April 2016 ESE Newsletter

ESE MSc Petroleum Geoscience students visit Utah and Texas on another fantastic fieldtrip

Contents

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

Publications

Almeida, T.,  Muxworthy, A. R., Kovács, A., Williams, W., Brown, P., Dunin-Borkowski, R. (2016). Direct visualization of the thermomagnetic behavior of pseudo–single-domain magnetite particles. Science Advances, e1501801, doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1501801. 

Corbett, L.B., Bierman, P.R., Rood, D.H. (2016). Constraining multi-stage exposure-burial scenarios for boulders preserved beneath cold-based glacial ice in Thule, northwest Greenland. Earth and Planetary Science Letters 440, 147-157.

Davison T. M., Collins G. S., and Bland P. A. (2016). Mesoscale numerical modeling of compaction of primitive solar system solids in low-velocity collisions. The Astrophysical Journal 821(1):68.

Jamil Z., Ruiz-Trejo E., Boldrin, P., and Brandon, N.P,. 2016. Anode Fabrication for Solid Oxide Fuel Cells: Electroless and Electrodeposition of nickel and silver into doped ceria scaffolds. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy http://10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.04.061

Kishimoto, M., Lomberg, M., Ruiz-Trejo ,E., Brandon, N.P., 2016. Numerical modeling of nickel-infiltrated gadolinium-doped ceria electrode reconstructed with focused ion beam tomography. Electrochimica Acta, 190, 178–185. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.electacta.2015.12.044.

Ruiz-Trejo E., N. Bonanos, K. Thyden, M. Mogensen Conductivity and structure of sub-micrometric SrTiO₃ -YSZ composites. Solid State Ionics, (2016) 288, 82–87. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ssi.2016.01.040.

Jamil, Z., Ruiz-Trejo, E., Boldrin, P., & Brandon, N. P. (2016). Anode fabrication for solid oxide fuel cells: Electroless and electrodeposition of nickel and silver into doped ceria scaffolds. International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, 1–11. doi:10.1016/j.ijhydene.2016.04.061.

Magee, C., O'Driscoll, B., Petronis, M.S., Stevenson, C.T.E. (2016). Three-dimensional magma flow dynamics within subvolcanic sheet intrusions. Geosphere, doi:10.1130/GES01270.1

Magee, C., Muirhead, J.D., Karvelas, A., Holford, S.P., Jackson, C.A-L., Bastow, I.D., Schofield, N., Stevenson, C.T.E., McLean, C., McCarthy, W., Shtukert, O. (2016) Lateral magma flow in mafic sill complexes Geosphere, doi:10.1130/GES01256.1 (OPEN ACCESS)

Nejati, M., Paluszny, A., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2016) A finite element framework for modeling internal frictional contact in three-dimensional fractured media using unstructured tetrahedral meshes. Computer Methods in Applied Mechanics and Engineering. doi:10.1016/j.cma.2016.03.028

Paluszny, A., Tang, X. H., Nejati, M., and Zimmerman, R. W. (2016) A direct fragmentation method with Weibull function distribution of sizes based on finite- and discrete element simulations. International Journal of Solids and Structures. doi:10.1016/j.ijsolstr.2015.10.01

Shah, J., Koppers, A.A., Leitner, M., Leonhardt, R., Muxworthy, A.R., Heunemann, C., Bachtadse, V., Ashley, J.A. and Matzka, J., (2016). Palaeomagnetic evidence for the persistence or recurrence of geomagnetic main field anomalies in the South Atlantic. Earth and Planetary Science Letters, 441, 113-124.

Conferences, Lectures and Seminars

John Paul Latham gave and invited talk at ETH Zurich Engineering Geology Seminar Series on “Getting to Grips with fractured and granular rock systems and processes - one decade of progress with FEMDEM modeling”.

Julie Prytulak gave an invited departmental seminar at Leeds University on April 22nd titled "The High's and Low's of Stable Vanadium Isotopes”.

Thomas Berndt gave a talk "Magnetic dating of storm floods, jökulhlaups and tsunamis" co-authored by Adrian Muxworthy, Miguel Valdez Grijalv and Ricardo Ramalho, at EGU, Vienna.

Vamsi Ganti gave the Hutton Club Seminar at the University of Edinburgh on April 29.

Members of the Basin Research Group (BRG) were out in force at this year’s European Geoscience Union (EGU) General Assembly in Vienna, Austria (17^th-22^nd April 2016). Rebecca Bell, Christopher Jackson, Antje Lenhart, Tom Phillips, Duna Roda-Boluda, Adamu Suleiman, Stephen Watkins and Alex Whittaker presented a series of talks and posters, as well as convening a number of sessions and PICOs. They worked hard and played hard…

Several members of the rock mechanics group gave presentations at the EGU General Assembly in Vienna, 17-22 April. Helen Lacey gave a talk entitled "Laboratory study of fault healing in Carrara marble", based on her collaboration with colleagues from MIT. Anozie Ebigbo presented a poster entitled "Inclusion-based e���ective medium models for the ���eld-scale permeability of 3D fractured rock masses", based on his work within the NERC-funded HydroFrame project, and a poster entitled “Finding a balance between accuracy and computational effort for modeling biomineralization”, based on collaborative work with colleagues from Stuttgart and elsewhere. Saeed Salimzadeh presented a poster entitled "Caprock integrity during hydrocarbon production and CO2 injection in the Goldeneye reservoir", based on his work within the EPSRC-funded CONTAIN project.

Ian Bastow gave an invited talk at the EGU conference in Vienna on the subject of rifting and magmatism in East Africa 

Carl Jacquemyn attended and presented at the AAPG GTW on Exploring and Exploiting Carbonate Reservoirs in Bari (Italy) with several contributions on sedimentology/fracture-related karstification, 3D geostatistics and storm scour heterogeneity.

PhD student Bhavik Lodhia presented a poster at the conference 'Rifts III' at the GSL in March and gave an oral presentation at the GSL conference 'East Africa, from Research to Reserves'.

PhD students Laura Petrescu and Rachel Bertram represented ESE at the Imperial College thesis in three minutes competition. Both gave fantastic short talks!”  

Awards

Susie Maidment received a research grant from the Geological Society’s Garwood Fund to study and describe a new stegosaurian dinosaur specimen in the Museum of the Rockies, Bozeman, Montana, in April. 

Claire Heaney, along with co-authors Andrew Buchan, Chris Pain and Simon Jewer, won the prize for best postdoctoral presentation and paper at the ACME conference held in Cardiff in March 2016. The paper was entitled: "A reduced order model for criticality problems in reactor physics".

Research Activity

Phil Mannion has been in China (Beijing, and Ningxia and Zhejiang Provinces) from the 10th-30th April studying dinosaurs and fossil crocodiles. Part of this research is funded by a National Geographic Waitt Grant to describe a new Middle Jurassic sauropod dinosaur from northern China that is the earliest member of the group that includes Diplodocus.

Impact and Media

The work of Dominik Weiss on the application of copper isotopes as a proxy for the ocean floor oxygen levels, and their utility in furthering our understanding of the great oxygenation event roughly 2.5-2.3Gyr ago, was the main feature on Imperial’s engineering News page on 19 April.  

Dick Selley had a cameo role pontificating on the impact of geology and global warming in the film 'A year in the life of a vineyard' premiered on 19th April.

Outreach

Offshore drilling of the Chicxulub crater began on the 8 April, with co-chief scientist Imperial’s Joanna Morgan and PhD student Auriol Rae joining the drill ship Myrtle on the 30 April. Four weeks into the expedition the crew are now approximately half way through drilling, last week bringing up a 3-meter core section from a depth of 670 meters containing granite and hydrothermal minerals, an indication that the team had entered the peak ring. Further details of the expedition including details of life on board can be found on the expedition blog. 

On the 18 April, PhD Student Rebekah Moore student, ICL Pint of Science Co-ordinator, attended this year’s Pint of Science UK ticket sale launch event at The Counting House in Cornhill, London, where a selection of scientists from around the country gave teaser talks to the public and media, including London Live and IFL Science for the upcoming festival on 23-26 May.

Fieldwork

MSc Petroleum Geoscience students enjoyed the geological delights of Utah and Texas during this years US fieldtrip, ably led by Cedric John and Pete Fitch (Texas), Gary Hampson and Lidia Lonergan (Moab), and Chris Jackson, Susie Maidment and Carl Jaquemym (Book Cliffs). The fieldtrip visited world-class outcrops illustrating the importance of carbonate and clastic sedimentology and stratigraphy, and structural geology, for petroleum systems development. 

Lisa Hart and Jamie Wilkinson visited the Oyu Tolgoi Cu-Au mine in the South Gobi desert, Mongolia, to carry out fieldwork and sampling for Lisa’s PhD study of the propylitic alteration associated with the ore deposits. The study, funded by a Department of Earth Science and Engineering scholarship (Imperial College London) and Rio Tinto, aims to understand the controls on the trace element chemistry of alteration minerals surrounding the deposits and identify signatures that can potentially be used to locate new mineral resources of this kind.

March was a busy time for our UG students. Our first year undergraduates had a fantastic time exploring the Jurassic coastline in Dorset, with a host of fossil loving staff, whilst our second year undergraduates were taught the structural secrets of the Pyrenees. The undergraduate administrators were very busy in April sorting out the final arrangements for the four undergraduate field trips happening in May, gathering all equipment needed. 

From across the ESE department 181 of our UG students will be heading off on fieldwork (Spain - first years, Scotland - second years, Sardinia - third years and the Apennines - fourth years) applying their knowledge about Geology to field exposures, learning more than can be learned from a lecture alone. They will be accompanied by 14 staff members and 14 of our graduate teaching assistants.  With a total of 209 staff and students missing, the department will feel quiet over the coming weeks so make sure to look out for our staff tweeting and sharing photos of all of these trips linked to @ImperialRSM and using the individual fieldwork hashtags such as #Scotland2016. 

Announcements

This year, ESE PhD students Tabea Junk and Martin Mangler are organising three Planet Earth themed nights (CSI: Geosciences, Our Changing World and Dante’s Peak for real!). For tickets (£4 each) and more information on events, visit: https://pintofscience.co.uk/