Take, for example, my fondness for keeping things aligned. I fully accept that I am on the extreme end of things when it comes to keeping things neat and tidy; I rarely leave my desk without straightening up my piles of paper, and a favourite past time of my old office mates was turning my books upside down and misaligning them on the shelf and seeing how long it took me to realise the disturbance (never normally more than 1 day). Although this penchant for neatness is admittedly a bit over the top and can cause both extreme amusement and annoyance at the same time, it does serve me brilliantly in the lab: I keep my working area clear and free from rubbish, I know exactly where my acids and other reagents are kept, and everything’s fully labelled and identifiable should someone else want to run the procedure after I’ve left.

I have since discovered that I’m not alone in displaying such neurotic lab behaviour. I know several colleagues who happily hide away behind teetering piles of unread papers on their desk, but maintain an air of organisation in the lab that astounds even themselves. For example, during a recent visit to the clean labs at Durham University I discovered a colour coded label system used to keep specific acid bottles in certain fume hoods for use with particular isotope systems. Genius. Similarly, I’m sure I’m not the only person to keep all of my pots carefully aligned on the hotplate, and who doesn’t swear by the magic rule of ‘3’ when rinsing beakers in water?

Not all of this behaviour can be attributed to an over developed sense of order. Arranging pots when performing sample digestions is sound practice, as it means you know what sample is where if catastrophe strikes and all the labels become illegible. Likewise, rinsing everything 3 times (or more) helps minimise the risk of crossover contamination between cleaning stages. I guess the real question therefore is what aspects of our lab routine we develop because we’ve been taught to do it in that way, and what parts to we do just because it seems right to ourselves.

Differences in lab etiquette really come to the fore when discussing the lab-cleaning rota. This universal bone of contention is an essential but time consuming aspect of labwork, and is always made all the worse for knowing that it’s not your turn as you did it last time. No matter how many times you put your name down, the feel-good brownie points you got on Friday don’t count for anything when you rock up on a Monday morning only to discover that a heard of elephants must have stormed through the corridor over the weekend leaving their muddy prints all over the entrance mat. Of course, having a spotlessly clean lab provides no guarantee of getting good data, but it does help, and there’s nothing more frustrating then watching other people waltz in and benefit from your mornings hard mopping and scrubbing without a word of acknowledgement or offer to take their turn next time.

Of course it would be wrong to say that all geochemists should strive to be strictly regimented in the lab, as what really matters is the quality of scientific output and everyone should be allowed to achieve that in their own manner (with due consideration to Health & Safety constraints of course!). However, I can’t help wondering how many other researchers out there have a tendency to adhere to the ‘law of straightness’, and kept our working area spotlessly neat and tidy…

I was trained as a metamorphic petrologist at the University of Kiel in Germany and as a petrologist/mineralogist at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. In my undergraduate thesis I studied ‘proper ROCKS!: serpentinites, and carbonates associated with ophiolites – and I love it. I absolutely enjoyed the quest about how mountains form, how rocks in the deep ocean changed through chemical reactions, how small minerals could move even big mountains like the Alps etc. etc…

I know, a rather geeky thing to like, but that was what I wanted “Geology” to be.

I can envisage that when some of you read this, those of you who know me now -  so many years later, will not believe that this is what I liked !

But indeed I like rocks and mountains even now, regardless of what I do research-wise currently. Nature still gives me the questions and searching for the unknown is still the only thing that makes sense to me.

My BSc and MSc days are long gone. They were in the early 90’ties (in the LAST century!!) – and for some of my students – that is very, very, long ago – i.e., practically ancient. Science – and by inference also I – have moved on but that is the way science goes; we reinvent ourselves all the time and that is more than fine with me – it is actually as far as I am concerned a pre-requisite of a scientist.

I am now a Professor in Experimental Biogeochemistry (sorry about the ‘posh’ title but it is a British thing!) at the University of Leeds and sort of lead the Cohen Geochemistry group in the School of Earth and Environment in Leeds, United Kingdom.

In the last months I saw several of my PhD students struggling either with experiments, or with analytical gear that did not want to behave, or with pesky data or just wrong numbers etc. You are not alone – that is normal and you will ultimately succeed –  if you stick it out!

So I thought: let me write a story about my PhD experience and maybe this will help.

Here we go!

Some might say that my PhD topic was ‘sexy’. I was working with Gold. Not gold in rocks as you would expect but I changed fields and became an experimentalist. I studied how gold dissolves.

 To the consternation of my ‘not-so-knowledgeable’ friends, I used to buy sheets and tubes of pure (and I mean pure – proper 24 carat) gold from Johnson Matthey. Using those I had to make my gold containers by welding them into a ‘bag’ shape and then do my experiments by filling the ‘bags’ with solution, heating them up in reactors and dissolving the gold -  to ultimately figure out how soluble it was.

Sounds asinine!

Well it is most likely not more strange than any of the projects you work on yourself.

When I started my PhD, my supervisor said: here is the key to the lab, lets do experiments!

So I went to the ‘lab’ and saw that it was an empty room that I had to fill with ‘stuff’.

He also said: go do experiments at high T and P!

Now that got me excited and I was thinking: great  – now I can play with hot water under pressure – and that was challenge!! And I was in heaven!!

 I started building my system. But first – because the lab was empty – I stared spending money. I had to buy anything from the first set of gloves – high T resistant that is – to screw drivers, pressure transducers, rocking ‘bombs’ (big reactors to you and me; – see my system below). I had to learn about strange US vs. imperial vs. metric units in threads and pipe dimensions etc., and naturally I had to learn how to weld with oxy-acetylene to make my gold foils and tubes into a nice ‘gold-bag’ shape for my high T and P reactors. Now the welding was scary yet fun – but only once I knew how. Much of my original, shiny, flat gold foil ended up in my first trials as a big molten blob, instead of a cylinder with a lid and with a nice seam – or a useful ‘bag’ shape. Anyhow, after many trials I got there and ultimately it was all fun.

Well at least for me.

 To the dismay of some of my colleagues I was not just dissolving gold BUT I was dissolving gold in ‘stinky’ H2S solutions to better understand the formation of gold deposits on Earth.

BUT that needed experiments as there was very little data in the literature. Naturally the experiments failed initially more than succeeded. In addition, to sort the chemistry out I needed to get to grips with pesky equation, difficult maths, and computing and only with a lot of perseverance and patience did this ultimately work.

Just to expose some of my geeky-nes – I added a few equations below to scare you off. Although the task I had may sound easy, let me tell you  – nothing was easy. On the surface all I had to manage was 2 small steps: (1) measure how much gold is in my ’gold-bag’  – in comes equation number 1:

and than use these numbers and (2) derive the equilibrium constants:. Ha, looks simple – no it was not.

I am sure such – or similar problems with equations, experiments etc – sound familiar to you and that maybe when you started you  expected it maybe to be easier, yet it is not. Don’t despair – that is also normal.

Easy is not a word you should assume to be the norm in your PhD.

As you can imagine, because I had to have H2S in my experiments I was not the most ‘loved’ colleague in Zurich at the time. When things did not go to plan     - and what experiments always do – the labs would be ‘perfumed’ by the ‘rotten eggs’ flavour.

 What saved me was ultimately a great bunch of PhD and postdoc colleagues and a fantastic supervisor. Terry (my supervisor, now emeritus at The University of Victoria in Wellington, New Zealand) had to – many times -’save’ me from giving up and doing something else.

In the first 18 (YES 18!) months of my PhD, not much worked and I used to often go to his office exclaiming:
“I give up! I want my rocks back! Geology is more fun than messing with fluids and gold bags and transducers or Heise pressure gauges!”
Terry used to take his time, listen to me rant and then calm me down, encourage me to continue and send me on my way to solve the problem I came in with in the first place, yet always saying:
” Stick in there kiddo, it will work, the solution is just around the corner”

Well after 18 months my system finally functioned and I had my first trusted gold solubility number. I collected the my data in the following 18 months and wrote up my thesis in time. The rest is history.

I survived because it was hard but ultimately a great challenge and I had loads of fun. It taught me what science and research is about. Even after all these years I still like “strange” and hard experiments and very much still enjoy building new and strange ‘gizmos’ and learning new stuff and working out problems that nobody has before.

Now, many years later I try to instil this ethos into my students. Although they don’t always get it, why I like tinkering with experimental gear in the lab and why hard experiments are worth it or why I often try to ask them to solve hard problems – I hope they all persevere. They know me well enough now to remember that I always say “If it would be easy it would have been done already”.

 About the author: Liane G. Benning is a Professor in Experimental Biogeochemistry at the University of Leeds and sort of lead the Cohen Geochemistry group in the School of Earth and Environment in Leeds, United Kingdom. She is currently the Vice President of the EAG and If you want to follow Liane’s blog –  visit her very own WordPress site here and follow her on Twitter @lianegbenning

We headed off on March 31 with fingers crossed (or “thumbs pressed” as the equivalent German expression translates) for good weather. We chose to start in Ulm rather than at the source of the river in order to make it to Vienna in time for the conference in the eight days we had available. As the train sped toward Ulm, snow swirled around outside. We spent most of that first half-day on bicycles bouncing through mud-filled potholes and arrived to our hotel, the first guests of the season, with loaded bicycles and rain gear splattered in mud.

The author’s EAG water bottle poses for a picture in front of the cathedral in Regensburg, Germany.

Perhaps the snow, mud and poor trails we encountered on the first day were necessary to calibrate our expectations for a spring expedition. Average daily temperatures reached only 3°C, the afternoons were windy, and the sun shone only briefly each day. However, we rode through very little subsequent precipitation, and trail conditions steadily improved. Each day in Germany was punctuated by medieval Bavarian townscapes blending one into another, separated by still-dormant agricultural fields, awaiting the arrival of spring. All the pedaling justified our indulgence in the German tradition of afternoon coffee and cake, almost a necessary stop to warm up frozen fingers and toes. Every night we slept well, bellies full of schnitzel and beer, glad to be tucked in cozy guesthouses and out of the wind for a few hours.

A 360° view of the Ilz and Inn rivers merging with the Danube in Passau, Germany. Click on the image to see bigger version.

Passau, on the eastern edge of Bavaria, was the inflection point of our journey. Shortly after this town, where three rivers confluence, we concluded our 395 km crossing of Bavaria and ventured into Austria. The dialect changed and the floodplain funneled into forested valleys. We passed through vowel-deficient towns like Ybbs and Tulln that were still in winter hibernation, but the natural beauty of the route and the increase in the number of guesthouses as compared to Germany testified to this section of the Danube being the most popular bicycle route in Europe. This early in the season, though, we had the route mostly to ourselves, seeing other pairs of through-riders only about every other day. Coming into the Wachau Valley, within 80 km of Vienna, we encountered more riders out enjoying the scenery of this sunny wine-growing valley, which is also a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

A view of the wine-producing Wachau Valley, Austria.

We rolled into Vienna on April 7, just hours before the EGU welcome event. As I related our journey to colleagues, the most common question was, “Are you riding back home?” Sore muscles and joints, bicycles needing repair and a depleted bank account validated our decision to purchase train tickets for the return journey.

As a geoscientist, the trip made me reflect on how the CO₂ output of our pedal-powered trip compared to conventional travel. Could we justify our journey as a vacation and a lower carbon conference travel option? I set to work using online calculators to generate a back-of-the-envelope estimate.[1]  The lowest emission transportation option for a round trip between our home and Vienna is the train, releasing an estimated 0.32 tons of CO₂. A round-trip flight, plus local transit to and from the airport emits 0.48 tons of CO₂. Our journey, 734 km of riding, burned primarily calories, but required 7 nights in hotels beyond the accommodation we needed at the conference. Hotel stays during our ride generated 0.5 tons CO₂, much more than the 0.04 tons our household produces in the same time interval.  Adding in a return train trip, our round-trip CO₂ emission was 0.66 tons.

By linking our vacation to the conference, we did at least eliminate the emissions of extra travel if the two trips were taken separately. Of course, pedaling to the conference was only feasible because we currently live in Europe. With Goldschmidt coming up in Florence, Italy this August, I considered briefly whether to again take advantage of our home-base in Europe and make the trip by bicycle. My analysis suggested carbon emission is an equivocal factor in the decision to ride, but there is one major geological factor. The Alps stand between Germany and Italy. My muscles and joints hurt just imagining that climb. I will be booking a flight to Florence this week.

A Google Earth image shows the bicycle route to Vienna in blue and the train ride home in red.

[1] The Carbon Neutral Company. (n.d.). CarbonNeutral® commute. Retrieved from: http://www.carbonneutralcalculator.com, and Conservation International. (n.d.). Carbon Calculator. Retrieved from: http://www.conservation.org

 About the Author: Elizabeth D. Swanner is a geomicrobiologist and geochemist interested in the co-evolution of life and Earth’s surface environment. Her current work focuses on microbial pathways involved in the mineralization of redox-active transition metals and what their presence in the rock record tells us about the redox state of ancient aqueous environments. Betsy, as she is known to friends and colleagues, received her PhD from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She currently resides in southwestern Germany with her husband (and travel companion), and is a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Tübingen.

Cohen Geochemistry members Ian, Rob, Cindy and I had the privilege (yes, I mean that) of taking around 50 second year University of Leeds Environmental Science students to the Blencathra Field Centre for 4 days of environmental geochemistry. The field centre is just outside Keswick, in the Lake District National Park, North West England, an area which actually only has 1 lake* (one for the pedants and pub quiz enthusiasts, bonus points if you can name it). Using the field centre as a base, we took day trips to two former mining sites where we were able to consider the concepts of equilibrium reactions, metal solubility and redox in the context of water quality.

Looking south from the field centre to Castlerigg Fell (right), Low Rigg and High Rigg (centre) and the western side of Matterdale Common with Helvellyn somewhere in the cloud (left).

To make the assessment during the field class a little more fun, the students were split into groups of 5 and each group given the scenario that they were a new environmental consultancy. Their first two (imaginary) clients’ concerns were about the quality of water leaving the two sites and therefore the geochemical processes controlling them.

The first site was a copper mine to extract chalcopyrite found in a mineral vein also containing pyrite, calcite and quartz. The second site was a tungsten mine extracting wolframite found in a mineral vein along with quartz, scheelite and arsenopyrite. The theoretical owners of the sites were concerned primarily about the fate of dissolved Cu and As leaving each location.

Students sampling water in the Red Dell Beck by Kennel Crag, under the watchful eye of the snow capped, Old Man of Coniston (back left).

At each site, the students tested waters draining from the mines and tailings into small streams leading off the site. By measuring pH, conductivity, temperature and stream flow rate on site, and filtering water samples to test for As, Cu, Fe, SO₄^2- and total alkalinity (as required) back at the field centre’s laboratory, the students had sufficient data for a preliminary geochemical assessment. Along with historical and geological information about the site, the students were able to use this data to produce presentations and posters for their clients on the situation at each location.

Students sampling waters leaving the lowest level mine adit feeding into Red Dell Beck (left).

Although some of these students had only been taught chemistry for 10 weeks in the first year of their degree, a small number of them could have explained the principles of equilibrium reactions and redox at the start of the field trip. Compare this to the end of the trip, where even students who have opted for study paths excluding geochemistry (I know, how could they?!) were able discuss the processes controlling the composition of the stream water leaving each site. Now, this could be attributed to the fact that it was fresh in their minds, but I’d argue there is more to it than that. (And no, I’m not saying their first year course was taught badly, golly, Cindy and I helped to teach it!)

What is it about a field class that aids the learning of Earth Sciences so well? Here is a thought:

The field class is THE holistic learning environment.

I’m not an educational specialist but I am aware of Fleming’s VAK model of learning styles; visual, auditory and kinaesthetic. I’d argue the field class covers and encompasses all, enabling a thorough learning experience

Visual. Earth sciences work best when you can see and feel both the large and small scale features of the environment in the same arena. Whether this is the contact between two rock units, the horizons in a soil trial pit, the precipitation of ochre in a stream, seeing environmental and geological processes greatly enhances the learning experience.

Auditory. Field classes often come with notes and the arrival at a new location is undoubtedly followed by a description. Discussions between students help to solidify ideas and bring together the varied observations and measurements made both in the field and the lab.

Kinaesthetic. The nature of a field class is active. The tasks involved in field classes often require one to hike halfway up a fell, dig a pit, measure, collect and test samples. I know for some folks there is some sort of internal conversation, where the body says to the brain “Dude, you’d better make this worthwhile and learn something. I didn’t just hike for an hour for fun!”**

The encompassing of all these styles into a field class enables students to utilise a varied learning approach to enhance understanding. Maybe that’s why learning and teaching in the field is so much fun (when the weather is good).

* There are over 90 bodies of water in the Lake District National Park but only one is named a lake, Bassenthwaite Lake. The larger bodies of water tend to be named mere or water and smaller bodies tarn.

** Some people do hike for fun, I am one of them.
Real also this post at the Cohen Geochemistry blog site.

  Andy Bray is a PhD student in the Cohen Geochemistry Group, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds and is supervised by Liane G. Benning and Steeve Bonneville. Andy’s studies are part of the World Universities Network Weathering Science Consortium investigating the biological weathering of primary minerals. Whilst working, Andy enjoys watching minerals dissolve and miniature pine trees grow. In a more natural environment, you might also find Andy telling bad jokes and jumping into rivers.

The other week, the School of Environmental Sciences (ENV) at the University of East Anglia was filming promotional videos to entice new undergraduates to join the department next year; this was mostly interviews with current students and filming lectures but they needed something a bit more exciting. This was provided by one of Jon Stone’s (@JonathanStone10) liquid nitrogen-powered volcanoes which are usually the highlight of ENV open days. On the promise of a free lunch, myself and Andrew Rushby (@andrewrushby), along with numerous others were roped into helping out…

2. Put the bin a long way, probably at least 10m away from anything or anybody that could be affected by the blast, seriously you don’t want to be too near this when it goes off, and fill with the water, food dye and jelly (the food dye and jelly aren’t necessary but will look good if you use plenty); now you’ve got a full magma chamber.

  

The eight members of the SAMBA project, from Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB) and Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Japan’s National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) and Tokyo University were searching for meteorites scattered across the Nansen Ice Field when, on January 28,  they found the 18kg ordinary chondrite. During the 40 day expedition the team discovered a total of 425 meteorites with a total weight of 75kg at an altitude of 2,900m, 140km south of Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Antarctica research base. “This meteorite was a very unexpected find for us, not only due to its weight, but because we don’t normally find such large meteorites in Antarctica”, said Vinciane Debaille, a geologist from Université Libre de Bruxelles and a councillor of the European Association of Geochemistry (EAG). Vinciane led the Belgian part of the team during the expedition. “This is the biggest meteorite found in East Antarctica for 25 years, so it’s a very special discovery for us, only made possible by the existence and location of Princess Elisabeth Antarctica.”

The SAMBA project contributes to the US and Japan-led global collection of Antarctic meteorites, and is an initiative of VUB and ULB, in collaboration with the Japanese Institute of Polar Research. SAMBA is supported by the Belgian Science Policy (BELSPO) and the International Polar Foundation.

Initial field observations by the scientists suggested that since the fusion crust was slightly eroded, the 18kg meteorite is an ordinary chondrite, the most abundant kind of  meteorite. It is currently undergoing a special thawing process in Japan, where ice is sublimed into vapor under vacuum. This is to ensure water doesn’t get inside the rock, potentially altering it further.

“In addition to this large meteorite, we already identified a few achondrites, including eucrites and diogenite, and at least two carbonaceous chondrites”, said Vinciane. “This season’s SAMBA mission was a success both in terms of the number and weight of the meteorites we found. Two years ago, we found less than 10kg. This year, we found so much that we had to call the travel agency – because we had 75kg of meteorites to take home”.

“Both Princess Elisabeth Antarctica and the International Polar Foundation are proud to support the research work of the Belgian and Japanese meteorite team”, said expedition leader Alain Hubert. “By providing solid logistics and field accommodation solutions to scientists working on the ice, we can ensure they can concentrate on what they have come to Antarctica to achieve: unlocking of Nature’s mysteries and broadening understanding of our planet”.

About the author:

Vinciane Debaille is a FNRS Research Associate at the Université Libre de Bruxelles in Belgium. She studies long-lived and short-lived isotope ratios in terrestrial as well as in extraterrestrial rocks for understanding the geodynamic of Earth and terrestrial planets. She is Co-PI of the SAMBA project, for collecting meteorites in Antarctica. In collaboration with the National Institute of Polar Research (Japan), she led the Belgian team during the 2012-2013 joint campaign in Antarctica, after a first mission in 2010-2011.

Additional information:

To find out more about science at Princess Elisabeth Antarctica and life in the frozen south, visit Inside the Station – an interactive exhibition that takes visitors on a journey inside Belgium’s zero emission polar research centre (currently taking place at Tour & Taxis, Brussels).

For more information, including access to high resolution images, please contact the International Polar Foundation’s press desk in Brussels, Belgium, at press@polarfoundation.org or phone +32 2 543 06 98 | www.polarfoundation.org.

Belgian and Japanese team:

• Vinciane Debaille (Belgium, ULB)
• Wendy Debouge (Belgium, ULB)
• Geneviève Hublet (Belgium, ULB)
• Nadia Van Roosbroek (Belgium,VUB)
• Harry Zekollari (Belgium,VUB)
• Naoya Imae (Japan, NIPR)
• Akira Yamaguchi (Japan, NIPR)
• Takashi Mikouchi (Japan, University of Tokyo)

A few numbers (source: Meteoritical Society):

• Total known meteorites discovered: 56,555
• Total meteorites found in Antarctica only: 38,537
• Among Antarctic meteorites, only 30 have a mass greater than 18 kg. The 18kg meteorite has the fifth largest mass ever discovered in East Antarctica (Dronning Maud Land), and is the first of this size found in the area since1988.
• Per year, around 1,000 meteorites weighing less than 100g are found, and about 100 less than 1kg.

References:

• SAMBA Project
• The Planet Topers in Antarctica
• ANSMET – The Antarctic Search for Meteorites
• BELSPO: Belgian Science Policy Office
• National Institute of Polar Research (Japan)
• European Association of Geochemistry (EAG)

A full press release is available here.

As I sit here watching my columns drip,

I thought I’d put together a little writ.

It’s about something that’s not always so plain to see;

the hidden world of isotope geochemistry.

It starts with a rock, water or gas

that contains an element of interest with a particular mass.

You crush, dissolve, evaporate or ash

until it resembles nothing more than a residual splash.

Next, with hands as steady as they can be,

weigh out some spike so that you can perform ID.

(Of course if you are feeling particularly pious,

using a DS will enable you to correct for subsequent mass bias.)

A drop more acid then on we go,

to run the columns that flow slow slow slow!

With resin and frits that just won’t sit right,

they’ll keep you stuck in the lab until late at night.

But finally it’s done and the samples are now ready

to be aspirated and analysed by mass spectrometry.

You tweak and you tune and you wait all day long,

but the blasted machine won’t behave unless you play its favorite song^*.

Eventually the standards come down to a value that’s alright,

at just about the time you planned to call it a night.

However the lure of the data means you set the run going,

while keeping everything crossed that the nebulizer stays flowing.

The next day… oh joy, what fun, can you see?

A brand new delta value that’s been generated just by me!

Now back to the lab to clean all that plastic;

a few hundred more runs like this doesn’t sound too drastic…

To end, while I think that it’s absolutely fab,

sitting on my own running columns in the lab.

I do so wish there was someone who wanted a PhD,

that would come and run all these wretched samples for me!

^*Not proven, but probably worth a try.

I was both delighted but surprised when I was asked to be the EAG Distinguished Lecturer in Eastern Europe. Distinguished is not an adjective that has ever been closely associated with my activities. However, on contemplation of the broader meaning of the word, I did feel I might be up to the job of giving some talks that could easily be distinguished from those others might give. So I accepted the job. It also struck me that given the amount of international travel involved in modern academia, I had spent remarkably little time in the eastern part of my home continent. This was something to rectify and if coupled with some modest geochemical proselising might pass for work.

Unfortunately, my commitments of lecturing closer to home, in what transpired to be a packed autumn term, meant my eventual trip was rather more rushed that I would have liked. There was not to be the meandering, Tokai-sipping cruise down the Danube that I had initially conjured in my imagination. Instead, I became a temporary authority on flight connections in Eastern Europe and packed 4 cities and 6 talks into 6 days. I did briefly worry that I would, Bush-like, get confused as to which country I was in by day 2. I’m pleased to report this was never close to happening in the distinct and varied settings through which I passed.

My Odyssey started in a chilly, misty Warsaw. My host was Prof. Ewa Slaby (University of Warsaw and Polish Academy of Sciences), who brought to life the complexities of Polish history in a fascinating trip around the sights of the city. In dubious return, I presented two talks the next day at the University of Warsaw. I was very pleased to be able to present to a large group of students in one of these talks, who graciously smiled through my trying to find the right balance on the first airing of my presentation. I was even further rewarded with a group-signed memento of my visit.

It’s Tuesday, so it must be Wroclaw. I was the guest of the Department of Experimental Petrology in the University of Wroclaw, housed atmospherically in weathered Bauhaus splendour on the banks of the Oder. Dr. Anna Pietranik ably co-ordinated my trip and rallied a full house for my talk. There was time for me enjoy a stroll through the gnome-strewn charms of central Wroclaw and be back to hunker down with the members of the Department for a perfect evening of tales, food and beverages.

A miraculously waiting cab outside the institution’s gates in the pre-dawn dark, conjured up images of cold-war spy films in my sadly clichéd mind. These rapidly evaporated in the glowing, modern blaze of Wroclaw’s impressive airport, as I set off for my next stop, Sofia. Bulgaria held a deal of intrigue for me and I was not disappointed with what awaited. I arrived in time to give a late afternoon presentation in the magnificent, NeoBaroque home of the Faculty of Geology and Geography, located in the heart of the city. My host, Dr. Momchil Dyulgerov, then showed me around the landmarks of the city centre, which bustled with life in the still balmy November evening. I had not expected the feel of a Mediterranean promenade in the late autumn of Bulgaria, but I guess such discoveries are what makes travelling such a pleasure.

Sadly my relentless schedule drove me on the next morning; a flight over the mountains to Bucharest and straight on to Cluj-Napoca. The first leg of this trip found me in a plane largely occupied by the entourage of Macy Gray and indeed the singer herself. Clearly the EAG were not the only people to think a November tour of Eastern Europe a good idea. I noted, however, that the level of logistical support offered to a ‘Distinguished’ Lecturer was considerably less than that of an internationally-renown chanteuse.

This was, in fact, not my first visit to the Romanian second city and I had previously passed through on a family caravanning holiday in the early seventies, as one does. Suffice to say I did not have strong recollections of the city’s layout and was pleased to make its reacquaintance. Dr. Dan Nita was my valiant guide and navigated me between the Faculties of Environmental Science and Geology of the Babes-Bolyai University, where I was warmly received by Prof. Alenxdru Ozunu and Dr. Nicolae Har respectively. It seemed quite appropriate for an EAG speaker to visit a city where Earth Science interests are represented in not just one but two institutes. I was glad of the opportunity to give talks in both and enjoyed a brief glimpse of the lively ambiance of the city in the intervening evening.

Amazingly, my timetable, horribly prone to the vagaries of transport, had gone to plan for the whole week. This was bound to end eventually, but fortunately not until my speaking commitments were done.  “Fog bound in Transylvania” is the sort of scenario designed to send shivers down the spines of Western Europeans who buy into the Bram Stoker myth. More prosaically, this led to nothing more traumatic than delays, rerouting and an unavoidable over-night in Bucharest airport.

I am very grateful for the great hospitality afforded to me during my week of distinction and also the kind interest shown in the abstruse brand of isotope geochemistry I peddle. It was wonderful opportunity for me to learn about places I feel I should know much better and I hope in small part I returned the favour with spot of isotopic titillation. As a footnote, I have to admit that, as a card-carrying vegetarian, I had been filled with worries of having to endlessly decline pork and dumpling dishes. Contrary to my ill-founded prejudices, I dined meat-free with ease, taste and diversity, never once having to turn down the offer of suety balls.

About the author:

Tim Elliott is Professor at the School of Earth Sciences of the University of Bristol, UK.
His research focuses on the chemical evolution of the Earth. As such he is interested in planetary formation and differentiation, sampling of the hidden Earth via melts, interaction of the deep and surface reservoirs and how this has influenced the terrestrial environment.

His tools of choice are dominantly isotopic, in tandem with elemental abundance measurements and judicious application of petrology and fieldwork. He has developed measurements of novel isotopic systems and is enthused by the new vistas of isotopic determination offered by plasma mass-spectrometry.

About the EAG Distinguished Lecture Program:

The Distinguished Lecture Program was started in 2011 and it currently focuses on Central and Eastern Europe. This program aims to introduce and motivate scientists and students located in under-represented regions of the world to emerging research areas in geochemistry. Tim Elliott, Distinguished Lecturer 2012, proposed lectures on ‘The Origin of Precious Metals on Earth’ and ‘Tracing mantle evolution with novel isotopic systems’.
In 2011, Karim Benzerara, CNRS and University Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France, was the EAG Distinguished Lecturer.

The film contained some undeniably beautiful still and motion images of the Arctic, which are definitely worth going to see on the big screen. Visual feast aside, the message of this film is why I write this blog.

As geochemists, we spend generally spend our time designing and conducting experiments in order to input our results and observations into models. We use these models to predict how earth processes did/do/will happen(ed) in the past/present/future or in places and at scales we can’t yet make direct observations. While I work on the specifics of micro-scale interactions, I sometimes find it hard to see the bigger picture of the Earth system as a whole. “Chasing Ice” helped me open my eyes.

I think I understand the implications of a warming planet and I know that things could get quite messy for us, the perpetrators. Even so, I was shocked at the scale and speed of change to, as Balog phrases it, “the Earth’s coal mine canary” – glaciers. This film was created to debunk the American media’s denial of anthropogenic climate change, but it works on this side of the pond too. Across Europe, scientists, news agencies, governments and the public alike ‘get’ that climate change is happening. However, I’d argue that we are largely ignorant to the severity of the situation which we read and hear about regularly. I was shocked at the documented scale of change in some of the biggest glaciers in the Arctic and I think most others would be too.

The reason I was shocked whilst watching “Chasing Ice” was because this huge visual dataset was presented in a simple and accessible way. It was not presented as a spreadsheet of ice area, volume, air temperatures, and glacier flow rate with a detailed, peer reviewed paper. It was not presented as a ‘News Special’, filled to the brim with scaremongering (the kind of thing I tend to ignore). It was presented as a motion picture, with a “see for yourself” narrative, inviting the viewer to engage in the situation and the implications, ending with a “what are you going to do about it?”

In an interview during the film, Balog explains the reason for founding EIS because he wanted to have something to say if, in 20 years time, his children asked “what did you do about climate change”. Balog and the EIS have created a database of images, both for today and for the future, recording landscapes which may not exist in the future.

In an environment where improved communication of science is becoming evermore important, what can we learn from Chasing Ice? Does the classic model of communication work? How can we communicate the implications of our field’s work in a more accessible way?

We don’t all do research that will make a nice film. My PhD, for example, would be a thrilling 4 hour marathon consisting of minerals sitting in acidic water and miniature pine trees slowly dying – hardly the stuff of an academy award!

With UK universities all working flat out towards REF 2014 and ‘impact’ being THE vital aspect of research across all disciplines, is our science being communicated well enough?

I think I’ll leave this post there. Two things though, go and see the film and take people with you. Make sure you listen to the original song that has earned an academy award nomination for Chasing, Before My Time – J. Ralph, Scarlett Johansson & Joshua Bell.

Also, I’d enjoy a discussion on this, if you have any ideas on what more we can be doing to communicate our science more effectively please use the comments section below.

Chasing Ice website:
http://chasingice.co.uk

Original post in the Cohen Research Group User’s blog (University of Leeds):
http://www.see.leeds.ac.uk/research/essi/cohen-research-group/users-blog/#c12809

About the author

  Andy Bray is a PhD student in the Cohen Geochemistry Group, School of Earth and Environment, University of Leeds and is supervised by Liane G. Benning and Steeve Bonneville. Andy’s studies are part of the World Universities Network Weathering Science Consortium investigating the biological weathering of primary minerals. Whilst working, Andy enjoys watching minerals dissolve and miniature pine trees grow. In a more natural environment, you might also find Andy telling bad jokes and jumping into rivers.

The rush started back in November, when, like many other Earth Scientists, I had a mad couple of weeks trying to collect enough data and put together a poster before flying out to the AGU fall meeting. Of course, the benefits of going to San Francisco and presenting your latest results to international colleagues far outweigh a few sleepless nights and an inability to talk about anything other than strontium isotopes (although I doubt that my other half would agree with this). However, the associated ice-breakers, happy-hours and socalising combined with 8am prompt starts (!) provided little time for rest and recuperation during the week… recovery from AGU is consequently normally designated for the week(s) after the conference, when term ends and universities wind down for the holidays. That wasn’t to be the case for me this year.

I had barely got home, dusted off the decorations, and put up the Christmas tree before I was back on a plane and heading out for my second conference in as many weeks. This time I was off to the inaugural MINSC meeting, where I had been invited to present my experiences of being involved in a similar Marie-Curie research-training network. The contrast between this meeting and AGU could not have been more pronounced: The mild Californian climate was swapped for the snow-covered alpine resort of Seefeld in Austria, the jostling hubbub of 22,000 delegates were replaced with face-to-face discussions with 15 early career researchers and their supervisors, and instead of having to queue for 20 minutes to get any beer other then Budweiser, I was able to enjoy a pint of weißbeer in front of a roaring fire. Again, this idealistic meeting didn’t provide quite as much time for rest as I’d hoped for, although in this instance I’m not complaining – there was fresh powder snow and the ski-lift was just opposite the hotel…

A few days later, as I sat on my third flight that month en-route to spend Christmas in Germany with the family, I realized that no matter how exhausting conferences and meetings may be, there is nothing more stimulating for scientific research then having the chance to discussing it with your peers. It’s just a shame that such discussions can’t always take place around the fire with a mince pie and glass of mulled wine!