December 2013 ESE Newsletter

Duna Roda Boluda studying the sedimentology of alluvial fan systems in Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada. Photograph: Mitch D'Arcy.

A fantastic end to a very productive year 2013 for ESE researchers!

Publications
Conference Talks and Lectures
Awards
Research Grants
Research Activity
Impact and Media
Outreach Activities
Fieldwork
PhD Vivas
Other Announcements

Publications

Elkins, L.J., Sims, K.W.W., Prytulak, J., Blichert-Toft, J., Elliott, T., Blusztajn, J., Fretzdor, S., Reagan, M., Haase, K., Humphris, S. and Schilling, J.-G. (2014). Melt generation beneath Arctic Ridges: Implications from U decay series disequilibria in the Mohns, Knipovich, and Gakkel ridges. Geochimica et Cosmochimica Acta. Doi: 10.1016/j.gca.2013.11.031.  

Le Voci, G., Davies, D.R., Goes, S., Kramer S.C. and Wilson, C.R. (2013). A systematic 2-D Investigation into the mantle wedge's transient flow regime and thermal structure: Complexities arising from a hydrated rheology and thermal buoyancy. Geochemistry Geophysics Geosystems. Doi: 10.1002/2013GC005022.

Molla, Y.B., Le Blond, J.S., Wardrop, N., Baxter, P., Atkinson, P.M., Newport, M.J. and Davey, G. (2013). Individual Correlates of Podoconiosis in Areas of Varying Endemicity: A Case-Control Study. PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. Doi:10.1371/journal.pntd.0002554. 

Muggeridge, A., Cockin, A., Webb, K., Frampton, H., Collins, I., Moulds, T. and Salino, P. (2013). Recovery rates, enhanced oil recovery and technological limits. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A. Doi: 10.1098/rsta.2012.0324. 

Paluszny, A., Tang, X.H. and Zimmerman, R.W. (2013). Fracture and impulse based finite-discrete element modeling of fragmentation. Computational Mechanics. Doi: 10.1007/s00466-013-0864-5.

Conference Talks and Lectures

Azli Abu Bakar, Thilo Wrona, Marijn van Cappelle, Dan Collins, Yvette Flood, Gary Hampson and Chris Jackson (keynote), members of the Basins Research Group (BRG), attended and presented their research at the 52nd AGM of the British Sedimentological Research Group (BSRG), which was held in Hull (19^th-21^st December).  

Rebecca Bell gave a talk entitled “Recovering physical property information from subduction plate boundaries using 3D full-waveform seismic inversion” at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2013 in San Francisco.

Michael King gave a lecture on "Shale Gas" at the University of Toronto on 5 December. 

Craig Magee presented two invited talks at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2013 in San Francisco, entitled "Lithological controls of intrusion-induced deformation" and "Magma rheology variations in sheet intrusions".

Susannah Maidment did a public talk at the Sussex Mineralogical and Lapidary Society entitled 'Walking with Dinosaurs' on December 6^th.

Robert Zimmerman delivered the plenary keynote talk, entitled "Measurement and Modelling of the Failure of Anisotropic Rocks such as Shales" at the Annual General Assembly of the Comité Français de Mécanique des Roches in Paris on 5 December. 

Awards

Martin Honig received a travel grant from the International Association of Sedimentologists (IAS) to travel to the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting 2013 in San Francisco (600€).

Research Grants

Ian Bastow secured a research Research Project Grant of £126.5k from the Leverhulme Trust for a project entitled “The building of North America:  evidence from seismology”.  This will help fund a post-doc to work on a seismological project in SE Canada. More than 46 seismograph stations will operate over the next two years, recording data that will enable the imaging of the deep seismic structure of the mantle beneath eastern North America.

Research Activity

Fiona Darbyshire, a seismologist from L'Université du Québec à Montréal in Canada, is currently visiting Ian Bastow for two months as part of her sabbatical year.  Ian and Fiona will be working together on the seismic project entitled “The building of North America: evidence from seismology”, along with Imperial College PhD student Laura Petrescu.

Impact and Media

Adam Booth was elected to the committee of The Geological Society’s Near Surface Geophysics Group, during their Unexploded Ordnance meeting at the British Geological Survey (5^th December). 

Matt Genge was interviewed on the sofa in the Sky News studio at the beginning of December on Comet Ison. Whilst most astronomers predicted Ison would be the comet of the Century, Matt applied some geological common sense and successfully predicted it would fail to survive its passage around the Sun.

James Hammond’s interview with Radio 4 about working on Earth Science Diplomacy in North Korea was on the PM show on Christmas Eve. An audio clip of the interview can be found here.  

James Hammond’s work was also cited in evidence provided by the Royal Society to the Parliamentary Select Committee on soft power and in testimony by the National Committee on North Korea to the US Helsinki Commission (US Congress).

Chris Jackson has been elected as the President/Chair of the British Sedimentological Research Group (BSRG). He will serve a 3-year term.

Craig Magee has been elected to the committee of the Volcanic and Magmatic Studies Group (VMSG) for a 3-year term.

Craig Magee, Chris Jackson and Freddie Briggs’ paper on "Lithological controls on igneous intrusion-induced ground deformation" was the second most downloaded paper for the Journal of the Geological Society of London in November with 95 downloads.

Outreach Activities

Matt Genge gave three lectures in December on the physics of atmospheric entry for Physics in Action at the Institute of Education. The event was attended by nearly 900 physics A-level students and provided an ideal opportunity to promote ESE's Geophysics undergraduate degree courses.

David Wilson, Claire Huck and Torben Struve participated in the Imperial Fringe “Fluid Thinking” festival on 12^th December, presenting the topic of “Earth's climate: past and future”. This gave them the chance to explain some of the palaeoclimate research being carried out in the MAGIC group, including how scientists can understand past oceans using fish teeth, corals and ocean sediments.

Fieldwork

Mitch d’Arcy and Duna Roda Boluda spent a month in California, studying the sedimentology of alluvial fan systems in Death Valley and the Sierra Nevada. They mapped and measured 11 alluvial fans in total, and used their stratigraphic records to test their sensitivities to glacial-interglacial climate changes during the last 200 ka.

Jennifer Le Blond recently spent two weeks in Cameroon on fieldwork as part of her research looking at podoconiosis and other non-infectious diseases in African countries. She went out with Dr Nicola Wardrop, a spatial epidemiologist from the University of Southampton, and worked with local contacts at the University of Buea. They visited a number of health districts in the remote North Western region of Cameroon, where an extensive baseline survey of the prevalence of podoconiosis is currently being carried out. Their aim was to devise a sampling strategy for collecting soils and surface sediments for early 2014, when Jennifer is due to next visit the region. 

PhD Vivas

Gavin Graham successfully passed his PhD viva on November 7^th. His thesis was entitled "From outcrop analogue to flow simulation: modelling heterogeneity in shallow-marine reservoirs". Gavin was examined by John Howell (University of Aberdeen) and Ann Muggeridge. His PhD research was supervised by Matthew Jackson and Gary Hampson.

Giuseppe Le Voci successfully defended his PhD thesis entitled "Controls on the Flow Regime and Thermal Structure of the Subduction Zone Mantle Wedge: A Systematic 2-D and 3-D Investigation" on 13 November 2013. His work was supervised by Rhodri Davies, Saskia Goes and Matthew Piggott.

Other Anouncements

G.41 has gained a new feature – a seven by two metre image of the surface of Mars, at 1:458 scale. In the spirit of recycling, the six panels are from a much larger image, originally exhibited at UCL, called “10 miles of Mars”; our image is equivalent to 1.0 x 3.3 km of Mars. The image (printed on vinyl and installed by Emma Passmore and a contractor) is from the HiRISE camera on the NASA MRO spacecraft, and shows an unnamed impact crater near the Nili Fossae fracture system. It was taken at 14:09 local time on Mars, on 24 August 2009 (Mars Northern Winter). The resolution is 57 cm per pixel, from an orbiting altitude of 300 km above the surface.

1:458 scale image of the surface of Mars in G.41. Credit: Emma Passmore.

Gaurav Singh, who recently completed his PhD in ESE, will be leaving Imperial College London this month to take up a postdoctoral position in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA). We wish him all the best in his future position!