Andy Bray

Posts by Andy Bray:

Friday Finale

August 21st, 2015

Good morning Goldschmidters.

I trust you enjoyed the Conference Banquet in the fantastic Municipal House, last night. And, I hope you are eager this morning to see our final day of science.

Today’s highlights…

The only medal winner presenting today is Ann Pearson, our plenary speaker, who is the Gast Lecture Series recipient.

11:30-12:30 Ann Pearson, 1A, Congress Hall

The final Anniversary talks today are:

08:30-09:00 Susanne Straub, Theme 20, Meeting Hall 1A
09:30-10:00 Richard Arculus, Theme 19, Club H
10:30-11:00 Timothy Eglinton, Theme 9, South Hall 1
11:00-11:30 Cinzia Farnetani, Theme 21, Club E

From Cohen Geochemistry and the Earth Surface Science Institute at the university of Leeds we have the following presentations:

09:30-09:45 Tomasz Stawski, 25E, Club A – Advanced Analysis of Time-Resolved and in situ SAXS Data from Evolving Inorganic Systems
09:45-10:00 Adriana Matamoros Veloza, 4F, Chamber Hall – Mechanisms and Structure of a Mackinawite FeS Precursor
10:45-11:00 Taher Rabizadeh, 14G, Small Theatre – Effects of Mg²⁺ on the Nucleation and Growth Kinetics of Calcium Sulfate

And, Andy’s Final Pick of the Day is a trip back in time with session 22B, the co-evolution of microbial life and environments in the precambrian. The notion of life simultaneous influencing, and being influenced by environmental change is fascinating. Head over to the Panorama Hall this morning to hear about it.

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On Thursday

August 20th, 2015

Today there are 5 medal talks:

08:30-09:15 Anat Shahar (2015 Clarke Medal) 21C, Club E
09:00-09:45 Liping Qin (The Shen-su Sun Award) 24D, Club B/C/D
09:30-10:15 Steve Larter (2014 Alfred Treibs Medal) 9E, Meeting Hall IV
14:15-15:00 Miriam Kastner (2015 Goldschmidt Medal) 19A, Club H
14:45-15:30 Karen Johannesson (2015 Patterson Medal) 4E, Chamber Hall

25th Anniversary talks:

08:30-09:00 Conel Alexander, Theme 24, Club B/C/D
11:00-11:30 Simon Redfern, Theme 14, Small Theatre
14:00-14:30 Ross Large. Theme 12, Small Theatre
14:30-15:00 Katherine Morris, Theme 13, Small Theatre
15:00-15:30 Chris Hawkesworth, Theme 18, Small Theatre
16:00-16:30 Bernhard Wehrli, Theme 4, Chamber Hall

Today’s Plenary is given by Andrew Revkin – Can Science Help Shape a “Good” Anthropocene?

From Cohen Geochemistry and the Earth Surface Science Institute at the university of Leeds we have the following presentations:

14:00-14:15 Ruza Ivanovic, 2C, North Hall – Sudden Ice Sheet Melt, Changing Ocean Circulation & Surface Climate: Understanding the Events of 14.6 ka
14:45-15:00 Michael Krom, 3C, Terrace 2 – Controls of Acid Dissolution of P in Mineral Dust during Atmospheric Processing
16:45 -17:00 Rhian Rees-Owen, 9A, Meeting Hall IV – Constraints on the Antarctic Hydrological Cycle during the Neogene
Poster 2120 Pilar Ramírez García – The Effect of Temperature on Switching between Calcite and Aragonite Seas

Andy’s Pick of the Day

For an overview of several fields of Geochemistry I recommend heading to Small Theatre either side of lunch, where 4 of today’s anniversary talks are taking place.

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The Global Weathering Thermostat

August 19th, 2015

Yesterday in Terrace 1 was an absolute delight. I sat there for most of the day listening to some fantastic biogeochemistry. From weathering of rock to soil and sediment, to the profound influence of one man on global biogeochemistry. Read the rest of this entry “

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Representative Sample

August 18th, 2015

Yesterday was a great start to the meeting. Oodles of excellent talks and posters. A personal highlight was a presentation in theme 5 yesterday emphasised the difference between a “representative sample” and a sample population size which is representative. The discussion that followed, both in the questions and around posters, was focussed on the significance of micro- and nano-structure and processes, and localised chemistry, on larger scale processes. Again, we’re back to the question of how to translate our observations across scales. Hopefully this is something we’ll start to talk in today’s Terrace 1 talks.

On to today! There are a number of things happening, see below. Don’t forget about Andy’s Pick of the Day at the bottom.

There is one medal citation:

10:45 – 11:30 Albrecht Hofmann (Urey Award) Session 21F, Congress Hall (note venue change)

Today’s Plenary will be given by Janne Blichert-Toft on Neo-Plumbotectonics. Come along!

There are also several 25th Anniversary talks happening today:

Don’t forget the EAG Cocktail Party and AGM from 18:30 in Zoom Restaurant

From Cohen Geochemistry and the Earth Surface Science Institute at the university of Leeds we have the following presentations:

14:15-14:30 Daniela Meier, 15H – Lysozyme Controls the Character of Biomimetic Silica Composites
16:00-16:15 Liane G. Benning, 14E – How do Calcium Carbonates Form in Microemulsions?

Andy’s Pick of the Day is a session which starts today, spanning 2 days, and is probably the most anticipated event at this year’s meeting (apart from my presentation on Wednesday at 15:30 in Terrace 1) – Session 5A The Global Weathering Thermostat: A Tribute to Bob Berner’s Legacy. This session will display the reach and impact of Bob Berner’s work with a huge number of quality presentations. 15:30 in Terrace 1.

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Monday Machination

August 17th, 2015

Doodle by our Artist in Residence, Nastasia Louveau.

Good Morning Goldschmidters,

I trust you all enjoyed the Ice Breaker last night. Sadly, I was too late into Prague to make it. You can read about how Nicci found her first Goldschmidt Ice Breaker here. Read the rest of this entry “

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Goldschmidt 2015: Introducing the Bloggers (3/3)

August 15th, 2015

Here’s the final post Introducing the Bloggers of Goldschmidt 2015 (part 1, part 2). Meet Drew, Nastasia, and Andy. Read the rest of this entry “

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Goldschmidt 2015: Introducing the Bloggers (2/3)

August 14th, 2015

In the second instalment of our Introducing the Bloggers mini-series (read part 1 here) we meet Adrienne, Nicci, and Rhian. Read the rest of this entry “

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Goldschmidt 2015: Introducing the Bloggers (1/3)

August 13th, 2015

It’s less than a week before thousands of Geochemists descend on Prague to meet for the 25^th Goldschmidt Conference. This is set to be a stellar meeting with a wide variety of social and student events, not to mention the huge number of world class oral and poster presentations through the week. In addition to the regular schedule, to celebrate this year’s 25^th anniversary of the Goldschmidt Conference, there will be 25 anniversary presentations given by distinguished researchers from each theme.

This year we have team of 8 bloggers who will be writing, tweeting, and presenting throughout the meeting. We’ll be giving you our personal highlights, pointing you towards parts of the programme you may have missed, covering the plenary presentations and social events, and trying to capture the essence of Goldschmidt 2015. On the team are Jess Barnes (Open University), Fred Bowyer (University of Edinburgh), Andy Bray (University of Leeds), Deirdre Clark (University of Iceland), Adrienne Macartney (University of Glasgow), Nicci Potts (Open University), Rhian Rees-Owen (University of Leeds), and Drew Steen (University of Tennessee).

We’re also privileged to have our first ever Goldschmidt Artist-in-Residence, Nastasia Louveau. Nastasia has a booth on the 3^rd floor where she will, amongst other things, be displaying her “Doodle a Day” during the week.

We’d really like you to get involved with the online part of the meeting, whether you’re attending or not. You can do this by reading and sharing our posts, tweeting using the official Goldschmidt hashtag #GT15, and saying hello to us around the conference centre.

Over the next 3 days (and 3 posts) we’ll be introducing ourselves, the blogging team. Here are the first 3, Jess, Fred, and Deirdre!

Jess Barnes

Hi there, I am a postdoctoral research associate at the Open University (OU), UK. I successfully defended my thesis on ‘Water in the Moon’ last December with the OU and the Natural History Museum, London. My research focussed on the analysis of water and its H-isotopic composition in Moon rocks, mostly samples brought back by the six NASA Apollo missions, together with some lunar meteorites. To analyse the samples I used a range of in situ microbeam techniques in order to answer some important science questions like: Is there any water in the Moon? If so then where did it come from? And what does it mean for the delivery of volatiles to the Earth-Moon system ca. 4.5 billion years ago? More recently I have been developing a method to enable high-precision in situ measurements of volatiles and chlorine isotopes in the mineral apatite using a Cameca NanoSIMS 50L. I’ll be speaking about H and Cl in lunar apatite on Wednesday morning at 9.30 in session 23A. At Goldschmidt 2015 I’ll be found in sessions on isotope geochemistry, planet evolution and differentiation, and volatiles in magmatic systems, and will be tweeting as @jessrocks88!

Fred Bowyer

Hi, I’m Fred, a PhD student at the University of Edinburgh. I’m interested in the chemical evolution of terminal Ediacaran ma rine environments with specific focus on early calcifying metazoan ecosystems. My PhD has so far been concerned with helping to reconstruct the redox architecture of sections from Namibia and South China utilising the iron speciation method. Future work will include investigation of weathering extent through use of Strontium and Lithium isotope proxies, and potential for pH reconstruction via non-traditional stable Boron analyses.

At Goldschmidt, I’m particularly looking forward to sessions covering themes of ocean geochemistry, geobiology, biogeochemistry, evolution of Earth’s environment, early Earth, and weathering and surface processes. I’m also interested in the themes of planetary chemistry, and cosmochemistry and astrophysics. As this is my first Goldschmidt meeting I’ll be trying to cram in as much as possible!

Deirdre Clark

Góðan daginn! I am a PhD Fellow at the University of Iceland. Originally from the United States and Canada, I completed my master’s degree in hydrology and geochemistry at Utrecht University (NL) before joining Sigurdur Gislason and his group in Reykjavik last year. I am also a part of the Marie Curie Network, CO2-React, which so far has been an amazing training program.

My research focuses on whether CO₂/H₂S can be stored in minerals >250°C and to assess the risk of toxic mobility during CO₂/H₂S-charged water pulses into basaltic rocks. I have been working closely with Reykjavik Energy and the CarbFix/SulFix projects at the Hellisheidi Geothermal Power Plant in SW Iceland where CO₂/H₂S injection is currently taking place. A poster of this project is Thursday evening in Session 13G!

This year’s Goldschmidt will be my first large-scale scientific conference and honestly I am not exactly sure to expect. I am definitely excited to explore the various facets of the geochemistry field and meeting new people! Feel free to follow me on twitter (@clarkdeirdre). See you around!Read part 2 and part 3 here.

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Expedition to the End of the World – a review

November 11th, 2013

I’ve been to the cinema again and, like last time, I feel compelled to write about it, encouraging you to see the film I just have. Expedition to the End of the World. Just reading the title evokes the vision of a Phileas Fogg-like adventure, and the film doesn’t disappoint.

Expedition to the End of the World is a sublime docu-film following a group of scientists and artists as they explore the unchartered fjords of NE Greenland on a three-mast schooner. Venturing by land, sea and air, the group experience the wildlife, wilderness and wonder of this area 200 km further north than the northernmost town. With pictures accompanied by a soundtrack of Mozart and Metallica, the eclectic nature of the trip is clear. Needless to say, from an artistic point of view this film presents a beautifully stark landscape, one which I’ve found myself daydreaming about visiting and studying.

The fjords of NE Greenland. Credit: Expedition to the End of the world

The main theme running through the feature is a conversation about life. Finding evidence of past life in the form of fossilised algal mats, the remains of a Stone Age playground and the carcases of deceased Arctic inhabitants, is met with the discovery of a new marine species and the awakening of dormant micro-organisms from the permafrost. These explorations and discoveries are accompanied by philosophical discussions on the origin, significance and meaning of life, topics we often don’t have the mental space to consider.

I’ve often thought that I should aim to be like a great scientist of old, not just a scientist but a philosopher. Maybe I need to hang out with more artists. Maybe I need to go on a boat trip to Greenland…

Anyway, as it seems I have become the resident EAG film critic I should probably give a rating, let’s go for 4.5/5*. I’d recommend this film to everyone as it is a delightful feature on artistic, scientific and personal exploration and it continues the discussion on the parallels between art and science which Betsy wrote about at the end of Goldschmidt 2013. The film is on again in Leeds on Tuesday 12^th November but if you can’t make that there are several short episodes which I’ll link to at the bottom of the page.

I’ll leave now with what expedition co-initiator Minik Rosing writes:

“Art and science both express the human need to understand ourselves in our world… A trip with no expectations of synergies and intersections was what we needed and what would produce the most valuable results, if we simply populated the ship with amiable people who were all experts in their field… The Expedition to the End of the World is a snapshot, not a document of the participating artists and scientists or their projects… No obligations or performance contracts, just pure exploration of the worlds of nature, science and art.”

* One can never give full marks!

Andy saw Expedition to the End of the World at the Leeds International Film Festival where it is showing again on Tuesday 12^th November 2013 at 16:00.

http://www.leedsfilm.com/films/expedition-world/

Episode 1: History of Life Episode 2: Vanished People Episode 3: The permafrost thaws Episode 4: New Species Episode 5: Capturing a mountain

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Goldschmidt 2013 revisited

September 17th, 2013

The Goldschmidt blogging team have all had time to travel back to their homes, some even moving to a new country! We’ve put together our highlights from the conference, see them below. Feel free to add your own personal highlights in the comment section at the bottom. Enjoy!

Though Goldschmidt2013 happened not even 3 weeks ago, it seems more like 2 months for me. Last week I spent in my home country, the Netherlands. Then I moved to Southern California and started a postdoc at JPL this week. Busy and exciting times!

Thinking back, two things really stood out for me at Goldschmidt. The first was meeting a “famous” colleague, who was very interested in collaborating on some of my samples. This is always the best about conferences I think, meeting new people, catching up with old friends, and talking about science. I’m always full of new ideas and motivations after such a week. The second was convening a session for the first time. We did our best to invite a diverse range of speakers, and I think it turned out a very interesting session.
Emma.

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There were so many highlights to this year’s meeting in Florence I have struggled to distil them to a workable number. Therefore I have selected my 3 favourite quotes from notes I made during Goldschmidt2013. In chronological order:

“Taking one river sample per month is like listening to Beethoven’s symphonies one note per minute” Jérôme Gaillardet

I mentioned this quote in another post during the week. It was taken from a presentation as part of the Critical Zone Observatory Open Forum Meeting on Monday evening. Jérôme was outlining the importance of holistic studies with thorough sampling to understand Critical Zone processes.

“Let’s skip all the details and go straight to the conclusions. That’s usually how I read a paper” Philippe Van Cappellen

Philippe, in his second keynote talk of the day (I know!), wanted to make sure the session got to the important aspects of several studies from his group. With a talk title of “Where Groundwater Meets Surface Water” there obviously needed to be a wide range of results presented to give a clear picture of this complicated environment. Philippe’s whistle-stop approach enabled him to get through a whole load of important processes, with clarity and without getting bogged down, refreshing!

“Icebergs are mobile MacDonald’s for phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean” Martyn Tranter

Also from a session’s keynote talk, this excellent turn of phrase evokes a mental image which has made Martyn’s Thursday afternoon talk stick with me for 2 weeks.

Along with the numerous Goldschmidt highlights there were areas for improvement… the main one, of course, was that we didn’t get Morgan Jones’ #OverlyHonestTalks theme running. This would be a trend on twitter where researchers present their results without the hype, for example:

“When two waters are mixed in different proportions, the stable isotopes of water form a line” @snowandscience
“The chemistry of a glacial river changes when the glacier melts” @drmorganjones
“Added acid to a solution and the pH went down…” @brayaw

Maybe next year…
Andy.

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Once again, Goldschmidt flew by and two weeks later I still find myself thinking, “Darn! I missed that [talk, poster, person].” Oh, well. You can only do so much with 1 week, 4100 people and 19 simultaneous sessions. Nevertheless, there are some experiences that stand out when I look back on the whirlwind week in Florence:

L-R: Jena Johnson (Caltech), Judith Klatt (invited speaker-MPIMM Bremen), Elizabeth Swanner (Univ. Tuebingen), Paula Welander (keynote-Stanford), Amber Jarrett (ANU), Nicole Posth (Univ. Southern Denmark), Trinity Hamilton (Penn State). Photo courtesy of Jenn Macalady.

Presenting in an all-female session on Monday (19e: Phototrophic life and Earth’s redox evolution) was a huge highlight. The session was organized by Jenn Macalady and Trinity Hamilton from Penn State and covered biomarker synthesis, stable isotopic signatures and redox cycling (Fe, S and Mn) mediated by phototrophs in analogue sites, laboratory experiments and geological samples. To see good science and representation by woman in this session was a welcome contrast to the predominantly male recipients of awards at Goldschmidt 2013, already mentioned by Emma Versteegh in her post on August 27.

Making connections with other scientists is always one of my favorite parts about Goldschmidt. One person I enjoyed meeting this year was Prof. Bill Gilhooly from Indiana University-Purdue University, Indianapolis (IUPUI). Bill gave an invited talk in session 3g (Reconstructing Ancient Surface Environments from Modern (Near) Analogues) on Friday about “ground-truthing” the multiple sulfur isotope signatures that are used to reconstruct past redox conditions based on his work in modern sulfidic sediments. We compared notes over dinner with a group one night about the complementarity between his work on sulfidic conditions and mine that is focused on ferruginous conditions. And of course “small world” syndrome set in after realizing my sister-in-law is a graduate student in his department.

Finally, I always appreciate the diversity of sessions at Goldschmidt and that it gives me exposure to research areas a bit removed from my own, or just new to me. This year I spent a lot of time in sessions that dealt with trace element distribution in sediments, seawater and marine biota, and Ocean Anoxic Events (OAE) (e.g. theme 17: Oceans and Atmospheres). It was great fun to observe what the hot topics are in these areas, but I did encounter some limits to my own knowledge: I’m still looking for someone to explain to me what is meant by the term “leaky bucket”!
Betsy.

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Goldschmidt2013? I am already thinking of 2014! But casting my mind back, it was a great meeting. Despite getting lost too many times among the lecture rooms in the basement, like some sort of minimalist maze where you never quite know which direction you are walking, it was a conference centre design like no other. If I felt in need of a workout, I simply took the long way round … walking from floor to floor via the never-ending external ramps.

As for Science … I enjoyed some great discussions over the poster sessions, sat through talks on planetary evolution in the early Solar System that blew my mind (without really working out how credible they were), and really appreciated the quality of so many of the presentations, especially from the grad students from our Department! It was a pleasure giving the citation for a colleague’s medal, meeting old friends in the beer queue and sampling some of the excellent food on offer in Florence. What a great city for a conference. I’m looking forward to future Goldschmidts, and must get back into the lab to collect the next dataset in preparation.
Simon

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Goldschmidt2013 can be described by a few words: whirlwind, tiring, stimulating and most of all amazing. This was my second Goldschmidt conference and my first as a blogger. Actually, it was the first conference I have ever blogged and I have to say it made for a different feel. At conferences I have mostly gone to talks that apply to my own field in some way and thought about the science as it applies to my work. However, this time I had to look at talks through a second lens: that of a blogger/journalist. For the first time I was trying to think about more than just myself and my own work when viewing talks and posters. At this Goldschmidt I was trying to think about how the work of others could be distilled into a blog post, or how their work could interest readers. It made for a very new and interesting experience and I think it helped me get more value out of attending a conference than I have ever experienced before.

The highlights for me were numerous. Firstly, I loved giving my own talk! It was fun to get up in front of my peers and discuss the work that I and others in my lab have been doing on Fukushima iodine. I also enjoyed the other talks in my session and came away with lots of great ideas and possible collaborations. The second highlight was the Impacts of Geochemistry session. This session was tailor made for blogging and a lot of the talks were fascinating. The talk by John Ludden on the Geochemistry of London was very interesting, as was the talk by my old Prof Kurt Kyser on Geochemical Tools for finding Ore Deposits. The third highlight was the personal interactions. For example, meeting the other bloggers was great. We all were there for the same reason and it was great to interact on personal level as opposed to digital.
Here’s looking forward to next year in Sacramento!
Matt

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What were your highlights? Don’t forget to give your feedback on Goldschmidt 2013 too!

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