Awards aplenty for ESE members this month

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards and Appointments
Impact and Media
Research Activity
Fieldwork

Publications

Alhashmi, Z., Blunt, M. J., Bijeljic, B., (2015). Predictions of Dynamic Changes in Reaction Rates as a Consequence of Incomplete Mixing Using Pore-scale Reactive Transport Modeling on Images of Porous Media, Journal of Contaminant Hydrology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/ j.jconhyd.2015.06.004

Ayele, A., Ebinger, C. J., van Alstyne, C., Keir, D., Nixon, C. W., Belachew, M., Hammond, J. O. S. (2015) Seismicity of the central Afar rift and implications for Tendaho dam hazards, Geol. Soc. Lond. Memoirs, 420, doi:10.1144/SP420.9

Bates, K T., Falkingham, P.L., Macaulay, S., Brassey, C., Maidment, S.C.R. (2015). Downsizing a giant: re-evaluating Dreadnoughtus body mass. Biology Letters 11, 20150215.

Bertazzo, S., Maidment, S.C.R., Kallepitis, C., Fearn, S., Stevens, M.M., Xie, H. (2015). Fibres and cellular strucutres preserved in 75-million-year-old dinosaur specimens. Nature Communications 6, 7352 

Booth, A.D., Emir, E. and Diez, A. (in press); Approximations to seismic amplitude-versus-angle responses: validity and potential in glaciological applications; Geophysics.

Kluge, T., and John, C.M., 2015. A simple method for vaterite precipitation for isotopic studies: implications for bulk and clumped isotope analysis, Biogeosciences 12,3289-3299, (doi:10.5194/bg-12-3289-2015) 

Lamontagne, M., Lavoie, D., Ma, S., Burke, K., I.D. Bastow, (2015), Monitoring the earthquake activity in an area with shale gas potential in southeastern New Brunswick, Seis. Res. Lett., 10.1785/0220150051.

Lei, Q., Latham, J.-P., Tsang, C.-F., Xiang, J., Lang, P., (2015). A new approach to upscaling fracture network models while preserving geostatistical and geomechanical characteristics. Journal of Geophysical Research: Solid Earth. DOI: 10.1002/2014JB011736.

Magee, C., Maharaj, S.M., Wrona, T., Jackson, C,A-L., (2015) Controls on the seismic expression of igneous intrusions in seismic reflection data. Geosphere, 11, 1-18

Muxworthy, A. R.  and Williams, W. (2015), Critical single-domain grain sizes in elongated iron particles: implications for meteoritic and lunar magnetism. Geophys. J. Int., 202, 578-583. doi: 10.1093/gji/ggv180

O’Driscoll, B., Ferré, E., Stevenson, C.T.E., Magee, C., (2015) The significance of magnetic fabrics in layered mafic-ultramafic intrusions. In: Layered Intrusions (Eds., Charlier, B., Namur, O., Latypov, R., Tegner, C), Springer, 295-330.

Upchurch, P., Mannion, P.D., Taylor, M.P., (2015). The anatomy and phylogenetic relationships of “Pelorosaurus“ becklesii (Neosauropoda, Macronaria) from the Early Cretaceous of England. PLoS ONE 10, e0125819. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0125819

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

Dr András Fall from the FRAC Group, Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), University of Texas at Austin, US visited ESE (25 July) to present a talk on the use of fluid inclusions to understand fracture growth. The talk was very well attended and enthusiastically received.

Zita Martins co-organized a session at the Astrobiology Science Conference 2015 (AbSciCon2015).

PhD student Thibaut Defoort presented a paper entitled "A finite element geomechanical study of the brittle failure of a caprock due to deflation", T. Defoort, S. Salimzadeh, A. Paluszny, and R.W. Zimmerman, at the 49th US Rock Mechanics Symposium in San Francisco, on 29 June 2015.

Adriana Paluszny delivered a talk entitled "Effective transmissivity of two- and three-dimensional fractured/porous media", A. Paluszny, P.S. Lang, R.W. Zimmerman, at the SIAM Conference on Mathematical and Computational Issues in the Geosciences, at Stanford University, on 1 July 2015.

PhD student, Saba Manzoor, gave an invited talk entitled ‘A theoretical assessment of the atmospheric fate of amine emissions from post combustion technology and their impacts on human health' at the 8th Trondheim Conference on CO2 Capture, Transport and Storage in Trondheim, Norway from 16-18 June 2015.  

Trevor Almeida attended Microscience Microscopy Congress 2015 in Manchester, where he gave a talk ‘In situ transmission electron microscopy and off-axis electron holography of thermal demagnetisation in non-ideal palaeomagnetic recorders’.

Cédric John, John Cosgrove, Veerle Vandeginste, Martin Hönig, Sunshine Abbott and Julia Beckert presented their research at the QCCSRC sponsors meeting in Doha, 6 June, 2015

Thomas Berndt gave a talk and presented three posters at the International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics General Assembly Prague, Czech Republic 6 June. Berndt, T. & Muxworthy, A. “Viscous remanent magnetization dating of floods” Berndt, T., Muxworthy, A., “Does size matter? Statistical limits of paleomagnetic field reconstructions.” Berndt, T., Muxworthy, A., Paterson, G. “Determining the attempt time and the grain size distribution” Berndt, T., Ruiz-Martínez, V. C., & Chalouan, A. “New constraints on the evolution of the Gibraltar Arc from palaeomagnetic data of the Ceuta and Beni Bousera peridotites (Rif, northern Africa)”

Awards and Appointments

Zita Martins was appointed Officer of the Order of Saint James of the Sword (Oficial da Ordem Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada, OSE) by the President of Portugal for exceptional and outstanding merits in science. This is the equivalent of OBE in the UK. The Order Militar de Sant'Iago da Espada is one of the oldest Military orders in Portugal (founded in 1172). The Commemorative ceremony for the bestowal of the decorations was broadcasted on all the Portuguese TV channels and was reported in several Portuguese newspapers. 

Chris Jackson has been elected to sit on the committee for the AAPG Distinguished Lecturer Program. He attended his first committee meeting at AAPG in Denver and, along with several other academic and industry representatives from around the world, Chris will be involved in selecting Distinguished Lecturers for the AAPG’s National and International lecture programs.

Xuhai Tang, who completed his PhD in 2014 under the supervision of Adriana Paluszny and Robert Zimmerman, then spent one year as a post-doc at Princeton University, has won an associate professorship in the School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, China. Congratulations to Tang!

PhD student Alex McCormac has been voted GTA of the year 2014/2015 by RSM undergraduate students following the outstanding support he has given students on courses and taught fieldwork. Alex's nomination will now go through to the Faculty of Engineering for consideration alongside the other 8 nominations for other departments.

Pete Fitch, Matt Jackson, Gary Hampson and Cédric John are the 2015 co-recipients of the EAGE “Norman Falcon Award for best paper in Petroleum Geoscience”.

PhD student Qinghua Lei received 2015 "Rock Mechanics Research Award" by American Rock Mechanics Association (ARMA), in recognition of his paper coauthored with John-Paul Latham, Jiansheng Xiang and Philipp Lang. This award annually recognises an original contribution that advances the theoretical or fundamental aspects of rock mechanics and rock engineering. The award was presented on June 30th at the AMRA conference in San Francisco.

Huge congratulations to Rebecca Bell, who is now a permanent member of staff with the new title of ‘Lecturer in Geology and Geophysics’, well done Becky!

PhD students Sarah Dodd and Christian Jacobs have both been awarded Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy. Congratulations also to Mike Struele and Emma Passmore have been awarded Senior Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy.

Impact and Media

Zita Martins was in a panel discussion with TV presented Adam Rutherford, biochemist Nick Lane, and chemist Matt Powner at the Cheltenham Science Festival, discussing the latest research about the origin of life. The event was a huge success and was sold out. 

Dick Selley gave an interview to BBC Radio on the 'Giant Wealden oil field' supposedly discovered by the Horse Hill well drilled recently in Surrey, AKA 'The Gatwick Gusher'.

Research activity

Craig Magee attended the “Rockall Basin: Ireland and UK Industry Awareness Seminar” held at the Geological Society (12 June) where he was involved with discussions concerning the impact that igneous sill-complexes may have petroleum system development.

Ian Bastow spent ten days in Florence and Pisa, Italy, working with Giacomo Corti and others at the Istituto Nazionale di Geofisica e Vulcanologia (INGV). The trip was funded by a grant from the National Research Council of Italy.  Craig Magee and Adam Booth also joined Ian for short periods during his visit.

Fieldwork

Howard Johnson co-led a fieldtrip with Joe Cartwright to South West England to study the evolution of the Bristol Channel Basin attended by Shell graduates, Oxford and Imperial PhD students. The trip was thoroughly enjoyed by all, cream teas inclusive!

Adam Booth and MSc Petroleum Geophysics student Rebekah Jones conducted field trials of seismic sources at St Bees, Cumbria, between 16-19 June. Rebekah's research involves quantifying different aspects (strength, bandwidth, consistency, etc.) of a range of near-surface seismic sources, and contributes to a TOTAL / University of Leeds investigation of vertical permeability in the St Bees Sandstone.  Impact sources and recording equipment were provided by the University of Leeds, and an ELVIS vibratory system (pictured, right, with additional hold-down weight!) was loaned by Geomatrix.