January 2014 ESE Newsletter

A vineyard near Biddenden in Kent. Will climate change turn Britain into one of the big wine producing regions? Photograph: Dave Skinner.

ESE research makes it to the front page of the New York Times!

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

Publications

Alves, T. M., Bell, R. E., Jackson, C. A. L. and Minshull, T. A. (2014). Deep-water continental margins: geological and economic frontiers. Basin Research. Doi: 10.1111/bre.12053.

Bell, R. E., Jackson, C. A. L., Elliott, G. M., Gawthorpe, R. L., Sharp, I. R. and Michelsen, L. (2014). Insights into the development of major rift-related unconformities from geologically constrained subsidence modelling: Halten Terrace, offshore mid Norway. Basin Research. Doi: 10.1111/bre.12049.

Booth A.D. and Szpakowska K., 'Ground Penetrating Radar Survey of the South Asasif Necropolis'. In: Pischikova E. (editor), 'Tombs of the South Asasif Necropolis - Thebes, Karakhamun (TT 223), and Karabasken (TT 391) in the Twenty-fifth Dynasty', American University in Cairo Press, November 2013 and on sale now.

Morris, G.D.M., Neethling, S.J. and Cilliers, J.J. (2014). The stability of a thin film supported by a double layer of spherical particles. Colloids and Surfaces A: Physicochemical and Engineering Aspects. Doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfa.2013.10.046.

Nielsen, S.G., Prytulak, J., Wood, B.J., Halliday, A.N. (2014). Vanadium isotopic difference between silicate Earth and meteorites. Earth and Planetary Science Letters. Doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2013.12.030.

Siveter, D.J., Briggs, D.E.G., Siveter, D.J., Sutton, M.D., Legg, D. and Joomun, S. (2014). A Silurian short-great-appendage arthropod. Proceedings of the Royal Society B. Doi: 10.1098/rspb.2013.2986.

Wilkinson, J.J. (2013). Triggers for the formation of porphyry ore deposits in magmatic arcs. Nature Geoscience. Doi:10.1038/ngeo1940.

Conference Talks and Lectures

Michael King gave an invited lecture entitled "Shale Gas" to the Institute of Civil Engineers (East Midlands Branch) at the University of Northampton on 21 January.

Susannah Maidment gave a talk on Stegosaurus and why dinosaurs are interesting for the Cosmic Genome Live: Skeptics in the Pub's 15th birthday party on Tuesday 21st January.

Stegosaurus in the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago.

In the LODE research group, Jamie Wilkinson gave a keynote presentation on the 7th January at the annual Mineral Deposits Studies Group conference held at the University of Oxford. PhD students William Brownscombe, Matthew Loader, Jacob Longridge, Adam Pacey, Simon Kocher and Robert Sievwright also presented on their projects at the meeting.

Awards

Adam Booth received €1750 from the Arthur Holmes scheme and the EU’s INTERACT Transnational Access scheme, in support of geophysical fieldwork on Midtdalsbreen Glacier, Norway.  A one-week field campaign is scheduled for April 2014, with Dr Benedict Reinardy at the University of Bergen, in which Adam will be acquiring ground penetrating radar data to determine if the glacier is frozen to its bed.

Luke James, Harry Fisher and Stuart MacGowan were awarded the Micromine award for best student report. In the Autumn term, the Earth Resources module included a resource estimation exercise using Micromine software. The team from Micromine were so impressed with the quality of the (non-assessed) final reports that they awarded a £100 prize to their top report.

Jacob Longridge was successful in his application to the Students in Mining Instrument Support Program, securing use of the TerraSpec 4 (TS4) mineral analyzer for his research on clay mineral quantification in the porphyry to epithermal transition.

Research Grants

Tina van de Flierdt has become a co-investigator on a collaborative NERC grant with Southampton National Oceanography Centre to investigate the ‘Dynamics of the Oligocene cryosphere: mid- to high latitude climate variability and ice sheet stability’.

Impact and Media

James Hammond featured on the Imperial Podcast talking about his participation in the Royal Society MP/Civil Servant - Scientist pairing scheme and the role of science in policy making.

James Hammond also presented his work on how science diplomacy is opening up access to some of the worlds most inaccessible volcanoes to members of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat at the Cabinet Office.

Richard Selley gave talks on 'Fracking shale gas: What on Earth is that all about' to Wealden members of the National Farmers Union, and to the Mole Valley Geological Society.

Richard Selley's research on the impact of climate change on UK vineyards (First published in the public domain in 2008) featured in an article on page 15 on the Sunday Times and made the front page of the New York Times in December.

Mark Sutton’s paper on the discovery of a new arthropod was covered in the Daily Mail.

Outreach Activities

On Sat 25^th January the RSM played host to the International Petrochallenge Grand Final once again, where teams of 16-18 year olds compete as virtual oil companies in the business simulation OilSim. The event was ably assisted by Laura Davies, and by undergraduates Giuseppe Bugatti, Joanna Taylor and Lewis Ryan.

Fieldwork

Martin Hönig and Carl Jacquemyn spent 3 weeks in the field in the United Arab Emirates working on Jurassic carbonates.

PhD Vivas

Christian Jacobs passed his PhD viva on 16 December 2013. His thesis is entitled "Modelling of Multiphase Flows on Adaptive Unstructured Meshes with Applications to the Dynamics of Volcanic Ash Plumes". The research was supervised by Gareth Collins, Matthew Piggott and Alan Dawes. Christian has now taken up a postdoc position here in the department. We welcome him to his new position!

Xuhai Tang successfully defended his PhD on 28 January 2014. His thesis, entitled "Impulse-based discrete element modelling of rock impact and fragmentation, with applications to block cave mining", was supervised by Adriana Paluszny and Robert Zimmerman, and was funded by the Rio Tinto Centre for Advanced Mineral Recovery. His examiners were Ante Munjiza from Queen Mary University of London and Gerard Gorman. Starting in March, Xuhai will be a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Princeton University. We wish him the best of luck in his new position!