September 2015 ESE Newsletter

ESE PhD students attend Chernobyl summer school

Crocodylians, Chernobyl visits and ESE-Away Days

Contents

Publications
Conferences, Lectures and Seminars
Awards
Outreach
Impact and Media
Fieldwork
ESE Away Day

Publications

Al-Menhali, A., Niu, B., Krevor, S. (2015) Capillarity and wetting of carbon dioxide and brine during drainage in Berea sandstone at reservoir conditions. Water Resources Research. DOI: 10.1002/2015WR016947 http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/2015WR016947/full

Civiero, C., Hammond, J.O.S, Goes, S., Fishwick, S., Ahmed, A., Ayele, A., Doubre, Cecile., Goitom, B., Keir, D, Kendall, J.M, Leroy, S., Ogubazghi, G., Rümpker, G., Stuart G.W., (2015). Multiple mantle upwellings in the transition zone beneath the northern East-African Rift system from relative P-wave travel-time tomography, Geochem. Geophys. Geosyst., 16, doi:10.1002/2015GC005948.

Cottin, H., Kotler, J.M., Bartik, K., Cleaves, H.J., Cockell, C.S., de Vera J.P.P., Ehrenfreund, P., Leuko, S., Ten Kate, I.L., Martins, Z., Pascal, R., Quinn, R., Rettberg, P., Westall, F., (2015) Astrobiology and the Possibility of Life on Earth and Elsewhere. . ., Space Science Reviews, DOI: 10.1007/s11214-015-0196-1

Gómez-García, J.F Ramírez-de-Arellano, J.M., Ruiz-Trejo E, Tavizon G., de la Mora, P. (2016). On the mechanism of electrical conductivity in Ce_1/3NbO₃, Computational Materials Science DOI:10.1016/j.commatsci.2015.09.009

Jacobs, C.T., Avdis, A., Mouradian, S.L., Piggott, M.D. (2015). Integrating Research Data Management into Geographical Information Systems. In Proceedings of the 5th International Workshop on Semantic Digital Archives, held in Poznan, Poland on 18 September 2015. Pre-print: http://arxiv.org/abs/1509.04729

Lai P., Moulton K., Krevor S. (2015). Pore-scale heterogeneity in the mineral distribution and reactive surface area of porous rocks. Chemical Geology. DOI:10.1016/j.chemgeo.2015.07.010

Mannion, P. D., Benson, R. B. J., Carrano, M. T., Tennant, J. P., Judd, J., Butler, R. J., (2015). Climate constrains the evolutionary history and biodiversity of crocodylians. Nature Communications. DOI: 10.1038/ncomms9438. 

Turcaud, J.A., Bez, H.N., Ruiz-Trejo, E., Bahl, C.R.H., Nielsen, K.K., Smith, A. Cohen, L.F.  (2015).  Influence of Manganite Powder Grain Size and Ag-particle Coating on the Magnetocaloric Effect and the Active Magnetic Regenerator Performance, Acta Materialia. DOI:10.1016/j.actamat.2015.06.058 

Yáñez-González, Á, Ruiz-Trejo, E., van Wachem, B., Skinner, S., Beyrau, F., Heyes, A., (2015). A detailed characterization of BaMgAl10O17:Eu phosphor as a thermal history sensor for harsh environments, Sensor and Actuators A: Physical. DOI:10.1016/j.sna.2015.09.020  

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

PhD students Robin Thomas and Matthew Kirby, working on the HydroFrame project, were fortunate to be able to attend a summer school in Chernobyl as part of the NERC-funded RATE "Radioactivity and the Environment" programme, in early September. The purpose of the trip was to learn about the 1986 accident, the resulting contamination by radionuclides, and the impact on humans and the environment. As Chernobyl is not a typical destination for researchers in our department, Robin will be delivering a talk about this field trip, at 12:30 on Tuesday, 13th October, in G38.

Raquel Ochoa Gonzalez from the MAGIC group attended the European Aerosol Conference 2015 at the University of Milano, 6-11 September. She presented a poster entitled "Tracers of traffic emissions in urban aerosols: application of Zn and Cu isotopes for source fingerprinting".

Christian Jacobs attended the 5th International Workshop on Semantic Digital Archives to present an application of the PyRDM project which facilitates the reproducibility of ocean simulations. A pre-print of the workshop paper is available here.

Zita Martins was part of the Science Organizing Committee (SOC) of the 6^th Astrobiology Society of Britain (ASB6) conference. 

Awards

PhD student Xue Wan, supervised by Jian Liu and Philippa Mason, won the President’s prize at the Annual Conference of the Remote Sensing & Photogrammetry Society (RSPSoc2014) in Aberystwyth this time last year for the best oral presentation during the conference. She was presented with her prize (cup) the 2 weeks ago at this year’s conference in Southampton.

PhD students Rebecca Smith and Chandra Taposeea were awarded AGU Student Travel Grants (worth $1000). Chandra received the ‘General Fall Meeting Student Travel Grant’ and Rebecca the ‘Earth and Planetary Surfaces Travel Award’.

Adrian Muxworthy was awarded a Royal Society International Exchange grant with the University of Alberta, Canada.

Zita Martins has been nominated by Audi and TV channel SICNoticias to the top 25 Portuguese Innovators

Outreach

Susie Maidment gave a talk at the Dorset County Museum titled “Blood cells and fibrous structures preserved in 75 million year old dinosaur specimens”. Susie was also was the guest speaker at the Chelsea Academy prize-giving, and gave a talk on the science behind Jurassic World.

Ian Bastow gave a seismology outreach lecture at St Orlaves Grammar School in Orpington as part of the school’s community lecture series.

Mike Streule went to Farnham Geological Society to give a talk on the “Tectonics of the Alps”.

Impact and Media

Phil Mannion’s paper “ Climate constrains the evolutionary history and biodiversity of crocodylians” received lots of media attention (including and article in The Mirror) and was featured as the lead story on Imperial College’s website. 

David Cronan wrote a semi- historical article on Deep Sea Minerals for the September issue of the Geological Society magazine, Geoscientist.

Fieldwork

Adrian Muxworthy and PhD-student Thomas Berndt were joined by Adrian Hall (University of Stockholm), for a four-day fieldtrip to the coast east of Edinburgh opposite the Bass Rock; storm deposits were successfully sampled.

ESE Away Day

Members of the department attended the ESE Away Day on 30 September at the Millennium Gloucester Hotel, South Kensington. The day was organized by the Athena SWAN committee run by Ian Bastow and Ann Muggeridge. PhD students and post-docs attended a paper writing course delivered by ThinkWrite while Academic staff attended a morning “Politive thinking” by Cathy Busani, Happy Ltd. This was followed by an afternnon “REF” session led by Matthew Jackson and the Departmental Research Committee. Support staff attended team building led by Steve Rathborn, Head of the Learning and Development Centre. Following formal training sessions students and staff had the opportunity to mingle over a poster session. Congratulations go to Auriol Rae, recipient of the best student poster award. The day was highly rewarding and enjoyed by all, a resounding success.