<![CDATA[Chris Rowan · Storify]]>http://storify.com/allochthonousNodeJS RSS ModuleThu, 23 May 2013 06:19:24 GMT<![CDATA[The new timelapse timesink]]>

Fun with Google Earth Engine's cool new feature

Storified by Chris Rowan · Fri, May 10 2013 18:08:40

Sometimes Google does some really awesome things. Like processing 30 years of LandSat imagery to produce time lapse photography of both natural and anthropogenic changes of the Earth's surface.
TimelapseTimelapse
Exclusive timelapse: See climate change, deforestation and urban sprawl unfold as Earth evolves over 30 years.
You can find it all at Google's Earth engine, which has a gallery of nice examples.
Google Earth EngineGoogle Earth Engine
What I didn't realise last night was that the examples are just that, and you can actually pan and zoom to anywhere on the Earth's surface. But Ron Schott did, and was quick to exploit this fact:
The response was...uniformly positive.
And then, of course, we all had to give it a go:
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/the-new-timelapse-timesinkhttp://storify.com/allochthonous/the-new-timelapse-timesinkSat, 11 May 2013 01:08:40 GMT<![CDATA[Live-tweeting 2012: the movie]]>

Storified by Chris Rowan · Sun, Dec 23 2012 08:37:54

2012 - Full HD trailer - At UK Cinemas November 13 ·
The reaction from our Twitter friends was of the 'fly, you fools!' variety:
And Maitri was having a much more civilised apocalypse party:
Nonetheless, we pressed on. And it got snarky very, very quickly.
Then the first big special effect hit, and we faced the question that plagued us though the rest of the movie: is hysterical laughter really an appropriate response to a scene where tens of thousands of people are presumably dying?
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/live-tweeting-2012-the-moviehttp://storify.com/allochthonous/live-tweeting-2012-the-movieSun, 23 Dec 2012 16:37:54 GMT<![CDATA[Women of Rock]]>

Geotweeps nominate women earth scientists of distinction

Storified by Chris Rowan · Sat, Oct 27 2012 07:45:19

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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/women-of-rockhttp://storify.com/allochthonous/women-of-rockSat, 27 Oct 2012 14:45:19 GMT<![CDATA[Are geologists mostly lefties?]]>

Geologists are often distinguished by an affinity for beer, fleeces and road cuts - but are there more distinctive marks of the earth science tribe?

Storified by Chris Rowan · Sun, Mar 11 2012 11:20:33

Fellow all-geo blogger Simon Wellings had noticed something weird about some of the geologists he went to school with: 4 in 10 of them were left-handed.
Request for information about left-handed geologists | MetageologistRequest for information about left-handed geologists | Metageologist
I'm a cack-handed sinister southpaw and the chances are surprisingly high that you are too. At University, about 40% of my peers studying Earth Sciences were left-handed. Faculty professors confirmed that this was normal, based on their experience of teaching geologists over the decades. This is of course an unusually high proportion.
This compares to only about 1 in 10 of the wider population being left handed, according to the Internet.
Handedness - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Handedness (also referred to as chirality or laterality) is a human attribute defined by unequal distribution of fine motor skills between the left and right hands. An individual who is more dexterous with the right hand is called right-handed and one who is more skilled with the left is said to be left-handed.
The question Simon had was: was his anecdotal observation meaningful. If it is, interesting research might ensue. I decided to help out with the data collection by asking Twitter.
A few fellow lefties chimed in:
But a horde of right-handed geo-types were also weighing in.
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/are-geologists-mostly-leftieshttp://storify.com/allochthonous/are-geologists-mostly-leftiesSun, 11 Mar 2012 18:20:33 GMT<![CDATA[The hidden hurdle of (no) childcare at conferences]]>

Storified by Chris Rowan · Thu, Jan 05 2012 18:18:14

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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/the-hidden-hurdle-of-no-childcare-at-conferenceshttp://storify.com/allochthonous/the-hidden-hurdle-of-no-childcare-at-conferencesFri, 06 Jan 2012 02:18:14 GMT<![CDATA[To lecture, or not to lecture?]]>

Is the lecture an effective educational tool, or should it be totally abandoned in favour of more interactive methods?

Storified by Chris Rowan · Mon, Jan 02 2012 19:53:06

From time to time, a story hits the media that decries that bastion of undergraduate education, the lecture. It's too passive, the criticism goes; it encourages rote memorisation rather than promoting conceptual understanding. Cue interesting discussion on Twitter, because some geologists aren't willing to give up on the lecture quite yet...
Physicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool : NPRPhysicists Seek To Lose The Lecture As Teaching Tool : NPR
The lecture is one of the oldest forms of education there is. "Before printing someone would read the books to everybody who would copy t...
So at least some geoscientists see a place for the 'sage on the stage' - and Erik is a lecturer himself. 
It's less exciting than the 'total teaching revolution!' angle, but the consensus seems to be that adapting the lecture format to include more interactive aspects is the best strategy. But it is not without its challenges. 
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/to-lecture-or-not-to-lecturehttp://storify.com/allochthonous/to-lecture-or-not-to-lectureTue, 03 Jan 2012 03:53:06 GMT<![CDATA[Teaching through blogs and tweeting: possible, or a pipe dream?]]>

Meagan Pollock kicked off a fascinating discussion with a question about one thing all people using social media love to discuss: using social media!

Storified by Chris Rowan · Sat, Oct 29 2011 18:57:45

And the answers rolled in. Unsurprisingly, undergraduates' hierarchy of social media usage is different from ours, most notably in their much more heavy use of Facebook.
And then (ramping up the meta-ness of this conversation) there is Twitter:
In conclusion then, it seems students use Twitter much like the rest of humanity - in a multitude of different ways. Which is, really, why Twitter has become so popular: the only constraint on how you use it is the need for brevity. 
Ron Schott, of course, has experimented with using social media in education more than most, with mixed results. 
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/students-and-social-mediahttp://storify.com/allochthonous/students-and-social-mediaSun, 30 Oct 2011 01:57:45 GMT<![CDATA[To blog your research, or not to blog your research?]]>

Blogs are a wonderful medium for communicating science. But what, if any, role do they have in doing science?

Storified by Chris Rowan · Sat, Oct 29 2011 19:00:39

Our starting point is an opinion piece in the Guardian by Sarah Kendrew (@sarahkendrew) which took on some negative opinions expressed about blogging in a Q+A by physicists Brian Cox (TVs current stand-in-exotic-place-staring-moodily-into-space icon) and Jeff Forshaw.
Brian Cox is wrong: blogging your research is not a recipe for disasterBrian Cox is wrong: blogging your research is not a recipe for disaster
A few days ago, the Guardian ran a Q&A session with Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw. Cox and Forshaw are professors of physics at the Universi...
How you feel about this issue depends on how you interpret the scope of the question (and the answers) and Sarah's piece makes some excellent points about how in physics at least, things like the arXiv pre-print server make things much less clear-cut than they once were; findings are making the news before they have been formally peer-reviewed and published. But that's not quite the same as blogging your results as you get them (which, as Sarah also points, out, some people are trying out too). Over to Brian Romans:
» Linking Erosional and Depositional Landscapes» Linking Erosional and Depositional Landscapes
The surface of Earth is being reshaped constantly. Mountainous uplands are broken down by water and wind producing sediment that is moved...
As demonstrated by the link above, Brian is an exemplar of using his blog to provide a more accessible account of his own research; but, as he says, only after it has been published in a peer-reviewed journal. 
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/to-blog-your-research-or-not-to-blog-your-research-http://storify.com/allochthonous/to-blog-your-research-or-not-to-blog-your-research-Sun, 30 Oct 2011 02:00:39 GMT<![CDATA[What's being erupted at El Hierro]]>

The eruption at El Hierro in the Canary Islands is taking place under the sea, but pictures from the scene are starting to show products of the eruption floating to the surface. But what are they? Read on for a crash cause in volcanic rocks that can float.

Storified by Chris Rowan · Wed, Oct 26 2011 23:08:56

The undersea eruption has manifested at the surface in the form of a plume of dirty brown water. 

wired.com
Of particular interest to watching geobloggers are these dark specks floating within the plume.
Imagen ofrecida por dirección del PEVOLCA. · twitpic.com
Experimental Crystallization of a High-K Arc Basalt: the Golden Pumice, Stromboli Volcano (Italy)Experimental Crystallization of a High-K Arc Basalt: the Golden Pumice, Stromboli Volcano (Italy)
The near-liquidus crystallization of a high-K basalt (PST-9 golden pumice, 49·4 wt % SiO2, 1·85 wt % K2O, 7·96 wt % MgO) from the present-day activity of Stromboli (Aeolian Islands, Italy) has been experimentally investigated between 1050 and 1175°C, at pressures from 50 to 400 MPa, for melt H2O concentrations between 1·2 and 5·5 wt % and ΔNNO ranging from −0·07 to +2·32.
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/floating-volcanic-rockshttp://storify.com/allochthonous/floating-volcanic-rocksMon, 17 Oct 2011 03:36:02 GMT<![CDATA[GSA Jumps the Kraken?]]>

The kooky conference abstract that no-one takes seriously inevitably becomes the star of the show.

Storified by Chris Rowan · Wed, Oct 26 2011 23:09:41

Our story begins a couple of weeks ago, when a geotweep looking through the abstracts for the upcoming Geological Society of America conference comes across a rather.... fanciful...submission.

TRIASSIC KRAKEN: THE BERLIN ICHTHYOSAUR DEATH ASSEMBLAGE INTERPRETED AS A GIANT CEPHALOPOD MIDDENTRIASSIC KRAKEN: THE BERLIN ICHTHYOSAUR DEATH ASSEMBLAGE INTERPRETED AS A GIANT CEPHALOPOD MIDDEN
The Luning Formation at Berlin‑Ichthyosaur State Park, Nevada, hosts a puzzling assemblage of at least 9 huge (≤14 m) juxtaposed ichthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis). Shonisaurs were cephalopod‑eating predators comparable to sperm whales (Physeter). Hypotheses presented to explain the apparent mass mortality at the site have included: tidal flat stranding, sudden burial by slope failure, and phytotoxin poisoning.

We all had a good chuckle about this on Twitter, but the odd eccentric conference submission is not unusual (getting an abstract accepted for a conference is light years away from getting a paper accepted for publication in terms of the scientific scrutiny involved), so we quickly moved on to other ways of distracting us from the talks we should be writing.


But it seems that within the press office of the GSA, someone looked past the lack of compelling evidence to find the compelling headline. And thus, we get this:

GSA press release - Giant Kraken Lair DiscoveredGSA press release - Giant Kraken Lair Discovered
Boulder, CO, USA - Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before Mount Holyoke College paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada.
Which leads to this:
Giant 'kraken' lair discovered: Cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaursGiant 'kraken' lair discovered: Cunning sea monster that preyed on ichthyosaurs
Long before whales, the oceans of Earth were roamed by a very different kind of air-breathing leviathan. Snaggle-toothed ichthyosaurs larger than school buses swam at the top of the Triassic Period ocean food chain, or so it seemed before paleontologist Mark McMenamin took a look at some of their remains in Nevada.
Giant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bonesGiant prehistoric krakens may have sculpted self-portraits using ichthyosaur bones
For decades, paleontologists have puzzled over a fossil collection of nine Triassic icthyosaurs (Shonisaurus popularis) discovered in Nevada's Berlin-Ichthyosaur State Park. Researchers initially thought that this strange grouping of 45-foot-long marine reptiles had either died en masse from a poisonous plankton bloom or had become stranded in shallow water.

And so on. And so on. Which leads to much headdesking and rending of hair:

Which was also Brian's reaction to the brain-dead churnalism that masqueraded as reporting of this story...
The Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common SenseThe Giant, Prehistoric Squid That Ate Common Sense
We have a serious problem with science journalism. A big one, in fact, and today that problem takes the form of a giant, prehistoric squid with tentacles so formidable that it has sucked the brains right out of staff writer's heads.
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]]>http://storify.com/allochthonous/gsa-jumps-the-krakenhttp://storify.com/allochthonous/gsa-jumps-the-krakenMon, 10 Oct 2011 23:28:57 GMT