of shale gas'

5. Granger Morgan, environmental engineer - 'Wrapping our heads around geoengineering'

Hurricane Sandy: A Sedimentary Perspective

About a month ago, two researchers at the Institute for Geophysics (where I am based), John Goff and Jamie Austin, sent out an email asking for a graduate student participant to accompany them on a cruise off the coast of New York to investigate the impact of Hurricane Sandy using seafloor and sub-seafloor mapping. My friend Cassie took up the opportunity and the team left for the field earlier this week. Cassie is blogging about her field experience and I recommend it if you are interested in sedimentology, CHIRP, sub-seafloor imaging, life on a research vessel at sea and ultimately, how Hurricane Sandy affected the coastline of New York/New Jersey.

Superstorm Sandy Blog: http://www.ig.utexas.edu/people/staff/goff/projects/Sandy/

2012: A Review

The past year was quite eventful for me. Here are twelve photographs and associated trivia from the months of 2012:

January

  In January, I returned to India after 1.5 years in the US and it was a treat to see my family and friends. Pictured here is my awesome grandmother, who takes pride in that I study 'nature' for a job.

February

 I was back in Austin around late January and was gearing up to get my Master's thesis on the statistics of individual foraminiferal analyses started while working on Gulf of Mexico sediment cores. Staying late in the department became a norm, after which I used to pass the UT Austin tower to catch the bus back home.

March

South by Southwest (SxSw) is an annual festival of music & film that happens in Austin. March 2012 was my 2nd SxSw adventure. The above picture was shot at Emo's East. High on Fire were the headlining act and there was a half-pipe where anyone with a skateboard could join in on the fun. Yes, the show was fantastic.

April

This is a noisy Carolina Wren (Thryothorus ludovicianus) in my backyard - April was a quiet, but hectic month - I got my Master's degree in geological science and was prepping to leave for the South Pacific. 

May

In May 2012, my life changed forever when I went to do field work in the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific. We encountered this fisherman with his kids on his canoe, in southern Ngela Sule. 

June

Continuing my Solomon Island field visit into June, I was spotting lifer after lifer. This pretty fellow is an Olive-backed Sunbird (Cinnyris jugularis) shot at Husuzo, Rendova.

July

After two months in the Solomon Islands, I came back to Texas in July - for three weeks. July was a very, very busy month. I had, amongst other things, a paper and three AGU abstracts to submit, to obtain a visa for my upcoming German trip and most importantly, I had to acquire data from the Gulf of Mexico sediment cores. Pictured above is sea-floor sediment collected by a multi-core from the Garrison Basin in the northern Gulf of Mexico

August

This was a gorgeous sunset at Tulaghi. Due to -ahem- certain technical difficulties, we had to return to the Solomon Islands and finish what we had started to do - coring and slabbing massive corals.

September

After getting back from an excruciating second field campaign, I spent all of three days in Austin before leaving for Hamburg in the first week of September. I was attending a summer school on 'Climate Change in the Marine Realm' where I spent two weeks in (primarily northwest) Germany. The sand dunes you see above are on the island of Sylt which could easily have been Frank Herbert's muse.

October and November

October and November were (happily) spent in Austin, preparing for the AGU conference. I had three presentations to prepare for which meant that there was no dearth of work. However, being in Austin, I made sure I had my fair share of fun as well.

December

The 2012 AGU meeting at San Francisco was a big deal for me as it was my first time presenting (though it was my 2nd time there). I had a fantastic meeting and it was great catching up with familiar faces and meeting new scientists and students alike. After the conference, a couple of friends and I stuck around the Bay Area and took a few of days off. This Rough-skinned newt (Taricha granulosa) was the coolest amphibian I had seen since the Solomons!

And with that, as I said, 2012 was an eventful year so here's hoping 2013 keeps me on my toes too! I wish you guys have an intriguing and eventful year as well!