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CONTENTS

- From the President

- From the Editor

- GSAf Matters

- News of/on Africa

- News of/on the Rest of the World

- News of/on Space /Astronomy

- Interesting Sites

- Books/Journals/Maps/

- Papers on Africa

- Other interesting papers

- Events

- 24th Colloquium on African Geology

- 34th International Geological Congress (34

- Professional Courses/

- Interesting Photos

-- Geology of African Countries/Territories

Edited by Lopo Vasconcelos Vice-President of GSAf for Southern Editor of the GSAf Newsletter [email protected]

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From the President

News of/on Africa

News of/on the Rest of the World

News of/on Space /Astronomy

Books/Journals/Maps/ Newsletters/etc

Papers on Africa

Other interesting papers

Colloquium on African Geology (CAG24)

International Geological Congress (34 IGC)

Professional Courses/ Workshops/Scholarships

Interesting Photos

Geology of African Countries/Territories

Africa

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FROM THE PRESIDENT

The Geological Society of Africa in 2012 By A. Mogessie (GSAf President)

We have started the New Year 2012. It will be a year with a number of activities where the GSAf will be engaged. Among the activities are the preparation of the 24th Colloquium of African Geology (CAG24), the 14th Conference of the Geological Society of Africa and the 40th Anniversary of the GSAf. Each of these activities require a lot of contribution from regional GSAf Council members and its supporters. During this year we will also have a chance to see a large number of African geologists who will participate at the IGC 34 meeting in Brisbane, Australia in August 2012. This is the first time that African geologists have got a chance to be present at an international geological congress in such a large number thanks to the organizers and the generous financial support of the Australian Government. This should be an example for those countries, organizations and companies engaged in the mineral exploration sector in Africa to follow and support the development of Earth Sciences research and education by contributing their share in supporting such type of initiatives. There are also several conferences which will be organized by Universities, National Geological Societies or Geological Surveys in Africa ranging from the Nile Basin Geology conference that will be held in Alexandria, Egypt, to the meeting of the Association of African Women in Geosciences in Cameroon and the 1st Comgress of Geology of Mozambique that will be held in Maputo, Mozambique, just to mention a few. As in 2011, the GSAf is invited to attend several high level meetings such as the AU-EU Ministerial and expert meeting on Raw Materials in Brussel (25-26.01.2012), the 63rd IUGS executive committee meeting in San Sebastian, Spain (14-17, 02, 2012) and the 40th Anniversary of the IGCP in Parris (Feb, 22, 2012). This shows how far the Society has come in representing the interests of the geosciences in Africa. In order to make sure that the preparation for the CAG24 is going on as planned, the GSAf President will visit Ethiopia in early March for a discussion with the local organizing committee. The Vice President of the GSAf for the Eastern African region, who is also from the Addis Ababa University will be at the meeting as one of the representatives of the GSAf in the organizing committee. The more the society is engaged the more responsibility each GSAf Council member has to shoulder. To have a voice in decision making processes of international organizations such as the IUGS, or programs such as the IGCP, it is necessary that the 54 African countries should be members of these organizations and establish National committees by paying their yearly membership dues regularly. Some African countries have such National committees, most do not. The Geological Society of Africa can be more effective when the national African Geological Societies become its associated members (for example, the National societies of Ethiopia, Nigeria and Mozambique are associated members). We hope the 51 countries will follow. It should be noted that the GSAf has nominated its past President Prof. Sospeter Muhongo of Tanzania as a candidate for the president position of the IUGS (2012-2016). We believe that we have the best candidate that Africa can proudly nominate for this distinguished position. However, the election that will take place in Brisbane, Australia during the IGC 34, will be conducted by IUGS member countries and organizations, affiliated and adhering societies. Therefore, it is necessary that most African Geological Societies or Geological Surveys/Ministry of mines officially register to be member of the IUGS or at least those who are members pay their membership dues on time and send a delegate to the IGC34 to have a voice for Africa and support the GSAf candidate. It should be noted that Africa has excellent scientists within the continent and scattered in the Diaspora. Therefore, the decision or policy makers in Africa have to set their priorities in advancing science and technology in the African continent for a fast track development. One way of dealing with this is encouraging the formation of national earth science associations which will help all those engaged in the earth sciences from the University to the industrial sector to get together and develop a strategy to encourage research and education and build the human capital necessary in this important sector for Africa. I hope and believe we can do more and advance forward in achieving some of our objectives with your support. Please look at our website and register as member of the GSAf and support its activities: http://www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org To register for the CAG24 please check the conference website: www.cag24.org.et On Behalf of GSAf Council members and on my behalf, I wish you all a 2012 full of wealth and health. Aberra Mogessie

FROM THE EDITOR

Dear Geo-Fellow A new year is ahead of us, with lots of perspectives for geosciences in Africa. Last year I managed to edit 1 GSAf Newsletter issue per month, and I hope its contents met your expectations. Although this is a newsletter of GSAf, I think that it must contain information about allover the World, not only about geosciences, but also related sciences and other issues of general interest. The inclusion of interesting pictures of the worls aims at divulging images of our Earth, but also to give a sense of “art” to the newsletter. One thing for which the Newsletter has been created is to include contributions from the GSAf members and readers in general. Unfortunately this was not achieved up to now. As Editor of the Newsletter, I would be very much please to receive contributions from all of you. Please be proactive this year. This is my last year as Editor of the Newsletter. During the next CAG24 in Ethiopia in January 2013 elections will be held to choose new Council members. I hope I can maintain in 2012 the pace reached up to now! Once again, I wish you all a fruitful New Year, with many fulfillments in your private and professional lives. Lopo Vasconcelos Vice-President of the GSAf for SA Editor of the GSAf Newsletter


GSAf MATTERS

1. An African to the IUGS Presidency The Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) has nominated PPrrooff.. SSoossppeetteerr MMuuhhoonnggoo as its candidate to the next election for President of IUGS (International Union of Geological Sciences) to be held in August 2012, during the 34th International Geological Congress, in Brisbane, Australia. A short CV of Prof. Muhongo is presented below for you to have an image of who is Prof. Muhongo and to lobby for a successful candidateship.

Prof Sospeter Muhongo, a Tanzanian, Officier, Ordre des Palmes Académiques, is a Full Professor of Geology at the University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania and an Honorary Professor of Geology at the University of Pretoria, South Africa. He is an Honorary Fellow of the Geological Society of London (HonFGS), an Honorary Research Fellow of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences (HonFCAGS), a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World (FTWAS), a Fellow of the Geological Society of Africa (FGSAf) and a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (FAAS). He is a fellow of eight highly learned professional societies, and the first recipient (2004) of the Robert Shackleton Award (Outstanding Research on the Precambrian Geology of Africa). He is the Vice President of the Commission of the Geological Map of the World (CGMW). Prof Muhongo is the Chair of the Jury for the African Union (AU) Kwame Nkrumah Scientific Awards – Continental Awards for Outstanding Scientists 2011 Edition. He is a member of the Executive Board of the African Inter-Parliamentary Forum on Science, Technology and Innovation (AIPF-STI), and was a candidate (2009) for the post of the Director General of UNESCO. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of African Earth Sciences (Elsevier), Associate Editor of Precambrian Research (Elsevier) and a member of several editorial boards of science journals and bulletins. Prof Muhongo is the Senior

Editor of the published book (2009) on, “Science, Technology and Innovation for Socio-Economic Development: Success Stories from Africa.” Prof Muhongo was the President of the Geological Society of Africa (1995-2001). He was the founding Regional Director (2005-2010) of the ICSU Regional Office for Africa, Pretoria, South Africa. He was the Chairperson of the UNESCO-IUGS IGCP Scientific Board of International Geoscience Programme (2004-2008), and the Chair (2007-2010) of Science Programme Committee (SPC) of the UN-proclaimed International Year of Planet Earth (IYPE). Prof Muhongo is a Member of the International Experts Group (Global Science Forum) of OECD. He is a Chartered Geologist and an active member of numerous professional societies including, the Geological Society of America, the Geological Society of London, the Royal Commonwealth Society, Geologische Vereinigung (Germany), Geological Society of Africa, Geological Society of South Africa and the Tanzania Geological Society. He was the Chairman (1999-2005) of the Board of Directors of the State Mining Corporation (STAMICO), Tanzania; and was the Head (1997-2000) of the Department of Geology, University of Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania. Prof Muhongo was the Chairman (2002) of the Tanzania Government's Commission of Inquiry on the deadliest Merelani tanzanite mine's accident. Prof Muhongo has published over 200 well acknowledged research articles, geological and mineral maps. He has delivered more than 300 invited keynote speeches around the world at international conferences. He has undertaken over 100 contracted scientific research projects, and consultancy services in the mineral industry, environmental issues and STI policy matters. Prof Muhongo has been on many STI review/evaluation panels and advisory boards for both national and international institutions and organizations. He has been an External Examiner/Referee for numerous universities, i.e. examinations moderator and academic staff referee/evaluator (e.g. candidates for professorship positions). Over the past two decades, Prof. Muhongo has co-organized over 100 expert group meetings and international earth sciences, STI and science policy conferences, including those on “Science with Africa (Rapporteur-General)” which are hosted by the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa (UNECA), the African Union Commission (AUC) and their partners. He has occupied numerous important national, regional and international professional positions dealing with science, technology, innovation, earth resources, science policy and science diplomacy. Prof Muhongo is intensively mentoring young scientists, engineers and technologists around the world and has developed a special interest in the application of STI for the sustainable growth and socio-economic development of the global society. Prof Muhongo, recipient of numerous scholarly and professional awards, recognitions, grants, and fellowships studied geology at the Universities of Dar Es Salaam and Goettingen (Germany). He graduated with Dr.rer.nat. degree from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany. Prof Muhongo is fluent in Kiswahili, English, German and French (basic). [email protected] Prof Dr Sospeter MUHONGO (Officier, Ordre des Palmes Académiques) FGSAf, FAAS, FASI, FASSAf, FGIGE, FTWAS, HonFCAGS, HonFGS, CGeol, EurGeol 10 January 2012

2. Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES) to bec ome AGI's 3rd International Associate Alexandria, VA - The American Geosciences Institute (AGI) welcomes the Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences (CFES) as the third member of the International Associates Program. Established in 2010, AGI's International Associates (IA) Program provides professional geoscience organizations based outside of the United States with a way to develop a formal collaborative and informational relationship with the Institute. Previously, AGI had only accepted member societies that resided within the United States or that had a large number of their members within the U.S. The IA Program provides an avenue for continued geoscience cooperation abroad and emphasizes the importance of global collaboration in promoting Earth science. The Youth Earth Science Network (YES Network) and the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) are also members of AGI's IA Program. The Canadian Federation of Earth Sciences, founded in 2006, acts as the unified voice for Earth science in Canada, and strives to raise awareness of the importance of geoscience in Canadians' daily lives. The Federation consists of 12 Canadian member societies and two cooperative groups. Their members represent organizations from industry, government and academia, and CFES has a total membership of approximately 20,000 Canadian geoscientists. This new partnership will greatly enhance both AGI and CFES's abilities to engage new audiences about the importance of geoscience. Currently, AGI and CFES are collaborating to promote CanGeoRef - a bibliographic geoscience database that covers the Canadian geoscience literature from the early 1800s to the present.

The American Geosciences Institute is a nonprofit federation of 50 geoscientific and professional associations that represents more than 250,000 geologists, geophysicists and other earth scientists. Founded in 1948, AGI provides information services to geoscientists, serves as a voice of shared interests in the profession, plays a major role in strengthening geoscience education, and strives to increase public awareness of the vital role the geosciences play in society's use of resources, resiliency to natural hazards, and interaction with the environment.


3. MEMBERSHIP NEW MEMBERS

Abdelouahed Lagnaoui [email protected] Akwinga Victor Asaah [email protected] Bannib Lambon [email protected] Biteme Kangeze John [email protected] Dorin Dordea [email protected] Gian Gabriele Ori [email protected] Hasina Randrianaly [email protected] Nasum Ahmed [email protected] Osama M. K. Kassem [email protected]

RENEWED MEMBERSHIP Allswell Adjei Ackah [email protected] Eyerusalem Gezu [email protected]

The GSAf welcomes these new Members and those who renewed their Membership

NEWS OF/ON AFRICA

4. Pan African Review Posted on November 24, 2011 by Steve Drury. Undoubtedly the best exposed and one of the biggest examples, the accretionary orogen of the Arabian-Nubian Shield (ANS) is a witness to the creation of a supercontinent from the remnants of an earlier one. At about 1 Ga, most of the Earth’s continental material was clumped together in the Rodinia supercontinent that existed for a quarter of a billion years. At a time of massive mantle upheaval that left most crust of that age affected by basaltic magmatism, in the form of lava flows and dyke swarms, Rodinia began to break up at 800 Ma to scatter continental fragments. Subduction zone accommodated this continental drift to form many ocean and continental-margin volcanic arcs. The ANS is a repository for many of these arcs which episodically accreted between earlier cratons to the west in Africa and those comprising Somalia and the present Indian subcontinent. Primarily the terranes are oceanic in origin and formed in the aftermath of the dismemberment of Rodinia, although a few slivers of older, reworked crust occur in Saudi Arabia and Yemen. Among the various components are ophiolites marking sutures and other major tectonic features of the orogen. The shape of the Shield is unlike that of any other major orogen of later times, for it shrinks from a width estimated at ~2000 km in Arabia to the north to vanish just south of the Equator in southern Kenya. This ‘pinched’ structure has suggested to some that the bulk of the new crust was forced laterally northwards when the African and Indian cratons collided, in the manner of toothpaste from a trodden-on tube. Fom Geobrasil, http://www.geobrasil.net More at http://earth-pages.co.uk/tag/rodinia/

A terrane boundary close to the Nile in the Sudan, detected by radar from the Space Shuttle: the Keraf Suture. From NASA

5. Couple finds evidence indicating earliest humans lived by rivers and streams December 26, 2011 by Bob Yirka. When many people think of our earliest human ancestors, they think of the hot dried out dusty environments in Africa in which many of their remains were found. Unfortunately, such images don’t take into account the changes in environment that have occurred since those times when early peoples walked the Earth. Archeologists of course have thought of such things and for many years have tossed ideas back and forth debating whether such people lived by rivers and streams, as did those that came later and built civilization along such places as the Nile or whether they lived in woodlands. Now new evidence has come to light that suggests the former might be more likely. Husband and wife team Royhan and Nahid Gani have been studying the sediments surrounding the place where Ardipithecus ramidus, aka, "Ardi," was found in Ethiopia, and have, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Communications, found that most of the evidence in the area points to a group of people that lived near a very large river. Ardi is believed to have lived some four and half million years ago in what is now Aramis, a hot and dry part of Ethiopia, but until now, no serious study had been done on the dirt in which the skeletal remains were found. After doing so, the Gani’s discovered that the dirt was actually layers of sandstone that appear most likely to have been the result of an ancient stream overflowing it’s banks periodically, leaving behind layers of sand. Branching out, the team discovered that the sediments indicated that such a stream was actually a river, likely twenty six feet deep and over twelve hundred feet wide. Next they turned their attention to plant material that had been preserved in the sandstone, measuring their isotopes, and found that the material had come from grassy plants, suggesting a savannah type environment. But once again, widening their area of study, they also found that there were wide changes in the types of plant material in the area. This caused them to surmise that there were patches of forests near the rivers and streams. Based on these two pieces of information, the team suggests that it appears Ardi, who many researchers believe is our oldest found ancestor, lived in a savannah, near fresh flowing water. Some suggest that such an environment would be consistent with learning to walk upright to see over the tall grasses. More information: River-margin habitat of Ardipithecus ramidus at Aramis, Ethiopia 4.4 million years ago, Nature Communications 2, Article number: 602. http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ncomms1610 Abstract The nature and type of landscape that hominins (early humans) frequented has been of considerable interest. The recent works on Ardipithecus ramidus, a 4.4 million years old hominin found at Middle Awash, Ethiopia, provided critical information about the early part of human evolution. However, habitat characterization of this basal hominin has been highly contested. Here we present new sedimentological and stable isotopic (carbon and oxygen) data from Aramis, where the in situ, partial skeleton of Ar. ramidus (nicknamed 'Ardi') was excavated. These data are interpreted to indicate the presence of major rivers and associated mixed vegetations (grasses and trees) in adjacent floodplains. Our finding suggests that, in contrast to a woodland habitat far from a river, Ar. ramidus lived in a river-margin forest in an otherwise savanna (wooded grassland) landscape at Aramis, Ethiopia. Correct interpretation of habitat of Ar. ramidus is crucial for proper assessment of causes and mechanisms of early hominin evolution, including the development of bipedalism. © 2011 PhysOrg.com. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-couple-evidence-indicating-earliest-humans.html


6. Shell deploys ships to clean oil spill off Niger ia December 22, 2011. Shell is deploying ships and mobilising planes on Thursday to clean up an oil spill at a major field off Nigeria, the company says, with some 40,000 barrels estimated to have leaked into the sea. The leak that began Tuesday has been stopped, according to Shell, and dispersants are being deployed to clean up the crude spilled at the field some 120 kilometres off Nigeria, Africa's largest oil producer and an OPEC member. Production has halted at Shell's Bonga field, which has a capacity of 200,000 barrels per day, due to the spill. Shell has said "less than 40,000 barrels" leaked, while Nigerian authorities could not immediately be reached for comment.

Spilled crude oil floats on the banks of the Niger Delta. Shell is deploying ships and mobilising planes on Thursday to clean up an oil spill at a major field off Nigeria, the company says, with some 40,000 barrels estimated to have leaked into the sea.

The company claimed on Thursday that "up to 50 percent of the leaked oil has already dissipated due to natural dispersion and evaporation, but that figure was impossible to verify independently. "To accelerate the clean-up at sea, we are deploying vessels with dispersants to break up the oil sheen at sea," Shell Nigeria head Mutiu Sunmonu said in a statement. "We are mobilizing airplanes that will support the vessels in this operation. We are deploying infra-red equipment to be able to trace the few areas where the sheen may be thicker. That allows for a targeted use of the dispersant. "Let me also mention that we are currently working with the Nigerian government to inform local communities and fishermen about the situation." Shell said the leak occurred on Tuesday during a transfer of crude to a waiting tanker. The likely source of the leak was an export line linking a production vessel to the tanker, Shell said. The line has been closed and de-pressurised, halting the flow of oil, it said.

Nigeria has been producing between 2.0 and 2.4 million barrels per day in recent months. Scores of oil spills have occurred in Nigeria, but most have been at onshore sites and their size has often been disputed. (c) 2011 AFP. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-shell-deploys-ships-oil-nigeria.html

7. The return of resource nationalism David McKay | Tue, 20 Dec 2011. MICK Davis, Xstrata CEO, is probably right in believing resource rents, as taxes and royalties on mining revenues are known, should be prospective rather than retrospective. Yet tell that to Africa's resource rich nations. Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, and Guinea among others well and truly cashed in on the recent history of high commodity prices throughout much of 2011, a year that will surely be remembered as the time when resource nationalism strode back to centre stage. Perhaps the most spectacular example was Rio Tinto's decision in April to pay the Guinea government $700m and grant it 35% in the Simandou iron ore project. This ended a dispute dating from 2008 in which the Guinea government said Rio Tinto had missed production deadlines and therefore it planned to rescind its mining licence. There are other examples such as the 1% increase in royalties imposed on African Barrick Gold by the Tanzanian government earlier this month, or the imposition in November of a fixed royalty rate of 5% in Africa's second largest gold producer, Ghana. This compares to a 3% to 6% rate previously adopted in that country. Stability clauses protect companies such as Newmont and AngloGold Ashanti, which will continue to pay 3% royalties in Ghana for the 15 years, but even these traditionally cast-iron ways of protecting a contract are being tested. In a study published in November on 10 trends likely to characterise the mining industry, consulting firm Deloitte stated: "Amid these rising levels of resource nationalism, some countries are even threatening to renegotiate existing tax stability agreements, throwing mining company financial projections into disarray and heightening political risk. Even in perceived stable fiscal environments, such as Mozambique where the discovering of millions of tonnes of coking and thermal coal has drawn every major diversified mining company to its shores, stability clauses are a point of debate. Mozambique will in January legislate a range of mining laws, although none of them have fiscal consequences, but are largely friendly to investment and intended to improve efficiencies. But one that is a cause for concern is changing the stability clause from life of mine to 10 years. Says Eduardo Calu, an attorney at Maputo's Sal & Caldeira Advogados, a stability clause of only 10 years might not be enough to attract finance; in other words, it's too short and too risky. Incidentally, one shouldn't see the advance this year of resource nationalism as an African phenomena only. Far from it. Australia pushed through its 30% tax on coal and iron ore miners while the carbon tax, which drew the ire of Xstrata's Davis who dubbed it "bloody stupid", has also seen light of day. Export duties were introduced in India, Kazakhstan and Russia while in Indonesia, miners are obliged to help the country meet its energy commitments before they can ship the region's coal to the lucrative Asian markets. The effect of these changes, quite apart from project profitability is that it's demanding a higher level of soft and political skills from mining company executives - a development identified by Randgold Resources CEO, Mark Bristow. Speaking to the Guardian newspaper in May, Bristow spelled out the need to provide real returns to host nations, and he's pretty uncompromising about it. Commenting on how competitors manage social investment in Africa, Bristow said: "They do these presentations showing pictures of snotty-nosed African children, giving them clinics and schools. "It's a few hundred thousand dollars a year, maybe a million. But we've paid the Mali government $800m in taxes in seven years – you can buy a lot of schools and roads for that money." But if this year's resource nationalism has taught the industry anything, it's that the discussion is not limited now to taxes. The adoption of indigenisation by Zimbabwe, the discussion regarding nationalisation in South Africa and in Namibia, and the Mozambican government's intention to invest up to 20% in 'strategic mega-projects' bears out Deloitte's observation that governments want a permanent stake in the mining industry. At http://www.miningmx.com/opinion/columnists/The-return-of-resource-nationalism.htm


8. The Pre-Salt Play - Looking to Africa ....Again Repsol has published an interesting work about the ancient supercontinent of Gondwana and its possibilities of oil in the pre-salt layer, which we reproduce in full below. Gondwana If you look at a map of the world, the coastlines of Africa and South America seem to fit together perfectly, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, a fact that illustrates their geological history. Around 120 million years ago both continents were part of a super continent called Gondwana, which was split by the Atlantic Ocean, leaving very similar coastal sediment on both sides of the ocean. This has led geologists to believe that the oil deposits found in the Brazilian pre-salt layer could be mirrored on the other side of the ocean. The concept of Gondwana was first suggested by palaeontologists, who found fossils of species such as Mesosaurus, a fresh water reptile, on both sides of the South Atlantic, the only possible explanation being that both continents had at some time been joined. Geologists also found the same types of rock and structural patterns, but no one was yet able to explain how South America and Africa broke apart. Earth dynamics It was not until the 60s that a scientific explanation was put forward, as Marcos Mozetic, geologist and Repsol's Executive Director for Exploration, explains Marcos Mozetic, "It was based on plate tectonics, a theory that was as revolutionary for geologists as Darwin's theory was for biologists." Plate tectonics explains why the earth's crust moves. The crust, which lies on a flexible layer, called the mantle, is more rigid and is divided into tectonic plates, and these are in constant motion. When it was first introduced, the theory met with strong opposition. "We all want to live on stable ground, and we don't want to hear that the place where we live is moving every day", jokes Mozetic. Tectonic plates move at a rate of about 2.5 cm a year, about the same length your fingernails grow in the same time. "Suddenly, everything fell into place, and we understood how mountains and oceans came into existence, and what caused volcanoes and earthquakes. And one aspect of particular interest to those of us involved in oil exploration: why sedimentary basins exist, which is where hydrocarbons are found". Gondwana breaks up Around 128 million years ago, in the Early Cretaceous, the African and South American plates started to drift apart. We now know that between what is now Brazil and East Africa a gigantic salt water lake formed in which conditions were ideal for creating and conserving oil: enclosed, anoxic waters, deposits of organic matter, and salt to preserve the formula. "The next event was the opening up of the Atlantic Ocean", continues Mozetic, "but the salt had already been deposited on the ocean bed. Salt is completely waterproof, and the best medium for preserving oil." Salt, oil's best ally "Until recently, the question was: what's the difference between the Near East and other oil-rich countries? Today we know it is salt. Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia… all have a large mantle of salt that preserved much of their oil deposits, preventing them from degrading and draining away. And the same is true here. The pre-salt layer is interesting because all the oil created lies below it. The problem is finding it and bringing it to the surface." Repsol geologists now want to take what they have learnt in the ocean depths of Brazil to the east coast of Africa, where in recent years the company has made some of the most important oil and gas finds in the world. The technological challenge is enormous. Take as an example Repsol's latest important discovery in the Brazilian pre-salt layer, where the oil lies under more than 2,000 metres of water. There, the geologists' hypotheses have been confirmed: "Technology has been decisive in Brazil - the possibility of exploring far out to sea, but also the certainty that the right conditions were to be found there". Until the 70s, the centres of marine basins were not thought to be prospective. But then, the way in which good oil-storing sediment is taken from the coast to the seabed was discovered "And that is what really changed oil prospection in Brazil". East Africa also has its pre-salt layer Now, all eyes are on the African coast. "Why are we there? We know that large deposits have been discovered in Brazil, and there are also large deposits in the Niger delta and in Angola. However, the outlook has changed with the discoveries made in the last 10 years, with the advent of deep sea pre-salt layer exploration". The answer lies out to sea, on continental shelves. Prospection is focussed on the areas of Africa situated opposite the Santos and Campos basins (Brazil) before Gondwana broke up. Today, this is Angola and the south coast of Gabon. "There are strong similarities between the seismic images of South America and Africa, and that is why we think that a volume similar to the 45 billion barrels found in Brazil could be found there". Repsol has already won three of the eleven pre-salt blocks awarded by Angola. All three are situated in the Kwanza basin, an area that geologists see as a prolongation of its oil-rich twin, the Santos basin in Brazil. The US geological service has estimated that Angola could hold at least 30 billion barrels of oil, equivalent to the resources of Nigeria or Qatar. In the words of Marcos Mozetic, "We have tested our subsaline model in Brazil, and we got great results. So this is obviously a concept that merits further development". Finding tomorrow's oil The era of easy oil is over, and now we have to find our oil in increasingly obscure, deep and inaccessible areas. Exploration is based on calculations made by geologists, and studying the earth’s history helps them know what to look for and where to find it. "We try to use geology to add to our knowledge, although we cannot give complete assurances, because the risks are always there". Thanks to this knowledge, the oil industry has made enormous progress in recent years. Theories such as plate tectonics are still being used to an advantage. Geologists know that Africa is splitting into two, and that the eastern side is slowly separating from the main continent around the area of the great lakes. A new fracture is already opening up, giving rise to the same conditions that produced oil in other parts of the earth. "We are at a stage where "bedrock" can easily be accumulated, and this can produce oil. There are large lakes, anoxic environment, and preservation of organic matter at a deep enough level for oil to be created. This is why Uganda has oil". "This is an interesting time", concludes Mozetic, "when a theory that was still under discussion in the 60s has now been proved, and all the initial hypotheses have been borne out in places such as Uganda". Gondwana will take millions of years to split apart again, but the oil is already being produced. At: http://presalt.com/understanding-pre-salt/gondwana-s-oil-by-repsol-it-will-be-the-paradise-of-the-pre-salt-oil-2066


9. The impact of human activities on a selection of lakes in Tanzania December 28, 2011. An increase in human activity is posing a threat to natural aquatic ecosystems in Tanzania and contributing to environmental damage and ecological changes. Doctoral research carried out by Hezron Emmanuel Nonga shows that agriculture and livestock farming leads to eutrophication in lakes and the proliferation of cyanobacteria which produce microcystins. New information about microcystins and other mycotoxins in Tanzanian lakes is useful for appraising the risk linked to drinking water and edible fish, which in turn affects the health of both humans and animals. In Tanzania, there are many and varied wetland areas and aquatic ecosystems which are productive but also vulnerable. Hezron Emmanual Nonga's doctoral research project has studied how human activities affect ecosystems in wetlands and has also examined the incidence of cyanobacteria, the production of microcystins and the possible effects of these toxins on wild species. The study was carried out on three alkaline (high pH) lakes (of which lake Manyara was the most important) in the north of Tanzania. In addition, similar experiments were conducted in the fresh-water Lake Victoria in the Northwest of the country. Sociological, cross-sectional studies were conducted in order to ascertain what effects human activities have had on the wetlands and ecosystems around the lakes. The results of these studies show that non-sustainable human activities contributed significantly to the environmental damage detected in the selected lakes in Tanzania. In addition, Nonga carried out field and laboratory experiments over a period of time in order to determine physical and chemical parameters, the incidence of phytoplankton, concentrations of different microcystins and microcystin-producing bacteria in the lakes. This research has resulted in new data which will be useful for appraising the risk of the lakes as sources of drinking water and edible fish. Pathological examinations of dwarf flamingos (Phoeniconaias minor Geoffroy) at Lake Manyara revealed a high concentration of microcystins in the birds' liver, which may be one of the reasons for the observed mass death of these birds. However, further studies are needed in order to confirm whether microcystins are to blame for this increase in mortality. The sociological study showed that Lake Manyara and the surrounding wetlands are valuable resources for local communities but that exploitation is too intensive. The main source of income for people living near the lake is from agriculture and livestock, and these are currently far from sustainable. Limited access to expertise, easily available pesticides and lack of knowledge about the latter has led to the uncontrolled spread of chemicals, with hitherto unknown consequences for the environment. Soil erosion and the frequent drying-out of Lake Manyara and rivers in the area have moreover led to a lack of water and high animal mortality. In order to protect the resources of these wetland areas, human activities must be better controlled and a more sustainable exploitation of land and water resources introduced. It is necessary to make the farmers aware of the importance of environment-friendly agriculture and train them in the use of pesticides and pest control. Nonga's doctoral research was carried out in Tanzania and at The Norwegian School of Veterinary Science in Norway. More information: Hezron Emmanuel Nonga defended his doctoral thesis on 19th December 2011 at The Norwegian School of Veterinary Science. His thesis is entitled: "Impact of human activities in selected lake ecosystems in Tanzania and occurrence of microcystins and potential microcystin-producing cyanobacteria”. Provided by Norwegian School of Veterinary Science. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-impact-human-lakes-tanzania.html

10. Scientists study hands of fearsome, meat-eating dinosaur

CT reconstruction of the forelimb and shoulder blades of Majungasaurus crenatissimus, showing the extremely shortened yet robust forearm bones, absent wrist bones, and four stubby fingers. Image: Sarah H. Burch.

January 11, 2012. 66 million years ago, the fearsome, meat-eating dinosaurMajungasaurus crenatissimus prowled the semi-arid lowlands of Madagascar. Its powerful jaws bristled with bladelike teeth, and its strong legs terminated in formidable claws. Not even its own kin were safe, for given the chance, Majungasaurus was known to engage in cannibalism. Now, a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology shows that there was one part of its dreadful form that was not to be feared: its arms. First discovered in 1895, Majungasaurus became well known through hundreds of fossils recovered by the joint Mahajanga Basin Project of Stony Brook University and the Université d’Antananarivo between 1993 and 2007. Nearly every structure – from its cranial sinuses to an injury on its tail – has been described in great detail. But the anatomy of Majungasurus’ forelimb has remained a mystery until now. Lead author Sara Burch, of Stony Brook University, says the arm of Majungasaurus epitomizes the unique forelimb anatomy of abelisaurids, a group of theropod dinosaurs known almost exclusively from southern landmasses collectively known as Gondwana. “The proportions of this limb are unlike

anything we see in other theropods. The forearm bones are short, only a quarter of the length of the humerus (upper arm bone), but extremely robust. The wrist bones aren’t even ossified, and the stubby fingers probably lacked claws. The proportions are so strange, it ends up looking like a hand stuck on the end of a humerus.” Limb reduction is nothing new for theropods; it’s accentuated in the caricature of the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex. Terrifying, to be sure, but with arms too puny to scratch its own face. “Another group of theropods, the alvarezsaurs, go their own odd way with limb reduction,” says co-author Matthew Carrano of the Smithsonian Institution. “These dinosaurs also had very short hands and very short forearms.” And modern-day theropods (those feathered fellows you see flying around) have even lost some digits through evolution. Might one of these scenarios explain the anatomy of Majungasaurus? Not likely, says Burch. “While many theropods have reduced limbs, most retain their normal proportions. We don’t know of any other case where the forearm bones have become more robust in this way. Abelisaurids like Majungasaurus were clearly on a completely different trajectory from the lineage leading to birds.” With no modern analogs, it’s difficult to speculate on how this stubby forelimb was used. But, says Burch, “grasping is out of the question – there’s no way this animal was doing much manipulation with such a reduced hand. The joint anatomy suggests great mobility at the elbow and wrist, but the individual digits probably could not have moved independently.” The limb may have been used in display, or it may represent an unknown evolutionary path that was cut short by the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction. More information: S. H. Burch and M. T. Carrano. An articulated pectoral girdle and forelimb of the abelisaurid theropod Majungasaurus crenatissimus from the Late Cretaceous of Madagascar. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 32(1). http://www.vertpaleo.org/ Provided by Society of Vertebrate Paleontology. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-fearsome-meat-eating-dinosaur.html


11. 'Space ball' drops on Namibia December 22, 2011. A large metallic ball fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia, prompting baffled authorities to contact NASA and the European space agency. The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres (43 inches) was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres (480 miles) from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik. Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said. With a diameter of 35 centimetres (14 inches), the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of "two halves welded together". It was made of a "metal alloy known to man" and weighed six kilogrammes (13 pounds), said Ludik. It was found 18 metres from its landing spot, a hole 33 centimetres deep and 3.8 meters wide. Several such balls have dropped in southern Africa, Australia and Latin America in the past twenty years, authorities found in an Internet search. The sphere was discovered mid-November, but authorities first did tests before announcing the find. Police deputy inspector general Vilho Hifindaka concluded the sphere did not pose any danger. "It is not an explosive device, but rather hollow, but we had to investigate all this first," he said. (c) 2011 AFP. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-space-ball-namibia.html

A photo provided by the National Forensic Science Institute shows a giant metallic ball, 1.1 metre in diameter and weighing some 6 kilograms (13 pounds), that fell out of the sky on a remote grassland in Namibia. Baffled authorities were prompted to contact NASA and the European space agency.

12. Other stories!!!! - British mining group Beacon Hill Resources exports first coal shipments from Mozambique. DECEMBER 21ST, 2011. London, United

Kingdom, 21 Dec – The first shipments of 10,650 tons of thermal coal mined by the Beacon Hill Resources mining group in Mozambique departed from the port of Beira, in Mozambique’s Sofala province, this week the chief executive of the group’s subsidiary BHR Mining said. http://www.macauhub.com.mo/en/2011/12/21/british-mining-group-beacon-hill-resources-exports-first-coal-shipments-from-mozambique/

- Africa's rainforests 'more resilient' to climate change. By Mark Kinver, Environment reporter, BBC News. 6 January 2012. Tropical forests in Africa may be more resilient to future climate change than the Amazon and other regions, a gathering of scientists has said. http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16428306

- South Africa’s mining production down 4.6%. By: Creamer Media Reporter. 17th January 2012. JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – South Africa’s mining production dropped by 4.6% year-on-year in November, compared with a decline of 12% in October, Statistics South Africa reported on Tuesday. http://www.miningweekly.com/article/south-africas-mining-production-down-46-2012-01-17

- Goldplat produces first gold bar at Kenya mine. By: Creamer Media Reporter. 17th January 2012. JOHANNESBURG (miningweekly.com) – Aim-quoted junior Goldplat has poured the first gold from its Kilimapesa mine in Kenya, following the commissioning of an elution plant, which enables it to smelt and produce bullion on site. http://www.miningweekly.com/article/goldplat-produces-first-gold-bar-at-kenya-mine-2012-01-17

NEWS OF/ON THE REST OF THE WORLD

13. Using new technology to record Antarctic Ocean, ice temperatures by Staff Writers, Reno NV (SPX) Dec 23, 2011. Half-mile long thermometers have been dropped through the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica that will give the world relevant data on sea and ice temperatures for tracking climate change and its effect on the glacial ice surrounding the continent. The study based at the University of Nevada, Reno is funded by the National Science Foundation's Office of Polar Programs and other NSF grants. "This technology is allowing us to do something never before done; to record continuous temperature data in and under the ice shelf," said Scott Tyler of the University of Nevada, Reno, who led the team of researchers at the desolate spot about 25 kilometers from the McMurdo Station research outpost. "The ice shelves serve as the 'corks' holding the large glaciers of west Antarctica from sliding into the ocean and raising sea level." "The melting of the ice shelves from below by warmer ocean water represents a critical unknown in the assessment of Antarctic ice sheet collapse and the potential for very rapid sea level rise around the world. This will allow us to assess the potential for collapse," he explained. Tyler, a professor in the University's College of Science, said the objectives of this first field season were to test the drilling design, test the fiber-optic installation and sensing and test the logistics of continuous monitoring and power system development for a full year of operation in the harsh Antarctic climate.

A team of scientists, led by Scott Tyler of the University of Nevada, Reno, spent two weeks on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica installing fiber-optic distributed temperature sensing equipment to conduct long-term monitoring of climate change effects on the ice pack and its potential for collapse. The equipment continually records temperatures for every meter of the ice shelf and to the ocean bottom 800 meters below the surface. Credit: Photo by Scott Tyler, University of Nevada, Reno.

"The instruments are all ready for the winter now, with wind power, solar andcamera set to record ocean temperatures through the seasons," he said. "We're already getting data downloads here at home eight times a day and the system is recording and sending temperatures and pressures perfectly. Our goals are to show that we can install these monitoring systems quickly and inexpensively, and then provide continuous data via satellite links throughout the long Antarctic winter." More at. http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Using_new_technology_to_record_Antarctic_Ocean_ice_temperatures_999.html


14. First ever direct measurement of the Earth's ro tation December 22, 2011. A group with researchers of the Technical University of Munich, Germany, are the first to plot changes in the Earth's axis through laboratory measurements. To do this, they constructed the world's most stable ring laser. Previously, scientists were only able to track shifts in the axis indirectly by monitoring fixed objects in space. Capturing these shifts is crucial for navigation systems. The Earth wobbles. Like a spinning top touched in mid-spin, its rotational axis fluctuates in relation to space. This is partly caused by gravitation from the sun and the moon. At the same time, the Earth's rotational axis constantly changes relative to the Earth's surface. On the one hand, this is caused by variation in atmospheric pressure, ocean loading and wind. These elements combine in an effect known as the Chandler wobble to create polar motion. Named after the scientist who discovered it, this phenomenon has a period of around 435 days. On the other hand, an event known as the "annual wobble" causes the rotational axis to move over a period of a year. This is due to the Earth's elliptical orbit around the sun. These two effects cause the Earth's axis to migrate irregularly along a circular path with a radius of up to six meters. Capturing these movements is crucial to create a reliable coordinate system that can feed navigation systems or project trajectory paths in space travel. "Locating a point to the exact centimeter for global positioning is an extremely dynamic process – after all, at our latitude, we are moving at around 350 meters to the east per second," explains Prof. Karl Ulrich Schreiber who directed the project in TUM's Research Section Satellite Geodesy. The orientation of the Earth's axis relative to space and its rotational velocity are currently established in a complicated process that involves 30 radio telescopes around the globe. Every Monday and Thursday, eight to twelve of these telescopes alternately measure the direction between Earth and specific quasars. Scientists assume that these galaxy nuclei never change their position and can therefore be used as reference points. The geodetic observatory Wettzell, which is run by TUM and Germany's Federal Agency for Cartography (BKG), is also part of this process. In the mid-1990s, scientists of TUM and BKG joined forces with researchers at New Zealand's University of Canterbury to develop a simpler method that would be capable of continuously tracking the Chandler wobble and annual wobble. "We also wanted to develop an alternative that would enable us to eliminate any systematic errors," continues Schreiber. "After all, there was always a possibility that the reference points in space were not actually stationary." The scientists had the idea of building a ring laser similar to ones used in aircraft guidance systems – only millions of times more exact. "At the time, we were almost laughed off. Hardly anyone thought that our project was feasible," says Schreiber. Yet at the end of the 1990s, work on the world's most stable ring laser got underway at the Wettzell observatory. The installation comprises two counter-rotating laser beams that travel around a square path with mirrors in the corners, which form a closed beam path (hence the name ring laser). When the assembly rotates, the co-rotating light has farther to travel than the counter-rotating light. The beams adjust their wavelengths, causing the optical frequency to change. The scientists can use this difference to calculate the rotational velocity the instrumentation experiences. In Wettzell, it is the Earth that rotates, not the ring laser. To ensure that only the Earth's rotation influences the laser beams, the four-by-four-meter assembly is anchored in a solid concrete pillar, which extends six meters down into the solid rock of the Earth's crust. The Earth's rotation affects light in different ways, depending on the laser's location. "If we were at one of the poles, the Earth and the laser's rotational axes would be in complete synch and their rotational velocity would map 1:1," details Schreiber. "At the equator, however, the light beam wouldn't even notice that the Earth is turning." The scientists therefore have to factor in the position of the Wettzell laser at the 49th degree of latitude. Any change in the Earth's rotational axis is reflected in the indicators for rotational velocity. The light's behavior therefore reveals shifts in the Earth's axis. "The principle is simple," adds Schreiber. "The biggest challenge was ensuring that the laser remains stable enough for us to measure the weak geophysical signal without interference – especially over a period of several months." In other words, the scientists had to eliminate any changes in frequency that do not come from the Earth's rotation. These include environmental factors such as atmospheric pressure and temperature. They relied predominantly on a ceramic glass plate and a pressurized cabin to achieve this. The researchers mounted the ring laser on a nine-ton Zerodur base plate, also using Zerodur for the supporting beams. They chose Zerodur as it is extremely resistant to changes in temperature. The installation is housed in a pressurized cabin, which registers changes in atmospheric pressure and temperature (12 degrees) and automatically compensates for these. The scientists sunk the lab five meters below ground level to keep these kinds of ambient influences to a minimum. It is insulated from above with layers of Styrodur and clay, and topped by a four-meter high mound of Earth. Scientists have to pass through a twenty-meter tunnel with five cold storage doors and a lock to get to the laser. Under these conditions, the researchers have succeeded in corroborating the Chandler and annual wobble measurements based on the data captured by radio telescopes. They now aim to make the apparatus more accurate, enabling them to determine changes in the Earth's rotational axis over a single day. The scientists also plan to make the ring laser capable of continuous operation so that it can run for a period of years without any deviations. "In simple terms," concludes Schreiber, "in future, we want to be able to just pop down into the basement and find out how fast the Earth is accurately turning right now." More information: Schreiber, K. U.; Klügel, T.; Wells, J.-P. R.; Hurst, R. B.; Gebauer, A.: How to detect the Chandler and the annual wobble of the Earth with a large ring laser gyroscope; Physical Review Letters, Vol. 107, Nr. 17, EID 173904, American Physical Society, ISSN 0031-9007, http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.173904 , 2011 Spotlight by the American Physical Society: http://physics.aps.org/synopsis-for/10.1103/PhysRevLett.107.173904 Provided by Technische Universitaet Muenchen. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-earth-rotation.html

15. Comprehensive study makes key findings of ocean pH variations December 22, 2011. A group of 19 scientists from five research organizations have conducted the broadest field study of ocean acidification to date using sensors developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. The study, "High-Frequency Dynamics of Ocean pH: A Multi-Ecosystem Comparison," is reported in the Dec. 19 issue of the journal PLoS One. It is an important step toward understanding how specific ecosystems are responding to the change in seawater chemistry that is being caused as the oceans take up extra carbon dioxide produced by human greenhouse gas emissions, said its authors. "These data represent a critical step in understanding the consequences of ocean change: the linkage of present-day pH exposures to organismal tolerance and how this translates into ecological change in marine ecosystems," the authors wrote. "These pH time series create a compelling argument for the collection of more continuous data of this kind." Ocean acidification research is a relatively new study topic as scientists have only appreciated the potential extent of acidification within the last decade. As greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated in the past century, the oceans have taken up about a third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities. That excess beyond natural levels increases amounts of carbonic acid in seawater. Acidification also limits the amount of carbonate forms that are needed by marine invertebrates such as coral and shelled organisms to form their skeletons. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-comprehensive-key-ocean-ph-variations.html


16. ICSU’s new Executive Director appointed PRESS RELEASE 9 January 2012 ICSU’s new Executive Director appointed The International Council for Science (ICSU) welcomes Dr. Steven Wilson as Executive Director. Dr. Wilson will provide important leadership as ICSU seeks to implement its

newly approved second Strategic Plan 2012–2017. Dr. Wilson will take up his duties on 1 April 2012. The President of ICSU, Professor Yuan-Tseh Lee, is delighted by Dr. Wilson’s acceptance of the post of Executive Director. Prof. Lee said: ‘It is a pleasure to welcome Dr. Wilson as the new Executive Director. His experience as the interim Chief Executive and a Director at the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NERC), which has been a supporter and partner of ICSU, means that he will bring the perspective and dynamism of a Research Council leader to us. His close involvement with a number of international research programmes over the years will help him in his new role.’ Dr. Wilson is a co-chair of the Belmont Forum, an international partnership of major environmental research funders, which is now working closely with ICSU in the development of the new co-designed initiative, Future Earth: research for global sustainability. Dr. Wilson expressed his eager anticipation to take up the exciting and challenging position of Executive Director: ‘I am very excited at the prospect of leading ICSU, as it continues to be one of the world’s foremost organizations for science. I look forward to bringing scientists together from all parts of the world, and helping to mobilize the international scientific community to provide new knowledge to tackle the grand societal challenges of the day – be they concerning environmental change, food security or human health.’ Following a degree in Chemistry from the University of Oxford, Dr. Wilson graduated from the University of Bristol in 1995 with a PhD in Chemistry. After working for the UK Meteorological Office, he joined NERC in 1998, and has held positions which include Director of Earth Observation, Director of Science and Innovation, and Director of Strategy and Partnerships. Among colleagues and peers, Dr. Wilson is known to be an exceptional manager of both programmes and people. He brings enthusiasm and vigour to all aspects of his work, and he has conceived and helped develop several large, highly successful initiatives and programmes that have earned him widespread respect. Dr. Wilson succeeds Professor Deliang Chen, who will return to the University of Gothenburg in Sweden after three years at the helm. Professor Lee expressed his appreciation of Professor Chen, stating: ‘For the past three years, Professor Chen has worked with extraordinary dedication, and made a tremendous contribution to the rejuvenation of ICSU. It was during his tenure that several major initiatives got off the ground, including Future Earth and ICSU’s key role at Rio+20. The international visibility of ICSU also increased, thanks in large part to his efforts. His outstanding service deserves the deep gratitude of our entire community. While we will dearly miss his full-time presence, Professor Chen will continue to work with ICSU as a concerned scientist.’5, rue Auguste Vacquerie, 75116 Paris, France. Tel: +33 (0) 1 45 25 03 29 Fax: +33 (0) 1 42 88 94 31 www.icsu.org Dr. Carthage Smith, the Deputy Executive Director of ICSU, will be the acting Executive Director during February-March 2012.

17. Quakes unearth Australia's underground past January 10, 2012. Researchers from The Australian National University have used the latest earthquake-measuring technology to image the tectonic plate beneath southeast Australia and reveal for the first time the continent’s geological building blocks. Scientists from the ANU Research School of Earth Sciences and international colleagues conducted the research through seismometers placed throughout eastern Australia. The instruments – which record ground motions caused by earthquakes as far away as Indonesia, Fiji and Japan – allowed the researchers to probe deep beneath the Earth’s surface and find evidence of some of the key geological events which have shaped the land mass we know today. Leader of the study, Dr Nick Rawlinson, said that the seismometers have helped reveal some of the secrets which have shaped the Australian continent as well as the planet. “The southeast of the Australian continent preserves a rich geological history that spans almost half a billion years. This history involves significant geological events like the opening of the Tasman Sea, the break-up of Australia and Antarctica and more recent volcanic events. “However, until now it has been almost impossible for scientists to unravel the tectonic history of this fascinating part of the continent due to the presence of large, thin cover features such as the Murray-Darling Basin. “To get around, and below this, we used an Earth imaging technique known as seismic tomography, which is similar in principle to a CAT scan of the human body. This allowed us to recover information from seismic waves generated by distant earthquakes and illuminate the 3D structure of the Earth to a depth of over 250km. “In southeast Australia this has been done using recordings from nearly 500 seismic stations. The imaging results gave us a detailed picture of the lithosphere, or the crust and rigid portion of the Earth’s mantle, which has greatly enhanced our understanding of the region.” Dr Rawlinson said that mapping the tectonic plate under southeast Australia led to some interesting discoveries. “In particular, there is a pronounced anomaly extending at least 150km beneath western Victoria which points to elevated temperatures beneath an area known as the Newer Volcanics province. The region has experienced widespread eruptions until only recently and it is likely that this ‘hot-spot’ is responsible for those episodes. “We can also see a gradual thinning of the lithosphere towards the east and south coast of the continent which is consistent with stretching related to the formation of the Tasman Sea and the separation of Australia and Antarctica some 80 million years ago.” Provided by Australian National University. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-quakes-unearth-australia-underground.html


18. Fossils shed light on evolutionary origin of an imals from single-cell ancestors December 22, 2011. All life evolved from a single-celled universal common ancestor, and at various times in Earth history, single-celled organisms threw their lot in with each other to become larger and multicellular, resulting, for instance, in the riotous diversity of animals. However, fossil evidence of these major evolutionary transitions is extremely rare. The fossils, reported this week in Science, preserve stages in the life cycleof an amoeba-like organism dividing in asexual cycles, first to produce two cells, then four, eight, 16, 32 and so on, ultimately resulting in hundreds of thousands of spore-like cells that were then released to start the cycle over again. The pattern of cell division is so similar to the early stages of animal (including human) embryology that until now they were thought to represent the embryos of the earliest animals. The researchers studied the microscopic fossils using high energy X-rays at the Swiss Light Source in Switzerland, revealing the organisation of the cells within their protective cyst walls. The organisms should not have been fossilized – they were just gooey clusters of cells – but they were buried in sediments rich in phosphate that impregnated the cell walls and turned them to stone. Lead author Therese Huldtgren said: "The fossils are so amazing that even their nuclei have been preserved." Co-author Dr John Cunningham said: "We used a particle accelerator called a synchrotron as our X-ray source. It allowed us to make a perfect computer model of the fossil that we could cut up in any way that we wanted, but without damaging the fossil in any way. We would never have been able to study the fossils otherwise!" This X-ray microscopy revealed that the fossils had features that multicellular embryos do not, and this led the researchers to the conclusion that the fossils were neither animals nor embryos but rather the reproductive spore bodies of single-celled ancestors of animals. Professor Philip Donoghue said: "We were very surprised by our results – we've been convinced for so long that these fossils represented the embryos of the earliest animals – much of what has been written about the fossils for the last ten years is flat wrong. Our colleagues are not going to like the result." Professor Stefan Bengtson said: "These fossils force us to rethink our ideas of how animals learned to make large bodies out of cells." More information: Huldtgren, T., Cunningham, J. A., Yin, C., Stampanoni, M., Marone, F., Donoghue, P. C. J. and Bengtson, S. 2011. 'Fossilized nuclei and germination structures identify Ediacaran "animal embryos" as encysting protists' in Science 334. Provided by University of Bristol. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-fossils-evolutionary-animals-single-cell-ancestors.html

19. Ocean Acidification: Some Organisms Already Exp eriencing Ocean Acidification Levels Not Predicted to Be Reached Until 2100

ScienceDaily (Dec. 22, 2011) — A group of 19 scientists from five research organizations have conducted the broadest field study of ocean acidification to date using sensors developed at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, UC San Diego. The study was recently reported the journal PLoS One. It is an important step toward understanding how specific ecosystems are responding to the change in seawater chemistry that is being caused as the oceans take up extra carbon dioxide produced by human greenhouse gas emissions, said its authors. "These data represent a critical step in understanding the consequences of ocean change: the linkage of present-day pH exposures to organismal tolerance and how this translates into ecological change in marine ecosystems," the authors wrote. "These pH time series create a compelling argument for the collection of more continuous data of this kind." Ocean acidification research is a relatively new study topic as scientists have only appreciated the potential extent of acidification within the last decade. As greenhouse gas emissions have accelerated in the past century, the oceans have taken up about a third of the carbon dioxide produced by human activities. That excess beyond natural levels increases amounts of carbonic acid in seawater. Acidification also limits the amount of carbonate forms that are needed by marine invertebrates such as coral and shelled organisms to form their skeletons. Though many lab simulations of this effect have been performed recently, including at a new acidification laboratory in development at Scripps, there have been few comparable field studies. Using sensors recently developed at Scripps, the researchers surveyed marine ecosystems ranging from coral reefs in the South Pacific Ocean to volcanic CO2 vent communities in the Mediterranean Sea. They found that in some places, such as Antarctica and the Line Islands of the south Pacific, the range of pH variance is much more limited than in areas of the California coast subject to large vertical movements of water known as upwellings. In some of their study areas, they found that the decrease in seawater pH being caused by greenhouse gas emissions is still within the bounds of natural pH fluctuation. Some areas already experience daily acidity levels that scientists had expected would only be reached at the end of the 21st Century. More at http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/12/111222103116.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A +sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29

20. Underground carbon-capture technique found to b e safe - but costly BY GORDON HAMILTON, POSTMEDIA NEWS DECEMBER 26, 2011. An international team of scientists including Simon Fraser University groundwater special Dirk Kirske has proven that capturing carbon dioxide and storing it underground can be a safe and effective way of reducing greenhouse gas emissions over thousands, even millions of years. Kirske was one of over 20 scientists who participated in the $40-million Otway Project in Australia, which tracked how carbon dioxide behaved when it was pumped into a depleted natural gas reservoir two kilometres beneath the Earth's surface. The scientists applied a broad range of monitoring strategies. He said no leakage was detected and the experimental results matched the scientific models. "We can verify what the CO2 is doing," he said, adding that scientists are now confident that they can say what will happen over thousands or even millions of years. However, the cost of separating carbon dioxide from the gas stream, and pressurizing it to get it underground makes carbon capture and storage a high-cost solution to greenhouse gas emissions. An ExxonMobil study on future costs of the world's electricity shows that generating electricity from coal, now the cheapest source of electricity, would double in cost in a world of carbon capture and storage (CCS). It would become more expensive to capture CO2 from coal and store it underground than to do nothing and pay a $60 a tonne for carbon-emissions penalty, the Exxon study shows. "While ExxonMobil believes CCS has the potential to be an effective technology for curbing emissions, we expect that through 2030, most CCS projects will require government support," the report states. Read more:http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Underground+carbon+capture+technique+found+safe+costly/5910608/story.html#ixzz1hcy0GmvO More at http://www.montrealgazette.com/technology/Underground+carbon+capture+technique+found+safe+costly/5910608/story.html


21. CryoSat ice satellite rides new waves

Estimate of wind speed over oceans using data from ESA’s CryoSat mission from 17 November - 13 December. The product was generated by NOAA using CryoSat’s fast delivery mode radar echoes. Credits: NOAA - E. Leuliette.

December 23, 2011. ESA’s CryoSat mission has been gathering detailed information on the thickness of Earth’s ice since its launch in 2010. Through international collaboration, this state-of-the-art mission is soon to be used to monitor CryoSat was built to measure tiny variations in the thickness of Earth’s ice. As a result, the mission is providing scientists with the data they need to help improve our understanding of the relationship between ice, climate and sea level. As CryoSat orbits from pole to pole, it passes over vast expanses of ocean. So while the mission was designed specifically for ice monitoring, it can also serve to help improve the safety of marine traffic. The satellite carries Europe’s first radar altimeter specialised for the purpose of detecting tiny variations in the height of the ice – but it can also be used to measure sea level and the height of the waves. The instrument sends out short radar pulses and measures the time it takes for the signals to travel from the satellite to the ground and back. This information provides the height of the surface below.

The advantage of yielding this kind of information from CryoSat is also down to the advanced performance of its main SIRAL instrument. When data from CryoSat are merged with other altimeter data such as that from the Envisat and Jason satellites, the combined estimation of wave height and wind speed is greatly improved. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-cryosat-ice-satellite.html

22. A new theory emerges for where some fish became four-limbed creatures December 27, 2011. A small fish crawling on stumpy limbs from a shrinking desert pond is an icon of can-do spirit, emblematic of a leading theory for the evolutionary transition between fish and amphibians. This theorized image of such a drastic adaptation to changing environmental conditions, however, may, itself, be evolving into a new picture. sites in Maryland, New York and Pennsylvania suggests that "such a plucky hypothetical ancestor of ours probably could not have survived the overwhelming odds of perishing in a trek to another shrinking pond." This scenario comes from the late Devonian, about 390 million years ago to roughly 360 million years ago. Paleontologist Alfred Romer, who died in 1973 after serving on the faculties at the University of Chicago and Harvard University, saw this time as a period of struggle and escape -- and important in fish-tetrapod transition -- to ensure survival. Reporting in the May 2011 issue of the Journal of Geology, Retallack, who also is co-director of paleontological collections at the UO's Museum of Natural and Cultural History, argues for a very different explanation. He examined numerous buried soils in rocks yielding footprints and bones of early transitional fossils between fish and amphibians of Devonian and Carboniferous geological age. What he found raises a major challenge to Romer's theory. "These transitional fossils were not associated with drying ponds or deserts, but consistently were found with humid woodland soils," he said. "Remains of drying ponds and desert soils also are known and are littered with fossil fish, but none of our distant ancestors. Judging from where their fossils were found, transitional forms between fish and amphibians lived in wooded floodplains. Our distant ancestors were not so much foolhardy, as opportunistic, taking advantage of floodplains and lakes choked with roots and logs for the first time in geological history." Limbs proved handy for negotiating woody obstacles, and flexible necks allowed for feeding in shallow water, Retallack said. By this new woodland hypothesis, the limbs and necks, which distinguish salamanders from fish, did not arise from reckless adventure in deserts, but rather were nurtured by a newly evolved habitat of humid, wooded floodplains. The findings, he said, dampen both the desert hypothesis of Romer and a newer inter-tidal theory put forth by Grzegorz Niedbwiedzki and colleagues at the University of Warsaw. In 2010, they published their discovery of eight-foot-long, 395-million-year-old tetrapods in ancient lagoonal mud in southeastern Poland, where Retallack also has been studying fossil soils with Polish colleague Marek Narkeiwicz. "Ancient soils and sediments at sites for transitional fossils around the world are critical for understanding when and under what conditions fish first walked," Retallack said. "The Darwin fish of chrome adorning many car trunks represents a particular time and place in the long evolutionary history of life on earth." Provided by University of Oregon. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-theory-emerges-fish-four-limbed-creatures.html

23. India 'won't sign binding emissions pact': mini ster December 27, 2011. India said Tuesday it would reject any global pact legally binding it to cut greenhouse gas emissions as such a move could stifle economic growth needed to eradicate poverty. Environment Minister Jayanthi Natarajan's statement came after a UN conference in Durban earlier this month agreed for the first time to seek to negotiate a legally enforceable agreement to control all nations' emissions. "There is no question of signing a legally binding agreement at this point of our development. We need to make sure that our development does not suffer," Natarajan told the upper house of parliament. "Our emissions are bound to grow as we have to ensure our social and economic development and fulfil the imperative of poverty eradication," the minister added. Some 42 percent of Indians, or 455 million people, live on less than $1.25 a day, according to the World Bank. The marathon UN climate conference in Durban approved a roadmap towards an accord that for the first time would bring all major greenhouse-gas emitters blamed for climate change under a single legal roof. If approved as scheduled in 2015, the pact will be operational from 2020 and become the prime weapon in the fight against climate change. But emerging Asian giants India and China, which have become huge emitters of carbon over the last half-dozen years, have long resisted calls to reduce emissions. The fast-growing economies said the burden of cuts should be on developed countries and that they cannot commit to binding targets which might hurt their ability to improve living standards. India and China do not fall under existing 1997 Kyoto Protocol constraints aimed at fighting global warming as they are developing countries. (c) 2011 AFP. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-india-wont-emissions-pact-minister.html


24. The enduring mystery of snowflakes

This dendritic snowflake was created using a computer model developed by Janko Gravner at UC Davis and David Griffeath at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Credit: Janko Gravner and David Griffeath

December 28, 2011 By Amina Khan. Who hasn't caught a snowflake in a mitten and marveled at its starlike detail, and then recalled that no two snowflakes are alike? But these crystals of ice are even more different than one might imagine - there are needle-like snowflakes, hollow-column snowflakes and flakes that look like delicate dumbbells, with two joined together by a column. Caltech physicist Kenneth Libbrecht, who studies the crystalline structure of snowflakes and has published seven books of snowflake photographs, talked to the Los Angeles Times about what we do, and don't, know about them. Q: What's so strange about snowflakes? A: If you grow ice crystals - snowflakes - just below freezing, then you get thin plate-like crystals. These include the canonical snowflakes, the star-like crystals. But if you get a little colder, (around 5 degrees C below freezing) then instead of plates, you get long thin columns - which is really almost the opposite of a plate. Think wooden pencils, little hexagonal columns, as opposed to a hexagonal plate. In the star type, the faces grow slowly and the edges grow quickly, and in the pencil type, the edges grow slowly and the faces grow quickly. And so in just a few degrees' temperature change, the growth changes from plate-like to columnar. And as you go colder, to 15 degrees below zero, it changes back to plate-like. At even lower temperatures, below 30 degrees below zero, the shape changes back to columnar.

So there are these transitions as a function of temperature, and that's really hard to explain. It's been a puzzle for 75 years, and it's still really not known what causes this. There are also variations in humidity. And the higher the humidity in the clouds, the faster the crystals grow, and the more structure they develop and the bigger they get. So at low humidities, you get simple, small crystals and at high humidities, they're more complex. Q: In your lab experiments, what have you been able to find out? A: What I found is that there's what I call a "sharpening effect." When the edge of an ice crystal gets sharp, actually the molecular structure of its edge changes, and it makes it grow faster, which makes it sharper, which makes it grow faster, and which sharpens it more ... so you end up with a very thin plate as sharp as a razor blade. That sharpening effect is why the crystals are so thin and flat. So if you change the temperature, all you're doing is changing the way the sharpening effect works. If the sharpening effect goes in the edge direction, it'll make a thin plate. If the sharpening effect goes in the upwards direction, you get a hollow column. A very small temperature change can make it flip directions. The sharpening effect amplifies that small change. Q: Why is every snowflake different? A: As an ice crystal falls, it will move from one part of the cloud to another, and the temperature and the humidity will be changing as it falls. Every time there are these small changes in the conditions, the growth of the arms changes. So you get all these branches and facets and all these different shapes - and by the time it lands on the ground, it's had a very complicated history because of all these changes in temperature and humidity. And because no two crystals follow exactly the same path as they fall, they all look a little different. Q: So snowflakes come in more shapes than your garden-variety hexagon. Which is your favorite? A: One of my favorites is the capped column. That's a crystal that first forms as a column and later on it changes, and has plates on the ends of a column. So it's an odd looking thing - like two wheels on an axle. When I started reading the literature on the subject, I found pictures of these capped columns and just found them really interesting. I mean, I grew up in North Dakota - how come I've never seen one of these before? On a trip to visit family at Christmas time, I took along my magnifying glass and I went outside and looked and the falling snow - and there they were, capped columns all over, and these other shapes, too. You just don't notice if you don't pay any attention. That's what got me into popularizing the science of it, because it seemed like if you live in snow country you ought to know a little a bit about what's falling out of the sky. Q: Are there advantages to studying ice crystals rather than other, perhaps more exotic, materials? A: Not only is the physics of ice crystals particularly rich, but experiments are pretty cheap and easy. As you can imagine, ice doesn't have a lot of safety issues. For almost anything else you can think of growing, experiments are confounded by safety issues. Just about any chemical has hazards, so you have to spend a lot of money and time worrying about that. I just love the ability to be able to pour your experiment down the drain or just evaporate it into the air without any thought of safety. And the fun part is, in the end, it's not like some esoteric thing that nobody ever sees. Most physicists study black holes or Higgs bosons - things that that never appear in ordinary experience. Whereas this stuff falls out of the sky, literally. So it's kind of fun to think about the puzzles surrounding it. (c)2011 the Los Angeles Times . Distributed by MCT Information Services. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-mystery-snowflakes.html

25. Earth's massive extinction: The story gets wors e January 5th 2012, Scientists have uncovered a lot about the Earth's greatest extinction event that took place 250 million years ago when rapid climate change wiped out nearly all marine species and a majority of those on land. Now, they have discovered a new culprit likely involved in the annihilation: an influx of mercury into the eco-system. "No one had ever looked to see if mercury was a potential culprit. This was a time of the greatest volcanic activity in Earth's history and we know today that the largest source of mercury comes from volcanic eruptions," says Dr. Steve Grasby, co-author of a paper published this month in the journal Geology. "We estimate that the mercury released then could have been up to 30 times greater than today's volcanic activity, making the event truly catastrophic." Grasby is a research scientist at Natural Resources Canada and an adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. Dr. Benoit Beauchamp, professor of geology at the University of Calgary, says this study is significant because it's the first time mercury has been linked to the cause of the massive extinction that took place during the end of the Permian. "Geologists, including myself should be taking notes and taking another look at the other five big extinction events," says Beauchamp, also a co-author.


During the late Permian, the natural buffering system in the ocean became overloaded with mercury contributing to the loss of 95 per cent of life in the sea. "Typically, algae acts like a scavenger and buries the mercury in the sediment, mitigating the effect in the oceans," says lead-author Dr. Hamed Sanei, research scientist at Natural Resources Canada and adjunct professor at the University of Calgary. "But in this case, the load was just so huge that it could not stop the damage." More at http://www.sciencecodex.com/read/earths_massive_extinction_the_story_gets_worse-83944

26. The nuclear, biological and climate threat - 20 11 reviewed January 6, 2012. In this special issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, published by SAGE, experts reflect on 2011 and highlight what to look out for in 2012 in the areas of nuclear energy, nuclear weapons, biosecurity, and climate change. Topics that have made the headlines during the previous 12 months, including the increased tension surrounding Iran's nuclear programme, the aftermath of the Fukushima incident, and the state of US policy on climate change, are analyzed in detail in this special issue. At the Doomsday Clock Symposium on January 9-10 in Washington, DC, the Bulletin's Science and Security Board will evaluate the minute hand of the Doomsday Clock. In 1947, the Bulletin first displayed the Doomsday Clock on its magazine cover to convey, through a simple design, the perils posed by nuclear weapons. The Clock evokes both the imagery of apocalypse (midnight) and the contemporary idiom of nuclear explosion (countdown to zero). In 1949, the Clock hand first moved to signal the assessment of world events and trends. The essays within this special issue are a glimpse into the topics the Bulletin's board will consider when evaluating the minute hand. Gerald Epstein, director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Security Policy (CSIS) of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, says that 2011 saw progress on approaches to address biological threats posed by non-state groups at both the Seventh Biological Weapons Convention (BWC)Review Conference and the G8 Global Partnership Against the Spread of Weapons of Mass Destruction. In his paper, Biosecurity 2011: Not a year to change minds, Epstein writes that the BWC is evolving to adapt to the nature of the biological threat. Going forward, biosecurity will hinge upon the international community's ability to cooperate, whether it can think creatively and strategically, and whether it enters partnerships with scientists from all world regions. Steven E. Miller, director of the International Security Program at Harvard University, writes in his paper, Nuclear Weapons 2011: Momentum slows, reality returns that 2011 was short on breakthroughs in the arms control arena, following something of a landmark year in 2010. Miller highlights five events that unfolded during 2011 that he suggests "seem certain to cast a powerful shadow in months and years to come." The current tension with Iran over weapons, the spread of nuclear technology in the Middle East and Southeast Asia, and difficulties in the US relationship with Russia are among them. The Fukushima incident was a sudden and dramatic shock in 2011, writes Mark Hibbs, a senior associate in Carnegie's Nuclear Policy Program, but what continued to be a concern throughout the year was the incremental escalation of continuing crises in Iran, North Korea, and South Asia. In his paper, Nuclear Energy 2011: A watershed year, Hibbs reviews reassessments undertaken around the world after Fukushima, and underlines Europe's critical role in nuclear energy's global future. In Climate change 2011: A status report on US policy, Steven Cohen and Alison Miller highlight a growing partisan divide in US Congress. This divide has stalled the country's federal climate policy, frustrated efforts to pass a cap-and-trade carbon permitting system, and spawned a battle between the US Environmental Protection Agency and Congress. Climate change policy has been pushed down to the municipal level, and the divide has also hindered US ability to effectively negotiate an international climate agreement. Meanwhile, US cities have enacted far-sighted climate policy initiatives, and growing fossil fuels costs have stimulated renewable energy investment, bringing commercially viable fossil fuel alternatives closer. "The inevitable shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy sources would be greatly hastened by federal action to tax carbon dioxide emissions and use the revenue generated to support alternative energy technologies," writes Cohen, executive director of Columbia University's Earth Institute. "That action is extremely unlikely to occur unless climate change comes to be seen in the United States as a practical, rather than ideological, issue." More information: The articles are available to access free for a limited period here: http://bos.sagepub.com/content/current Provided by SAGE Publications. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-nuclear-biological-climate-threat-.html

27. The Ichthyosaurs survived longer than was thoug ht

Acamptonectes densus. Credit: C. M. Kosemen 2012, [email protected]

January 5, 2012. The discovery of a new species of ichthyosaurs considerably changes our understanding of the evolution and the extinction of these dinosaur age sea reptiles, according to a study published this week in PLoS ONE by an international team of Belgian, British and German scientists. This work shows that the ichthyosaurs were not subject to a major extinction at the end of the Jurassic era (145 million years ago). It furthermore also shows that the ichthyosaurs remained very diversified until their definitive extinction, around 94 million years ago. These two results, springing from joint work produced by university and museum researchers in Belgium, the United Kingdom and Germany, and published in the Tuesday, January 3, 2012 edition of the open access

journal PLoS One, contradicts earlier theories which considered the cretaceous ichthyosaurs as the final survivors of a group in its death throes. The ichthyosaurs are known for being sea reptiles which superficially resemble sharks and dolphins. ‘Their size could range from less than 1m in length to giants measuring over 20m. They all gave birth to their offspring directly in the sea, and certain of them were swift swimmers which could quickly dive to great depths, and had enormous eyeballs and a so-called ‘hot blooded’ physiology,’ says the study’s first author, Valentin Fischer, who works at the University of Liège (Belgium). The ichthyosaurs were a major component of the sea ecosystems during the age of the dinosaurs, and occupied numerous ecological niches. Up until recently it was thought that a major extinction on the Jurassic-Cretaceous Boundary had eradicated the diversified forms of the Jurassic era, to the benefit of less specialised forms. These few survivors of the Cretaceous period were thought to have subsequently some fifty million years later, over the course of the Cenomanian era (Late Cretaceous). Nonetheless, the cruel lack of fossils in the lower Cretaceous prevented a clear understanding of dynamics of the shift from the diversified ichthyosaurs of the Jurassic to the rare and generalised forms of the Cretaceous. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-ichthyosaurs-survived-longer-thought.html


28. Third lunar mineral - Tranquillityite found in Western Australia

January 5, 2012 by Bob Yirka. Back in the heyday of the Apollo moon program, hundreds of pounds of rock samples were carted back to Earth by visiting astronauts. Those samples were then pored over more thoroughly by geologists than perhaps any other rocks in human history, and after all that study, three minerals were found that were unique to the moon: armalcolite, pyroxferroite and tranquillityite. The first two were subsequently found over the next ten years on the surface of the Earth as well, but the third, named after Tranquility Base, site of the first moon landing, had never been found here on this planet, at least not naturally, tranquillityite has been found in meteorite samples. But now that’s changed. Birger Rasmussen, paleontologist with Curtin University in Perth, and colleagues have found natural samples in several sites in Western Australia, and as they describe in their paper published in Geology, it appears likely the mineral is more common here on our home planet than anyone might have surmised. The mineral has been found in six sites in all, in various remote spots in Western Australia, and occurs in very small amounts. The samples found were actually about the width of a human hair and just microns in length, and that’s part of the reason why it’s taken so long for those that study rocks to find such samples here on Earth. Another reason is that tranquillityite is comparatively delicate and tends to break down when exposed to normal surface climatic events such as heat, rain and wind.

Rasmussen notes that the team had been studying the lunar samples recently and so when they came across some interesting rocks while digging around for other reasons, it seemed logical that they might have at least some traces of the rare mineral. To find out, they subjected the sample to a blast of electrons; a method researchers use to identify certain materials. The trajectories produced by the blast are unique for each mineral. In so doing, they found a perfect match with the lunar samples. Tranquillityite is made up of iron, silicon, oxygen, zirconium, titanium and a tiny bit of yttrium, a rare earth element, and though it doesn’t have appear to have much in the way of economical value, it can be used by researchers to deduce the age of other rocks in which it is embedded. Another possible reason for the long time lag in finding tranquillityite here on Earth is that it takes a very special unique set of conditions for it to form. Plus, there’s the fact that it appears no one has really been trying very hard to find it. Thus, now that it’s been found in six widely scattered spots, it’s likely that it’s not nearly as rare as many in the geology field had thought. More information: Tranquillityite: The last lunar mineral comes down to Earth, Geology, v. 40 no. 1 p. 83-86. First published online November 23, 2011, http://dx.doi.org/10.1130/G32525.1 Abstract Tranquillityite [Fe2+8(ZrY)2Ti3Si3O24] was first discovered in mare basalts collected during the Apollo 11 lunar mission to the Sea of Tranquillity. The mineral has since been found exclusively in returned lunar samples and lunar meteorites, with no terrestrial counterpart. We have now identified tranquillityite in six dolerite dikes and sills from Western Australia. Terrestrial tranquillityite commonly occurs as clusters of fox-red laths closely associated with baddeleyite and zirconolite in quartz and K-feldspar intergrowths in late-stage interstices between plagioclase and pyroxene. Its composition is relatively uniform, comprising mostly Si, Zr, Ti, and Fe, with minor Al, Mg, Mn, Ca, Nb, Hf, Y, and rare earth elements. Its habit and chemistry are consistent with tranquillityite in lunar basalts, and it has a face-centered-cubic subcell, similar to that of annealed lunar tranquillityite. Unlike coexisting baddeleyite and zirconolite, it is commonly altered to a secondary intergrowth of submicron phases comprising mainly Si, Ti, and Ca, with minor Zr. In situ sensitive high-resolution ion microprobe (SHRIMP) U-Pb geochronology of tranquillityite from sills intruding the Eel Creek Formation, northeastern Pilbara Craton, yields a 207Pb/206Pb age of 1064 ± 14 Ma. This age indicates that the previously undated sills belong to the ca. 1070 Ma Warakurna large igneous province, extending the geographic range of this mafic complex. The date also provides a new minimum age (>1.05 Ga) for the intruded sedimentary rocks, which were previously thought to be Neoproterozoic. Examination of dolerite from Western Australia suggests that tranquillityite is a relatively widespread, albeit volumetrically minor, accessory mineral and, where sufficiently coarse, it represents an exceptional new U-Pb geochronometer. © 2011 PhysOrg.com. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-lunar-mineral-tranquillityite-western.html

29. Flipped from head to toe: 100 years of continen tal drift theory January 4, 2012. Exactly 100 years ago, on 6 January 1912, Alfred Wegener presented his theory of continental drift to the public for the first time. At a meeting of the Geological Association in Frankfurt's Senckenberg Museum, he revealed his thoughts on the supercontinent Pangaea, which broke apart and whose individual parts now drift across the earth as today's continents. In 1915, he published his book "The Origin of Continents and Oceans". Its third edition in 1922 was translated into the languages of the world and today is considered the foundation stone of plate tectonics. Wegener's genius idea did not only find friends, because it had the main disadvantage that it lacked the engine to break apart the supercontinent and move huge continental masses over the Earth's surface. Indeed, only by the seismology of the 1950s and through scientific drilling in the oceans in the 1960s, the foundation for plate tectonics was laid – at the same time, however, Wegener's groundbreaking theory was turned upside down. Seismological insights Earthquakes are not only terrible natural disasters, they also offer a view inside the Earth. It was the geophysicists Wadati and Benioff, who in 1954 independently discovered the systematic arrangement of earthquakes in the places which we now know as plate boundaries. "More than 90% of the global seismic energy is released at the plate boundaries", says Professor Michael Weber, head seismologist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences GFZ. "We use these earthquakes for tomographic screening of the earth." With modern methods of scientific seismology it is even possible to reconstruct how quickly the continents moved. The speed record is held by India, which started to make its way from East Gondwana to Eurasia about 140 million years ago – at a speed of 20 centimeters per year. Drilling into the ocean floor The real breakthrough, however, came only when those findings were combined with the research results from the great ocean drilling programs of the sixties. Previously, using magnetic measurements of the ocean floor and topography of the seabed the mid-ocean ridges had been discovered, as well as a magnetic polarization of the rocks in parallel strips either side of mid-ocean ridges. Now, the obtained cores showed: No piece of the drilled ocean floor was older than 200 million years, and therefore decidedly younger than Wegener had assumed. Continental rocks, in contrast, can achieve an age of more than four billion years. Secondly, it could be shown that the ocean floor is very young in the immediate vicinity of the mid-ocean ridges. With increasing distance from these undersea mountains, the rocks exhibit an increase in age. Thirdly, the ocean floors below the top layer of sediment are


entirely of magmatic origin. "These results could in fact only allow one interpretation. From the interior of the earth, hot, liquid rock rises to these ridges and pushes the ocean floor off to the side", explains Dr. Ulrich Harms, who at the GFZ directs the “Centre for Scientific Drilling”. "Not the continents drift, but entire tectonic plates, which consist of continents , ocean floors, and parts of the upper mantle." Ascending rocks and the engine of plate tectonics All these findings in the second half of the sixties put Wegener's ingenious discoveries into a correct context, and also flipped his theory from the head to its feet: not only were his assumptions as to the age of oceans and continents completely reversed, the idea that the continents plow the ocean turns around so that continents and oceans move together as a common upper part of the lithospheric plates. The continents float on top as the lightest rocks, so to speak. These tectonic plates move, collide, grind past each other or drift apart. All these processes are associated with earthquakes, which can thus be explained as part of the overall process. But what forces the heavy rock inside the earth to rise? The enormous heat inside the earth's core and mantle comes in one part from the formation of Earth, in another from the radioactive decay of elements in the mantle. The heated rock rises and induces the movement expressed on the surface as a displacement of the plates. We know this process today as plate tectonics, which the science magazine "New Scientist" places on an equal footing with the theory of evolution and the theory of relativity. The quiet revolution in the theory of tectonics The classical concept of tectonics as a quasi mechanical process of the movement and collision of rigid plates is now itself in disarray. "Recent findings show plate tectonics as a self-regulating system of interactions, in which all the subsystems of the planet earth are involved”, explains Professor Onno Oncken. The Director of the Department "Geodynamics" at GFZ notes: "It is not a mechanical system, but rather complex feedback processes." The climate as example: high-altitude mountains have a decisive influence on the climate, of course. But that the climate in turn controls the tectonics, is a new discovery: the Andes, for example, are caused by the collision of the Nazca plate with South America. The humid climate of the South Andes leads to the erosion of material that ends up as sediment in the Pacific. The Nazca plate approaching from the west deposits this rock on the South American crust. The arid climate of the Northern and Central Andes, however, gives rise to no sediment, therefore the Nazca plate rasps off the continental crust here. The thus created great increase in friction in turn transmits a force that causes the Andean plateau to gain height and width. This in turn enhances the rain shadow on the west side of the Andes and additionally reduces erosion. The classical notion of folded mountains as a result of a collision also had to be revised: "The Andes, for example, in their present form, exist for about 45 million years, the subduction of the Nazca plate beneath South America has been going on since the Paleozoic, so hundreds of millions of years longer," says Onno Oncken. Similarly, the interplay between the hot, rising rock masses and the Earth's crust is much more complex than originally thought. When a hot rock bubble rises, the poorly heat-conductive lithosphere acts as a boundary layer to the surface like a blanket, which in turn increases the temperature further below. This heat buildup can eventually soften whole continents like a welding torch until they dissolve, as it happened around 140 to 130 million years ago, when Gondwana fell apart first in the East, then in the West. At that time Africa also separated from South America, but it was exactly the contours of these two continents that sparked Wegener's idea. Professor Oncken: "Wegener's approach was the starting point, the plate tectonics of the previous century was the revolution in geoscientific perception. Today we see an equally thorough, quiet revolution in the theory of plate tectonics, because we understand our planet increasingly as a complete system". Provided by GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-flipped-toe-years-continental-drift.html

30. First-known ginglymodian fish found from the mi ddle triassic of Eastern Yunnan Province, China

January 9, 2012 The Ginglymodi are a group of ray-finned fishes that make up one of three major subdivisions of the infraclass Neopterygii. Extant ginglymodians are represented by gars, which inhabit freshwater environments of North and Central America and Cuba. Drs. XU Guanghui and WU Feixiang, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, reported the discovery of well-preserved fossils of a new ginglymodian, Kyphosichthys grandei gen. et sp. nov., from the Middle Triassic (Anisian) marine deposits (Guanling Formation) in Luoping, eastern Yunnan Province, China. The discovery documents the first known fossil record of highly deep-bodied ginglymodians, adding new information on the early morphological diversity of this group. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-first-known-ginglymodian-fish-middle-triassic.html Fig. 1: Holotype of Kyphosichthys grandei gen. et sp. nov. (IVPP V10108) Credit: XU Guanghui

31. Of orbits and ice ages: Researcher confirms tha t axis shifts help to propel temperature changes

January 11, 2012 By Peter Reuell. Though it was first suggested well over a century ago, the hypothesis that changes in Earth’s orientation relative to its orbit influence the growth and decline of ice sheets was only recently tested. As described in a paper recently published in the journal Nature, Harvard Professor of Earth and Planetary Sciences Peter Huybers confirmed that slow changes in both the tilt and orientation of Earth’s spin axis combined to help determine when the major deglaciations of the past million years occurred. “These periods of deglaciation saw massive climate changes,” Huybers said. “Sea level increased by 130 meters, temperatures rose by about 5 degrees C, and atmospheric CO2 went from 180 to 280 parts per million. We ought to understand what caused these massive changes in past climate if we are to predict long-term changes in future climate with any confidence. And at least now we know with greater than 99 percent confidence that the interaction between obliquity and precession are among the factors that contribute to deglaciation.” In this context, obliquity refers to the tilt of the spin axis relative to the plane of Earth’s orbit, and precession refers to changes in the direction that the spin axis points, relative to Earth’s elongated, or eccentric, orbit. While Huybers’ research is the first to prove a connection between obliquity, precession, and deglaciations, suggestions that the Earth’s orbit plays a role in the formation or loss of glaciers are nothing new. By the early 1840s, just a few years after the notion of the Ice Age was first articulated by geologist and later Harvard Professor Louis Agassiz, scientists


began proposing that orbital changes were behind periods of glaciation. In the intervening 170 years, Huybers said, dozens of additional hypotheses have been presented, but it has been difficult to distinguish between these many competing models. “We don’t understand why glacial cycles have occurred, not for lack of ideas, but rather because we lack means to rule the wrong ideas out,” Huybers said. “A lot of people have tried to tie when ice ages started or ended to variations in the orbital cycle, but this is difficult because we don’t know exactly when ice ages occurred in the past. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-orbits-ice-ages-axis-shifts.html

32. Project to pour water into volcano to make powe r January 14, 2012 By JEFF BARNARD , Associated Press. (AP) -- Geothermal energy developers plan to pump 24 million gallons of water into the side of a dormant volcano in Central Oregon this summer to demonstrate new technology they hope will give a boost to a green energy sector that has yet to live up to its promise. They hope the water comes back to the surface fast enough and hot enough to create cheap, clean electricity that isn't dependent on sunny skies or stiff breezes - without shaking the earth and rattling the nerves of nearby residents. Renewable energy has been held back by cheap natural gas, weak demand for power and waning political concern over global warming. Efforts to use the earth's heat to generate power, known as geothermal energy, have been further hampered by technical problems and worries that tapping it can cause earthquakes. Even so, the federal government, Google and other investors are interested enough to bet $43 million on the Oregon project. They are helping AltaRock Energy, Inc. of Seattle and Davenport Newberry Holdings LLC of Stamford, Conn., demonstrate whether the next level in geothermal power development can work on the flanks of Newberrry Volcano, located about 20 miles south of Bend, Ore. "We know the heat is there," said Susan Petty, president of AltaRock. "The big issue is can we circulate enough water through the system to make it economic." The heat in the earth's crust has been used to generate power for more than a century. Engineers gather hot water or steam that bubbles near the surface and use it to spin a turbine that creates electricity. Most of those areas have been exploited. The new frontier is places with hot rocks, but no cracks in the rocks or water to deliver the steam. To tap that heat - and grow geothermal energy from a tiny niche into an important source of green energy - engineers are working on a new technology called Enhanced Geothermal Systems. "To build geothermal in a big way beyond where it is now requires new technology, and that is where EGS comes in," said Steve Hickman, a research geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey in Menlo Park, Calif. Wells are drilled deep into the rock and water is pumped in, creating tiny fractures in the rock, a process known as hydroshearing. Cold water is pumped down production wells into the reservoir, and the steam is drawn out. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-volcano-power.html

33. Earth from Space: A southern summer bloom

In this Envisat image, acquired on 2 December 2011, a phytoplankton bloom swirls a figure-of-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands. Different types and quantities of phytoplankton exhibit different colours, such as the blues and greens in this image. Earth-observing satellites like Envisat can monitor these algal blooms. Once a bloom begins, an ocean colour sensor can make an initial identification of its chlorophyll pigment, and therefore its species and toxicity. Credits: ESA

January 16, 2012. In this Envisat image, a phytoplankton bloom swirls a figure-of-8 in the South Atlantic Ocean about 600 km east of the Falkland Islands. During this period in the southern hemisphere, the ocean becomes rich in minerals from the mixing of surface waters with deeper waters. Phytoplankton depend on these minerals, making blooms like this common in the spring and summer. These microscopic organisms are the base of the marine food chain, and play a huge role in the removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and the production of oxygen in the oceans. By helping to regulate the carbon cycle, phytoplankton are important to the global climate system. Different types and quantities of phytoplankton exhibit different colours, such as the blues and greens in this image. Earth-observing satellites like Envisat can monitor these algal blooms. Once a bloom begins, an ocean colour sensor can make an initial identification of its chlorophyll pigment, and therefore its species and toxicity. Since the phytoplankton are sensitive to environmental changes, it is important to monitor and model them for climate change calculations and to identify potentially harmful blooms. Envisat’s MERIS instrument acquired this image on 2 December 2011 at a resolution of 300 m. Provided by European Space Agency. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-earth-space-southern-summer-bloom.html


34. Mammalian fossil first-ever found in the Cenozo ic deposits of the Lunpola Basin, Northern Tibet

Plesiaceratherium sp. (IVPP V 18082) from Lunbori, Baingoin, Tibet (a1, Medial view; a2, anterior view; a3, distal view), in preservation of a medial part of the distal extremity of a left humerus with the complete medial condyle and the residual epicondyle. Credit: DENG Tao

January 9, 2012. Dr. DENG Tao, Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology (IVPP), Chinese Academy of Sciences, and his research team, found a rhinocerotid fossil in the upper part of the Dingqing Formation at the Lunbori locality in Baingoin County during an extensive and detailed investigation of the stratigraphy and a survey for vertebrate fossils in 2009 and 2010, which is the first mammalian fossil found in Cenozoic deposits of the Lunpola Basin, Northern Tibet, as reported in the journal of Chinese Science Bulletin(No.2-3:261-269) in January 2012. The Lunpola Basin is located on the southern and northern sides of the boundary between Baingoin County and the Shuanghu Special District in northern Tibet. The age of Cenozoic deposits in the Lunpola Basin in northern Tibet has been disputed for many years, primarily because of a lack of fossils with accurate chronological significance. Rhinocerotid fossils are important standard fossils with strict chronological significance for the Cenozoic, and are important indicators of the ecosystems inhabited by mammalian faunas.

“The medial condyle of the distal trochlea of the humerus specimen from Lunbori gradually contracts from medially to laterally. The margin of the medial surface of the medial condyle is not prominent, the well-developed medial epicondyle strongly extends posteriorly, and is divided from the articular facet of the medial condyle by a groove”, said DENG Tao, lead author of the study, “These all are typical characteristic for the Family Rhinocerotidae, and it must be a rhinocerotid fossil.” The detailed observations and comparisons show that its medial condyle is wide at the bottom and narrow at the top, the medial collateral ligament fossa is relatively shallow, and the medial collateral ligament tubercle is very weak. The medial part of the upper margin of the medial condyle smoothly connects to the bony surface above, but lacks a clear boundary between them. All of these characteristics are identical with those of Plesiaceratherium. These comparisons imply that the Lunbori specimen is closest to Plesiaceratherium gracile in the Shanwang Fauna from Linqu, Shandong Province, in size and morphology. Plesiaceratherium has previously been found in the late Early Miocene deposits of eastern China and Western Europe. Radiometric dating for the Shanwang Basin in Linqu County, Shandong Province indicates that Plesiaceratherium lived between 18–16 Ma. Thus, the upper part of the Dingqing Formation bearing the fossil Plesiaceratherium was deposited during the late Early Miocene, and the entire Dingqing Formation included Oligocene- Miocene deposits. The vegetation type of the Dingqing Formation was identical to that of the Shanwang Fauna and Plesiaceratherium has been inferred to live in subtropical and warm temperate forests, preferring a warm and humid climate. The correlations and adjustments based on modern alpine vegetation vertical zones in the Himalayas and the Early Miocene global climatic conditions indicate that the highest elevation in the Lunpola Basin at the time of the deposition of the Dingqing Formation could not have exceeded 3170 m a.s.l. The ecological requirements of rhinoceroses through a paleo-temperature adjustment for the Early Miocene indicate that the most reasonable paleo-elevation for Plesiaceratherium is close to 3000 m a.s.l. This work was supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the National Basic Research Program of China, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.. Provided by Institute of Vertebrae Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-mammalian-fossil-first-ever-cenozoic-deposits.html

35. Winner in satellite image contest

The Rakaia river runs through the Canterbury Plains on New Zealand's South Island

GeoEye's 2012 Calendar includes this photo of unusual formations in the Gulf

12 January 2012. An image of the ribbon-like Rakaia river in New Zealand has won an online vote for one company's best satellite image of 2011. The river, shown in March 2011, runs for about 150km to the Pacific. Commercial satellite imaging firm DigitalGlobe invited Facebook users to choose its best image of last year (at http://www.digitalglobeblog.com/2012/01/10/the-top-image-of-2011-announced/). The picture of the twisting river beat other striking images of Ground Zero in New York, and Palm Island, Dubai, to claim the top spot. A French high-resolution imaging satellite, named Pleiades, was launched in December. Its manufacturers are expecting it to go head to head with both GeoEye and DigitalGlobe in the satellite imaging market. Another satellite imaging company, GeoEye, has also published a 2012 calendar (http://www.geoeye.com/CorpSite/gallery/Default.aspx?gid=56) made up of its top images from last year. DigitalGlobe encouraged users to vote on 20 of its images (https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150556254406289.439273.132015741288&type=1) from last year. This was whittled down to five at the beginning of January; the winner has just been announced. In addition to the photos of Ground Zero and Palm Island, the original choices included a satellite photo showing the space shuttle Atlantis being moved out of its assembly building in Florida for its final mission. GeoEye's images include a photo of unusual, tree-like sedimentary formations in the Gulf off Qatar and a shadow cast on the ground by the Gateway Arch in St Louis, Missouri, which is considered to be the tallest man-made monument in the US. At http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-16529540


36. Strong quakes rattle remote Antarctica January 16, 2012. Two strong earthquakes 40 minutes apart rocked the remote South Orkney Islands in Antarctica on Sunday, experts from the US Geological Survey said. The epicenter of the first, a magnitude 6.6 temblor, was at a depth of 10 kilometers (six miles), some 539 kilometers (334 miles) west of Coronation Island, the USGS said. No destructive tsunami was created, according to a US-based warning center. The first quake occurred at 1340 GMT. About 40 minutes later the region was struck by an aftershock measured at 6.2. A second 5.1-magnitude aftershock occurred at around 1640 GMT, USGS said later. The South Orkney Islands form a remote archipelago in the Southern Ocean to the northeast of the Antarctic Peninsula. An ownership dispute between Britain and Argentina was resolved by the 1959 Antarctic Treaty, which allowed for any of the 12 signatories to use the islands for non-military purposes. The British Antarctic Survey staffs a small research station on Signy Island, while Argentina maintains a base on Laurie Island.

Giant tabular icebergs surrounded by ice floe drift in Vincennes Bay in the Australian Antarctic Territory in 2008. Two strong earthquakes 40 minutes apart rocked the remote South Orkney Islands in Antarctica, experts from the US Geological Survey said.

"There is the small possibility of a local or regional tsunami that could affect coasts located usually no more than a few hundreds kilometers from the earthquake epicenter," the Hawaii-based Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said. The tsunami that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 caused waves that hit an ice shelf in Antarctica 13,000 kilometers (8,100 miles) away, smashing parts of it into huge icebergs. The largest berg measured about 9.5 by 6.5 kilometers (5.9 by 4.0 miles), making it slightly bigger in surface area than Manhattan, according to the European Space Agency. An early USGS alert Sunday put the depth of the first Antarctica quake at just one kilometer and located it closer to Coronation Island. (c) 2012 AFP. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-strong-quakes-rattle-remote-antarctica.html

37. New research shows 1992 earthquake in Pakistan was due to rare horizontal shift

A North-south cross section passing through the Kohat earthquake showing the decollement and (south-dipping) faults branching upwards. Image: Nature Geoscience (2012) doi:10.1038/ngeo1373

January 16, 2012, by Bob Yirka. The media (and school teachers, of course) has done a very good job of informing most people about how earthquakes work. We can all very easily imagine two great plates rubbing against one another, like two fists rubbing together, creating havoc along fault lines. But what most of us have never likely imagined is the type of earthquake that occurred back in 1992 in Kohat, Pakistan. Instead of two plates rubbing together, a whole section of the earth simply moved from one place to another, like a rug being pulled out from underneath those that were living there. In some ways, it

appears the quake was more like a giant mud slide than a normal earthquake. It's only now, twenty years later, that scientists have put the pieces together though. S. P. Satyabala, Zhaohui Yang and Roger Bilham, as they describe in their paper published in Nature Geoscience, have found using satellite radar and historical seismic data, that the 6.0 quake was in fact a rare horizontal one. Such quakes occur, the researchers say, when a parcel of land sits atop another with something that works as a slippery agent between them. In this case, the team believes it’s a layer of salt. What happens is, a whole swath or slip of land is very, very slowly moving downhill, like a glacier. In this case, the rate is about one to two millimeters each year; so slowly that the movement is not noticed by those that are living on the land above. Unfortunately, it’s not always such a smooth ride. Every now and then, something causes a problem with the slippery layer, resulting in the upper and lower rock touching. Without the slippery stuff between them, the two layers of land stop sliding, but only for awhile as the forces that caused the top part to slide in the first place, continue to work. Eventually, the top layer gives way and lurches forward, causing a very noticeable earthquake. In 1992, over 200 people were killed as buildings fell on top of them. To come to their conclusions the team turned to interferometric synthetic aperture radar, which is a method of data collection via satellite that maps the surface of the Earth over time. In this case, when that data was combined with seismic recordings, it was easy for the team to see that some 3,800 square miles of land surrounding Kohat, had shifted about a foot, all at once. Unfortunately for those that live there, it appears that such an occurrence will likely happen again, though at least now they will have more knowledge about what is going on beneath them and thus will be able to make more informed decisions going forward. More information: Stick–slip advance of the Kohat Plateau in Pakistan,Nature Geoscience (2012). (http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/ngeo1373).

38. How Diamond-Studded Magma Rises From Earth's De pths

A diamond sits embedded in kimberlite rock at a diamond-trading firm in London. Photograph by Patrick Landmann, Getty Images

Richard A. Lovett, for National Geographic News, January 19, 2012 The recipe for making diamonds is no secret: Take carbon and squeeze it under the extremely high temperatures and pressures found deep inside the Earth. The mystery lies in how the prized gemstones then get delivered from the depths to parts of Earth's crust that are accessible to miners. According to a new study, diamonds can be carried up through the lithosphere—the crust and uppermost layer of the mantle—by dense magmas rich in carbonate. "These melts are really quite special, because they can hold a huge amount of dissolved carbon dioxide, up to 40 to 45 percent by weight," said study leader James "Kelly" Russell, a petrologist from the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. Previous models had suggested that gases in the magma would increase its buoyancy, helping to push the diamond-laden melt closer to the surface without destroying the precious gems.

The new lab experiments now show how molten carbonate reacts with other chemicals in Earth's lithosphere to release the gas, offering a likely mechanism for speeding up the dense magma.


"Let There Be a Gas Phase" Natural diamond production begins deep beneath the planet's oldest continents, where Earth's lithosphere can extend to depths of 75 miles (120 kilometers), Russell said. There, a type of material called kimberlite magma forces its way up from deeper in Earth's mantle, cracking the solid rock. As it rises, the magma collects fragments of rocks, like floodwaters picking up silt and gravel. Some of these fragments contain diamonds. But the diamond-containing rocks are heavy, and the magma picks up enough of them that its progress should be substantially slowed, Russell said. Diamonds, however, have to rise quickly, or they will be destroyed as they pass through zones of intermediate pressure, where the gems can be rapidly consumed by high-temperature oxidation. The best estimates are that, in order for the diamonds to make it, the magma must travel all the way to the surface in about 10 to 45 hours—moving at about 3 to 13 feet (1 to 4 meters) a second. The only way for magma to rise so quickly, Russell and others have long believed, is if the melt is supercharged with gas—but nobody knew where such gas might come from. "Prior models have been [rather] deus ex machina—let there be a gas phase," he said. Diamonds Caught in Volcano Plumbing In the new paper, Russell and colleagues found that as carbonate-rich magma passes through overlying rocks on its way toward the surface, it quickly dissolves those rocks' silica-rich minerals. In high-temperature and high-pressure lab experiments, this process can start happening within tens of minutes. The resulting mixture of molten silica and carbonate can't carry as much dissolved carbon dioxide as the original magma. Large quantities of gas therefore bubble out, causing the magma to rise even quicker, until it reaches the surface in an explosive eruption. More importantly for miners, long after the resulting volcano has been eroded into invisibility on the surface, its interior plumbing remains, leaving behind kimberlite "pipes" that may be rich in diamonds. A First Step in Better Diamond Hunting? Whether the findings will help prospectors find new diamond deposits is unclear, Russell said. "These people are pretty smart," he said of diamond miners, noting that years of experience have taught them many rules of thumb regarding the most likely places to look. Still, he noted, the new study might point the way to future research into mineralogical signals that could help differentiate fast-rising kimberlite deposits, which might contain diamonds, from slower-rising ones that are unlikely to bear any gems. The study might also help increase prospectors' confidence by explaining why their current strategies work, Russell added. The new diamond-transport study appears this week in the journal Nature. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120119-diamonds-gems-earth-magma-carbonate-rocks-science/?source=link_fb20120119news-diamondmagma

39. Other stories!!!! - The Year’s Most Overlooked Energy Stories. National geographic. http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/energy/2011/12/pictures/111227-

most-overlooked-energy-stories-of-2011/ - China plans Asia's biggest coal-fired power plant. December 27, 2011. China's Shenhua Group will build the largest coal-fired power station in

Asia over the next five years, the official Xinhua news agency said Tuesday, as the country struggles to meet its energy needs. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-china-asia-biggest-coal-fired-power.html

- 50 million year old cricket and katydid fossils hint at the origins of insect hearing. January 3, 2012. How did insects get their hearing? A new study of 50 million year-old cricket and katydid fossils — sporting some of the best preserved fossil insect ears described to date— help trace the evolution of the insect ear, says a new study by researchers working at the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-million-year-cricket-katydid-fossils.html

- A new way to measure Earth's magnetosphere. January 4, 2012. US researchers have demonstrated the potential use of a new way to measure properties of Earth's magnetosphere, the magnetic bubble that surrounds the planet. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-earth-magnetosphere.html

- Depleted gas reservoirs can double as geologic carbon storage sites. January 6, 2012 by Dan Krotz. A demonstration project on the southeastern tip of Australia has helped to verify that depleted natural gas reservoirs can be repurposed for geologic carbon sequestration, which is a climate change mitigation strategy that involves pumping CO2 deep underground for permanent storage. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-depleted-gas-reservoirs-geologic-carbon.html

- New data finds regions of North America have remained extremely stable for more than one billion years. January 6, 2012 by Jennifer Chu. Like lines in a deeply weathered face, the cracks and fissures in the Earth’s crust reveal a long and tumultuous lifetime. Massive continent-bearing plates have come together and broken apart, setting off earthquakes and volcanic eruptions that have fragmented underlying rock, changing the face of the planet over billions of years. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-regions-north-america-extremely-stable.html

- Could Siberian Volcanism Have Caused the Earth's Largest Extinction Event? ScienceDaily (Jan. 9, 2012) — Around 250 million years ago, at the end of the Permian geologic period, there was a mass extinction so severe that it remains the most traumatic known species die-off in Earth's history. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120109132746.htm?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29

- Scientists Set to Research Largest Unexplored Biomass on Earth --Realm of Volcanic Lava Beneath Oceans. January 10, 2012. The igneous ocean crust --the rocky realm of hard volcanic lava exists beneath ocean sediments that lie at the bottom of much of the world's oceans-- is largely unexplored and unknown to science.While scientists have estimated that microbes living in deep ocean sediments may represent as much as one-third of Earth's total biomass, the habitable portion of the rocky ocean crust may be 10 times as great. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/the-igneous-ocean-crust-the-rocky-realm-of-hard-volcanic-lava-exists-beneath-ocean-sediments-that-lie-at-the-bottom-of-much.html#.Twz7kJlsBmU.facebook

- Satellite Imagery Detects Thermal 'Uplift' Signal of Underground Nuclear Tests. ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2012) - A new analysis of satellite data from the late 1990s documents for the first time the "uplift" of ground above a site of underground nuclear testing, providing researchers a potential new tool for analyzing the strength of detonation. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110151712.htm?utm_source=feedburner&


utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29 - Renewable Fuel: Clearing a Potential Road Block to Bisabolane. ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2012) — The recent discovery that bisabolane, a

member of the terpene class of chemical compounds used in fragrances and flavorings, holds high promise as a biosynthetic alternative to D2 diesel fuel has generated keen interest in the green energy community and the trucking industry. Now a second team of researchers with the U.S Department of Energy (DOE)'s Joint BioEnergy Institute (JBEI) has determined the three-dimensional crystal structure of a protein that is key to boosting the microbial-based production of bisabolane as an advanced biofuel. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110140227.htm? utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29

- Reuse of Municipal Wastewater Has Potential to Augment Future Drinking Water Supplies. ScienceDaily (Jan. 10, 2012) — With recent advances in technology and design, treating municipal wastewater and reusing it for drinking water, irrigation, industry, and other applications could significantly increase the nation's total available water resources, particularly in coastal areas facing water shortages, says a new report from the National Research Council.It adds that the reuse of treated wastewater, also known as reclaimed water, to augment drinking water supplies has significant potential for helping meet future needs. http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120110140223.htm?utm_source=feedburner& utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+sciencedaily%2Fearth_climate+%28ScienceDaily%3A+Earth+%26+Climate+News%29

- Researchers discover particle which could 'cool the planet'. January 12, 2012. In a breakthrough paper published in Science, researchers from The University of Manchester, The University of Bristol and Sandia National Laboratories report the potentially revolutionary effects of Criegee biradicals. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-particle-cool-planet.html

- World's most extreme deep-sea vents revealed. January 10, 2012. Scientists have revealed details of the world's most extreme deep-sea volcanic vents, 5 kilometres down in a rift in the Caribbean seafloor. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-world-extreme-deep-sea-vents-revealed.html

- New study urges smart targeting of pollution sources to save lives and climate. January 13, 2012. Researchers at the Stockholm Environment Institute (SEI) at the University of York have played a key role in a new study that shows that implementing 14 key air pollution control measures could slow the pace of global warming, save millions of lives and boost agricultural production. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-urges-smart-pollution-sources-climate.html

- Breakthrough Facility to Trap Solar Energy in Molten Salt. David A Gabel, ENN, January 4, 2012. One of the greatest problems of large scale solar power facilities is that they do not produce electricity at night, and when they do produce power, it is constantly fluctuating with the sun's strength. Under development in the deserts of Tonopah, Nevada is a new technology that will effectively store solar energy in the form of molten salt. When the sun goes down, thermal energy from the salt will be able to produce electricity for eight to ten hours. http://www.enn.com/energy/article/43801

- Include trees in climate modelling, say scientists. January 13, 2012 - Dyna Rochmyaningsih, Science and Development Network. Current climate models and projections may be inaccurate because measurements are based on guidelines that do not include the effects of trees on the local climate, according to agroforestry experts. This in turn may be hindering effective adaptation by local farming communities, as the true effect of climate change on their crops is not accurately captured. http://www.enn.com/climate/article/43850

- Archaeologists find clues to Neanderthal extinction. January 16, 2012 By Carol Hughes. Computational modeling that examines evidence of how hominin groups evolved culturally and biologically in response to climate change during the last Ice Age also bears new insights into the extinction of Neanderthals. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-archaeologists-clues-neanderthal-extinction.html

- EcoAlert: Earth Mapped in 3D for 1st Time. Earth observation satellites have completely mapped the entire land surface of Earth for the first time in a German Aerospace Center (DLR) project designed to create the world’s first single-source, high-precision, 3D digital-elevation model of Earth. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/ecoalert-earth-mapped-in-3d-for-1st-time.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email& utm_campaign=Feed%3A+TheDailyGalaxyNewsFromPlanetEarthBeyond+%28The+Daily+Galaxy+--Great+Discoveries+Channel%3A+Sci% 2C+Space%2C+Tech.%29

NEWS OF/ON THE SPACE / ASTRONOMY

40. Some nearby young stars may be much older than previously thought December 21, 2011. Low in the south in the summer sky shines the constellation Scorpius and the bright, red supergiant star Antares. Many of the brightest stars in Scorpius, and hundreds of its fainter stars, are among the youngest stars found near the earth, and a new analysis of them may result in a rethinking of both their ages and the ages of other groups of stars. New research by astrophysicists from the University of Rochester focused on stars in the north part of the constellation, known as Upper Scorpius, which is a part of the Scorpius-Centaurus OB association, one of our best studied groups of young stars and a benchmark sample for investigating the early lives of stars and the evolution of their planet-spawning disks. The Upper Scorpius stellar group lies roughly 470 light years from Earth. While those stars have been thought to be just five million years old, the team concludes that those stars are actually more than twice as old, at 11 million years of age. The findings are surprising given Upper Scorpius's status as one of the best-studied samples of young stars in the sky. The findings by graduate student Mark Pecaut and Assistant Professor Eric Mamajek of Rochester, and Assistant Professor Eric Bubar of Marymount University, were accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The scientists came to their conclusions after analyzing hundreds of optical spectra measured with the SMARTS 1.5-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory (CTIO) in Chile, as well as reanalyzing previously published data on the stars. "We combined our new estimates for the temperatures of the stars based on our spectra, with data on the brightnesses and distances to estimate accurate luminosities," said Pecaut. "Then we used state-of-the-art stellar evolution models to determine the ages." While similar methods were used in the past to calculate ages for some of the Upper Scorpius stars, Pecaut says no previous study has determined independent age estimates for members of the group over such a wide range of stellar masses. The new analysis shows that stars over a wide range of masses in Upper Scorpius – from slightly more massive than our Sun, up to the mass of the bright star Antares (17 times the mass of our Sun) are giving ages consistent with a mean age of 11 million years. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-nearby-young-stars-older-previously.html


41. Can Earth-sized planets survive their star's ex pansion?

This shows two planets that survived the red-giant expansion of their host star. Credit: Illustration by Stéphane Charpinet/Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie in Toulouse, France.

December 21, 2011. Two Earth-sized planets have been discovered circling a dying star that has passed the red giant stage. Because of their close orbits, the planets must have been engulfed by their star while it swelled up to many times its original size. This discovery, published in the science journal Nature, may shed new light on the destiny of stellar and planetary systems, including our solar system. When our sun nears the end of its life in about 5 billion years, it will swell up to what astronomers call a red giant, an inflated star that has used up most of its fuel. So large will the dying star grow that its fiery outer reaches will swallow the innermost planets of our solar system – Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. Researchers believed that this unimaginable inferno would make short work of any planet caught in it – until now. This report describes the first discovery of two planets – or remnants thereof – that evidently not only

survived being engulfed by their parent star, but also may have helped to strip the star of most of its fiery envelope in the process. The team was led by Stephane Charpinet, an astronomer at the Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie, Université de Toulouse-CNRS, in France. "When our sun swells up to become a red giant, it will engulf the Earth," said Elizabeth 'Betsy' Green, an associate astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, who participated in the research. "If a tiny planet like the Earth spends 1 billion years in an environment like that, it will just evaporate. Only planets with masses very much larger than the Earth, like Jupiter or Saturn, could possibly survive." The two planets, named KOI 55.01 and KOI 55.02, circle their host star in extremely tight orbits. Having migrated so close, they probably plunged deep into the star's envelope during the red giant phase, but survived. In the most plausible configuration, the two bodies would respectively have radii of 0.76 and 0.87 times the Earth radius, making them the smallest planets so far detected around an active star other than our sun. The host star, KOI 55, is what astronomers call a subdwarf B star: It consists of the exposed core of a red giant that has lost nearly its entire envelope. In fact, the authors write, the planets may have contributed to the increased mass loss necessary for the formation of this type of star. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-earth-sized-planets-survive-star-expansion.html

42. Earth always has a second temporary moon, resea rchers claim

Saturn's moons Rhea and Dione as seen by the Cassini spacecraft. Could this be a future view from Earth? Image credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

December 21, 2011 By Amy Shira Teitel, Universe Today. In the fall of 2006, observers at the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona found an object orbiting the Earth. At first, it looked like a spent rocket stage -- it had a spectrum similar to the titanium white paint NASA uses on rocket stages that end up in heliocentric orbits. But closer inspection revealed that the object was a natural body. Called 2006 RH120, it was a tiny asteroid measuring just a few metres across but it still qualified as a natural satellite just like out Moon. By June 2007, it was gone. Less than a year after it arrived, it left Earth’s orbit in search of a new cosmic companion. Now, astrophysicists at Cornell are suggesting that 2006 RH120 wasn’t an anomaly; a second temporary moon is actually the norm for our planet. Temporary satellites are a result of the gravitational pull of Earth and the Moon. Both bodies pull on one another and also pull on anything else in nearby space. The most common objects that get pulled in by the Earth-Moon system’s gravity are near Earth objects (NEOs) — comets and asteroids are nudged by the outer planets and end up in orbits that bring them into Earth’s neighbourhood. The team from Cornell, astrophysicists Mikael Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon, Robert Jedicke, has modeled the way our Earth-Moon system captures these NEOs to understand how often we have additional moons and how long they stick around.

They found that the Earth-Moon system captures NEOs quite frequently. “At any given time, there should be at least one natural Earth satellite of 1-meter diameter orbiting the Earth,” the team said. These NEOs orbit the Earth for about ten months, enough time to make about three orbits, before leaving. Luckily, and very interestingly, this discovery has implication well beyond academic applications. Knowing that these small satellites come and go but that one is always present around the Earth, astronomers can work on detecting them. With more complete information on these bodies, specifically their position around the Earth at a given time, NASA could send a crew out to investigate. A crew wouldn’t be able to land on something a few metres across, but they could certainly study it up close and gather samples. Proposals for a manned mission to an asteroid have been floating around NASA for years. Now, astronauts won’t have to go all the way out to an asteroid to learn about the Solar System’s early history. NASA can wait for an asteroid to come to us. If the Cornell team is right and there is no shortage of second satellites around the Earth, the gains from such missions increases. The possible information about the solar system’s formation that we could obtain would be amazing, and amazingly cost-efficient. More information: The population of natural Earth satellites, arXiv:1112.3781v1 [astro-ph.EP] http://arxiv.org/abs/1112.3781 Abstract We have for the first time calculated the population characteristics of the Earth's irregular natural satellites (NES) that are temporarily captured from the near-Earth-object (NEO) population. The steady-state NES size-frequency and residence-time distributions were determined under the dynamical influence of all the massive bodies in the solar system (but mainly the Sun, Earth, and Moon) for NEOs of negligible mass. To this end, we compute the NES capture probability from the NEO population as a function of the latter's heliocentric orbital elements and combine those results with the current best estimates for the NEO size-frequency and orbital distribution. At any given time there should be at least one NES of 1-meter diameter orbiting the Earth. The average temporarily-captured orbiter (TCO; an object that makes at least one revolution around the Earth in a co-rotating coordinate system) completes $(2.88pm0.82)rev$ around the Earth during a capture event that lasts $(286pm18)days$. We find a small preference for capture events starting in either January or July. Our results are consistent with the single known natural TCO, 2006 RH$_{120}$, a few-meter diameter object that was captured for about a year starting in June 2006. We estimate that about 0.1% of all meteors impacting the Earth were TCOs. Source: Universe Today. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-earth-temporary-moon.html


43. Spitzer and Hubble telescopes find rare galaxy at dawn of time

This image shows one of the most distant galaxies known, called GN-108036, dating back to 750 million years after the Big Bang that created our universe. The galaxy's light took 12.9 billion years to reach us. The main Hubble image shows a field of galaxies, known as the Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey, or GOODS. A close-up of the Hubble image, and a Spitzer image, are called out at right. In the Spitzer image, infrared light captured by its Infrared Array Camera at wavelengths of 3.6 and 4.5 microns is colored green and red, respectively. In the Hubble image, visible light taken by its Advanced Camera for Surveys instrument at 0.6 and 0.9 microns is blue and green, respectively, while infrared light captured by Hubble's new Wide Field Camera 3 at 1.6 microns is red. GN-108036 is only detected in the infrared, and is completely invisible in the optical Hubble images, explaining its very red color in this picture. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/STScI/University of Tokyo

December 21, 2011. Astronomers using NASA's Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have discovered that one of the most distant galaxies known is churning out stars at a shockingly high rate. The blob-shaped galaxy, called GN-108036, is the brightest galaxy found to date at such great distances. The galaxy, which was discovered and confirmed using ground-based telescopes, is 12.9 billion light-years away. Data from Spitzer and Hubble were used to measure the galaxy's high star production rate, equivalent to about 100 suns per year. For reference, our Milky Way galaxy is about five times larger and 100 times more massive than GN-108036, but makes roughly 30 times fewer stars per year. "The discovery is surprising because previous surveys had not found galaxies this bright so early in the history of the universe," said Mark Dickinson of the National Optical Astronomy Observatory in Tucson, Ariz. "Perhaps those surveys were just too small to find galaxies like GN-108036. It may be a special, rare object that we just happened to catch during an extreme burst of star formation." The international team of astronomers, led by Masami Ouchi of the University of Tokyo, Japan, first identified the remote galaxy after scanning a large patch of sky with the Subaru Telescope atop Mauna Kea in Hawaii. Its great distance was then carefully confirmed with the W.M. Keck Observatory, also on Mauna Kea. "We checked our results on three different occasions over two years, and each time confirmed the previous

measurement," said Yoshiaki Ono of the University of Tokyo, lead author of a new paper reporting the findings in the Astrophysical Journal.More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-spitzer-hubble-telescopes-rare-galaxy.html

44. New calculations suggest Jupiter's core may be liquefying

Jupiter. Photo courtesy of NASA

December 21, 2011 by Bob Yirka. Jupiter, the largest planet in our solar system, may be causing its own core to liquefy, at least according to Hugh Wilson and colleague Burkhard Militzer of UC, Berkeley. They’ve come to this conclusion after making quantum mechanical calculations on the conditions that exist within the big planet. In a paper published on the preprint serverarXiv, and submitted to Physical Review Letters, the two explain that because the gas giant has a relatively small core made of mostly iron, rock (partly magnesium oxide) and ice, and sits embedded in fluid hydrogen and helium all under great pressure from the planet’s gravity (which has created very high temperatures (16,000 K)), there is a likelihood that the core is liquefying due to the heat and pressure exerted on the magnesium oxide. Calculating the possibility of the magnesium oxide liquefying had to be done to predict the outcome because recreating the environment that exists inside of Jupiter for experimentation purposes isn’t feasible. They have in essence shown that magnesium oxide, when exposed to such high temperatures and pressure, has high solubility, which of course means a high probability of dissolving into a liquid. In a previous study, the team also made calculations showing that the core ice would likely be dissolving as well.

The findings suggest that Jupiter’s core might not be as big as it once was, though it currently weights about as much as ten Earth’s (the whole planet weighs as much as 318 Earth’s). This implies that the core could eventually be reduced down to nothing at all. And if that’s the case, than those who study exoplanets, particularly the giant gas variety, will have to do some rethinking, because those others might not have a core at all, contrary to conventional wisdom. Unfortunately, the calculations the two performed can’t give a rate of erosion, thus a timeline for how long it’s taken for the core to come to its current size can’t be made, nor can predictions be made on how long it might take for the core to disappear altogether; both of which would be useful in helping to predict the ages of other gas giants out beyond our solar system. Luckily, NASA has a space probe on the way to measure Jupiter’s gravitational field more accurately, though it won’t get there till 2016; that should give scientists plenty of time to consider the impact these new findings might have on their current models regarding giant gas planets. More information: Rocky core solubility in Jupiter and giant exoplanets, arXiv:1111.6309v1 [astro-ph.EP] http://arxiv.org/abs/1111.6309 Abstract Gas giants are believed to form by the accretion of hydrogen-helium gas around an initial protocore of rock and ice. The question of whether the rocky parts of the core dissolve into the fluid H-He layers following formation has significant implications for planetary structure and evolution. Here we use ab initio calculations to study rock solubility in fluid hydrogen, choosing MgO as a representative example of planetary rocky materials, and find MgO to be highly soluble in H for temperatures in excess of approximately 10000 K, implying significant redistribution of rocky core material in Jupiter and larger exoplanets. © 2011 PhysOrg.com. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-jupiter-core-liquefying.html


45. Cassini delivers holiday treats from Saturn December 22, 2011. No team of reindeer, but radio signals flying clear across the solar system from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have delivered a holiday package of glorious images. The pictures, from Cassini’s imaging team, show Saturn’s largest, most colorful ornament, Titan, and other icy baubles in orbit around this splendid planet. The release includes images of satellite conjunctions in which one moon passes in front of or behind another. Cassini scientists regularly make these observations to study the ever-changing orbits of the planet's moons. But even in these routine images, the Saturnian system shines. A few of Saturn's stark, airless, icy moons appear to dangle next to the orange orb of Titan, the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere. Titan's atmosphere is of great interest because of its similarities to the atmosphere believed to exist long ago on the early Earth. The images are online at: http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. While it may be wintry in Earth's northern hemisphere, it is currently northern spring in the Saturnian system and it will remain so for several Earth years. Current plans to extend the Cassini mission through 2017 will supply a continued bounty of scientifically rewarding and majestic views of Saturn and its moons and rings, as spectators are treated to the passage of northern spring and the arrival of summer in May 2017. "As another year traveling this magnificent sector of our solar system draws to a close, all of us on Cassini wish all of you a very happy and peaceful holiday season, " said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team lead at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

Saturn's third-largest moon Dione can be seen through the haze of its largest moon, Titan, in this view of the two posing before the planet and its rings from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

The colorful globe of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, passes in front of the planet and its rings in this true color snapshot from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Saturn's moon Tethys, with its stark white icy surface, peeps out from behind the larger, hazy, colorful Titan in this Cassini view of the two moons. Saturn's rings lie between the two. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SSI

Provided by JPL/NASA. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-cassini-holiday-saturn.html

46. ASU cosmologist suggests studying moon for alie n artifacts December 26, 2011 by Bob Yirka. If you were part of a team sent to explore an unknown planet; and that planet had a natural orbiting moon, wouldn’t it make sense to use that moon as a base camp or remote observation post? Especially if you didn’t want those being observed to know you were there? Professor Paul Davis and research technician Robert Wagner think so, and that’s why they’ve published a paper in Acta Astronautica that suggests we humans begin taking a little closer look at our own moon to see if any alien life forms might have left behind some evidence of their visit. Though some might see it as farfetched, or heaven forbid, lunacy, Davis and Wagner are convinced that it’s worth the small amount of investment such a search would entail. What if, they suggest, close-up photographs of the moon that are already being made available to the masses (from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) via the Internet, were to be presented with a request that anyone that would like to participate, study whichever photo’s they find interesting, looking for anything that appears of unnatural origin, then report back. Interesting “finds” could then be studied by many others, and those that seem promising could be studied further by professionals. It all seems so easy, after all, other group projects are underway, and by most accounts, appear to meet with relative success.

Moon. Photo courtesy of NASA

Another possibility, the team suggests, is using image or shape recognizing software to scan photos of the moon to help narrow down search areas and to alert human’s when it finds something interesting. More information: Searching for alien artifacts on the moon, Acta Astronautica, In Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.actaastro.2011.10.022 © 2011 PhysOrg.com. More http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-asu-cosmologist-moon-alien-artifacts.html

47. Space Image: Fastest rotating star found in nei ghboring galaxy

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, and G. Bacon (STScI)

December 30, 2011. This artist's concept pictures the fastest rotating star found to date. The massive, bright young star, called VFTS 102, rotates at a million miles per hour, or 100 times faster than our sun does. Centrifugal forces from this dizzying spin rate have flattened the star into an oblate shape and spun off a disk of hot plasma, seen edge on in this view from a hypothetical planet. The star may have "spun up" by accreting material from a binary companion star. The rapidly evolving companion later exploded as a supernova. The whirling star lies 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. Provided by JPL/NASA. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-space-image-fastest-rotating-star.html


48. Space Image: Ring of fire December 28, 2011. Image Credits: X-ray: NASA/CXC/CfA/J.Wang et al.; Optical: Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes, La Palma/Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope, Radio: NSF/NRAO/VLA (PhysOrg.com) -- This composite image shows the central region of the spiral galaxy NGC 4151. X-rays (blue) from the Chandra X-ray Observatory are combined with optical data (yellow) showing positively charged hydrogen (H II) from observations with the 1-meter Jacobus Kapteyn Telescope on La Palma. The red ring shows neutral hydrogen detected by radio observations with the NSF's Very Large Array. This neutral hydrogen is part of a structure near the center of NGC 4151 that has been distorted by gravitational interactions with the rest of the galaxy, and includes material falling towards the center of the galaxy. The yellow blobs around the red ellipse are regions where star formation has recently occurred.

49. "Tatooine" Planet With Two Suns Could Host Habi table Moon? Victoria Jaggard in Austin, Texas, National Geographic News. January 9, 2012 NASA mission may be first to find alien moon, expert says. A new planet found last fall may be orbiting two stars, but it's far from a real-lifeTatooine. Dubbed Kepler-16b, the world is a cold, Saturn-size gas giant with little chance of hosting desert farmers like the fictional Star Wars world. But according to new computer simulations, the Kepler-16 stars may still shine on a world fit for life—a hypothetical Earthlike moon orbiting Kepler-16b. Kepler-16b was discovered by NASA's Kepler spacecraft, which looks for dips in starlight as a planet transits—or passes in front of—a star, as seen from Earth. For the new study, Billy Quarles, a doctoral student at the University of Texas at Arlington, and colleagues simulated several possible configurations for a theoretical Earth-mass world in the Kepler-16 system.

An artist's depiction of the "Tatooine" planet Kepler-16b. Illustration courtesy Caltech/NASA

The team started by drawing up a "laundry list of parameters" for defining the habitable zone—the region around a star where a planet gets enough heat to host liquid water, essential for life as we know it—Quarles said Monday during a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. The researchers assumed that the brighter of the two Kepler-16 stars is the main source of heat and light for any orbiting worlds. Based on that star's size and temperature, the team determined that the main habitable zone possible around the Kepler-16 stars would extend from about 34 million to 66 million miles (55 to 106 million kilometers) out. Capturing a Habitable Moon With a roughly circular orbit about 65 million miles from the stars, the Saturn-like planet is on the outer edge of this main habitable zone. And while this "Tatooine" is uninhabitable, an Earthlike moon in Kepler-16b's orbit could sustain life, the researchers said. The group isn't yet ready to say whether a moon could have formed alongside the planet. But their simulations suggest a moon could have arrived, fully formed, later in Kepler-16b's life. According to the new models, a planet closer to the brighter star, squarely in the habitable zone, could have long ago been ejected from its orbit due to gravitational interactions with the other objects in the system. Kepler-16b's gravitational pull could have attracted the Earthlike planet during its journey outward, turning the world from planet to moon. Such a moon would technically be in the main habitable zone of the Kepler-16 system and—unlike Mars, on the outer edge of the habitable zone in our solar system—the moon would be massive enough to retain an Earthlike atmosphere, the team said. First to Find an Alien Moon? If astronomers were to discover an Earthlike satellite orbiting Kepler-16b—a big if—it would be a major first. More than 700 alien planets have been confirmed so far, and Kepler has identified more than 2,000 more potential planets. As of yet, though, no moons have been detected outside our solar system. With the new study, "we can say there are exomoons possible around Kepler-16b, and what's important about this is that they are detectable ... down to 0.2 Earth masses," Quarles said. To do so would require looking for subtle irregularities in the gas giant's orbit that could be caused by a moon's gravitational pull—something Kepler is equipped to do. In fact, a new project using the Kepler telescope aims to make the the first systematic search for planets with moons. The new study suggests Kepler-16b may be an ideal target for the new initiative. "For this system," Quarles said, "there should be a drive to determine if there's an exomoon there, because it could be the first one to be detected." A "Drastic" Earth Also Possible In addition to considering the possibility of an Earthlike exomoon of Kepler-16b, the team considered whether an as-yet undetected Earthlike planet could exist in what they call an extended habitable zone around the Kepler-16 stars. The results suggest that a planet around 88 million miles from the stars—outside the orbit of the existing Saturn-like world—could maintain a stable orbit. That theoretical, far-flung world could retain enough heat for liquid water, Quarles said, if it has "a very drastic atmosphere" of heat-trapping gases such as carbon dioxide and methane. At http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120109-earthlike-planets-moons-nasa-kepler-16b-space-science/?source=link_fb20120109news-tatooineplanet


50. Gravity's effect on landslides: A strike agains t Martian water December 22, 2011. A pile of sand, gravel, or other granular material takes on a familiar conical shape, with the slope of the pile's walls coming to rest at the static angle of repose. If the material exceeds this angle, it will trigger an avalanche, tumbling down until it comes to rest at the dynamic angle of repose. Static angles of repose for coarse, angular materials tend to be around 40° from the horizontal, while smooth grains are stable up to 20°. As largely a matter of geometry, grain properties, and internal friction, scientists have assumed these two angles of repose are fixed for a given substance. Observations of the angles of gully walls on Mars, found to be too shallow for the materials involved, have been used to argue that surface water must have played a part, either lubricating landslides or depositing the material directly. But research by Kleinhans et al., using the parabolic flight of an airplane to test the effect of gravity on angles of repose, demonstrates that water need not have been present. As the plane followed its roller coaster style path, slowly rotating cylinders containing different materials experienced one tenth of Earth's gravity (0.1 g), Martian gravity (0.38 g) and the Earth's normal pull (1 g). The authors find that at 0.1 g, the static angle of repose for all materials increases by 5°, while the dynamic angle of repose decreases by 10°. They suggest weaker gravity would reduce internal friction for avalanching material and could explain the shallow gully walls on the Martian surface. Further, as angles of repose are commonly used as measures of material properties, this challenge to their presumed gravity independence will require a reassessment of many other surface processes at lower slopes. More information: "Static and dynamic angles of repose in loose granular materials under reduced gravity" Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, http://dx.doi.org/10.1029/2011JE003865, 2011 Provided by American Geophysical Union. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-gravity-effect-landslides-martian.html

51. Researchers build computer model that explains lakes and storms on Saturn's moon Titan January 4, 2012 by Marcus Woo. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is an intriguing, alien world that's covered in a thick atmosphere with abundant methane. With an average surface temperature of a brisk -297 degrees Fahrenheit (about 90 kelvins) and a diameter just less than half of Earth's, Titan boasts methane clouds and fog, as well as rainstorms and plentiful lakes of liquid methane. It's the only place in the solar system, other than Earth, that has large bodies of liquid on its surface. The origins of many of these features, however, remain puzzling to scientists. Now, researchers at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have developed a computer model of Titan's atmosphere and methane cycle that, for the first time, explains many of these phenomena in a relatively simple and coherent way. In particular, the new model explains three baffling observations of Titan. One oddity was discovered in 2009, when researchers led by Caltech professor of planetary science Oded Aharonson found that Titan's methane lakes tend to cluster around its poles—and noted that there are more lakes in the northern hemisphere than in the south. Secondly, the areas at low latitudes, near Titan's equator, are known to be dry, lacking lakes and regular precipitation. But when the Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005, it saw channels carved out by flowing liquid—possibly runoff from rain. And in 2009, Caltech researchers discovered raging storms that may have brought rain to this supposedly dry region. Finally, scientists uncovered a third mystery when they noticed that clouds observed over the past decade—during summer in Titan's southern hemisphere—cluster around southern middle and high latitudes. Scientists have proposed various ideas to explain these features, but their models either can't account for all of the observations, or do so by requiring exotic processes, such as cryogenic volcanoes that spew methane vapor to form clouds. The Caltech researchers say their new computer model, on the other hand, can explain all these observations—and does so using relatively straightforward and fundamental principles of atmospheric circulation. "We have a unified explanation for many of the observed features," says Tapio Schneider, the Frank J. Gilloon Professor of Environmental Science and Engineering. "It doesn't require cryovolcanoes or anything esoteric." Schneider, along with Caltech graduate student Sonja Graves, former Caltech graduate student Emily Schaller (PhD '08), and Mike Brown, the Richard and Barbara Rosenberg Professor and professor of planetary astronomy, have published their findings in the January 5 issue of the journal Nature. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-lakes-storms-saturn-moon-titan.html

52. Four new exoplanets to start off the new year! January 6, 2012 By Paul Scott Anderson, Universe Today. It’s only a few days into 2012 and already some new exoplanet discoveries have been announced. As 2011 ended, there were a total of 716 confirmed exoplanets and 2,326 planetary candidates, found by both orbiting space telescopes like Kepler and ground-based observatories. The pace of new discoveries has accelerated enormously in the past few years. Now there are four more confirmed exoplanets to add to the list. The four planets, HAT-P-34b, HAT-P-35b, HAT-P-36b, HAT-P-37b all have very tight orbits around their (four different) stars, taking only 5.5, 3.6, 1.3 and 2.8 days to complete an orbit. Compare that to Mercury, which takes 87.969 days and 365 days of course for Earth. They were found by astronomers with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics which operates a network of ground-based telescopes known as the HATNet project. The first exoplanet discovery by HATNet, the planet HAT-P-1b, was in 2006. They are all “hot jupiter” type planets, gas giants which orbit very close to their stars and so are much hotter than Earth, like Mercury in our own solar system. Mercury though, of course, is a small

Artist's conception of a "hot Jupiter" orbiting close to its star. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/T. Pyle (SSC)

rocky world, but in some alien solar systems, gas giants have been found orbiting just as close to their stars, or even closer, than Mercury does here. HAT-P-34b however, may have an “outer component” and is in a very elongated orbit. The other three are more typical hot Jupiters. They were discovered using the transit method, when a planet is aligned in its orbit so that it passes in front of its star, from our viewpoint.So what does this mean? If exoplanet discoveries continue to grow exponentially as expected, then 2012 should be a good year, not only for yet more new planets being found, but also for our understanding of these alien worlds and how such a wide variety of solar systems came to be. More information: The abstract and paper are here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1201.0659. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-exoplanets-year.html


53. The smoky pink core of the Omega Nebula

This image of the Omega Nebula, captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope, is one of the sharpest of this object ever taken from the ground. It shows the dusty, rosy central parts of the famous star-forming region in fine detail. Credit: ESO

January 4, 2012. A new image of the Omega Nebula, captured by ESO's Very Large Telescope (VLT), is one of the sharpest of this object ever taken from the ground. It shows the dusty, rose-coloured central parts of this famous stellar nursery and reveals extraordinary detail in the cosmic landscape of gas clouds, dust and newborn stars. The colourful gas and dark dust in the Omega Nebula serve as the raw materials for creating the next generation of stars. In this particular section of the nebula, the newest stars on the scene — dazzlingly bright and shining blue-white — light up the whole ensemble. The nebula's smoky-looking ribbons of dust stand in silhouette against the glowing gas. The dominant reddish colours of this portion of the cloud-like expanse, arise from hydrogen gas, glowing under the influence of the intense ultraviolet rays from the hot young stars. The Omega Nebula goes by many names, depending on who observed it when and what they thought they saw. These other titles include the Swan Nebula, the Horseshoe Nebula and even the Lobster Nebula. The object has also been catalogued as Messier 17 (M17) and NGC 6618. The nebula is located about 6500 light-years away in the constellation of Sagittarius (The Archer). A popular target of astronomers, this illuminated gas and dust field ranks as one of the youngest and most active stellar nurseries for massive stars in the Milky Way. The image was taken with the FORS (FOcal Reducer and Spectrograph) instrument on Antu, one of the four Unit Telescopes of the VLT. In addition to the huge telescope, exceptionally steady air during the observations, despite some clouds, also helped make the crispness of this image possible. As a result this new picture is among the sharpest of this part of the Omega Nebula ever taken from the ground.

This image is one of the first to have been produced as part of the ESO Cosmic Gems programme. Provided by ESO. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-smoky-pink-core-omega-nebula.html

54. The Milky Way contains at least 100 billion pla nets according to survey January 12, 2012. Our Milky Way galaxy contains a minimum of 100 billion planets according to a detailed statistical study based on the detection of three extrasolar planets by an observational technique called microlensing. Kailash Sahu, of the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Md., is part of an international team reporting today that our galaxy contains a minimum of one planet for every star on average. This means that there is likely to be a minimum of 1,500 planets within just 50 light-years of Earth. The results are based on observations taken over six years by the PLANET (Probing Lensing Anomalies NETwork) collaboration, which Sahu co-founded in 1995. The study concludes that there are far more Earth-sized planets than bloated Jupiter-sized worlds. This is based on calibrating a planetary mass function that shows the number of planets increases for lower mass worlds. A rough estimate from this survey would point to the existence of more than 10 billion terrestrial planets across our galaxy. The results are being published in the January 12 issue of the British science journal Nature. The team's conclusions are gleaned from a planet search technique called microlensing. The technique takes advantage of the random motions of stars, which are generally too small to be noticed. If one star passes precisely in front of another star, the gravity of the foreground star bends the light from the background star.

This artist's illustration gives an impression of how common planets are around the stars in the Milky Way. The planets, their orbits, and their host stars are all vastly magnified compared to their real separations. A six-year search that surveyed millions of stars using the microlensing technique concluded that planets around stars are the rule rather than the exception. The average number of planets per star is greater than one. Credit: NASA, ESA, and M. Kornmesser (ESO)

This means that the foreground star acts like a giant lens amplifying the light from the background star. A planetary companion around the foreground star can produce additional brightening of the background star. This additional brightening reveals the planet, which is otherwise too faint to be seen by telescopes. The higher the mass of the "lensing" star, the longer is the duration of the microlensing event. Typical microlensing events due to a star last about a month. But the extra brightening due to a planet typically lasts a few hours to a couple of days. Using the microlensing technique, astronomers can determine a planet's mass. This method, however, does not reveal any clues about the world's composition. More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-milky-billion-planets-survey.html

55. Planets around stars are the rule rather than t he exception January 12, 2012. There are more exoplanets further away from their parent stars than originally thought, according to new astrophysics research. In a new paper appearing in the Jan. 12 edition of the journal, Nature, astrophysicist Kem Cook as part of an international collaboration, analyzed microlensing data that bridges the gap between a recent finding of planets further away from their parent stars and observations of planets extremely close to their parent star. The results point to more planetary systemsresembling our solar system rather than being significantly different. Gravitational microlensing occurs when light from a source star is bent and focused by gravity as a second object (the lens star), which passes between the source star and an observer on Earth. A planet rotating around the lens star will produce an additional deviation in the microlensing. The first gravitational microlensing observations were made by the Massive Astrophysical Compact Halo Object (MACHO) collaboration, led by Livermore scientists. The new research also determines that a large fraction of planets have orbital distances from 0.5 to 10 sun-Earth distances. In the past, using the Doppler shift technique, most extrasolar planets found were gas giants like Jupiter and Saturn that orbited stars that were much closer to them than the sun is to Earth. An exoplanet is a planet outside our solar system. Over the past 16 years, astronomers have detected more than 700 confirmed exoplanets and have


started to probe the spectra and atmospheres of these worlds. While studying the properties of individual exoplanets is undeniably valuable, a much more basic question remains: how commonplace are planets in the Milky Way? The team found that approximately 17 percent of stars host Jupiter-mass planets. However, cool-Neptunes and super-Earths are more common, occurring 52 percent and 62 percent, respectively, of the time. Gravitationally microlensing is very rare. In fact, fewer stars than one per million undergo micolensing at any time. The team's result is consistent with every star of the Milky Way, hosting, on average, one planet or more in an orbital distance range of 0.5 to 10 sun-Earth distances. "Our measurements confirm that low-mass planets are very common and the number of planets increases with decreasing planet mass, in an agreement with the predictions of the core accretion scenario of planet formation," Cook said. "Planets around stars in our galaxy appear to be the rule rather than the exception." "We used to think that the Earth might be unique in our galaxy. But now it seems that there are literally billions of planets with masses similar to Earth orbiting stars in the Milky Way," concludes Daniel Kuba, of the European Southern Observatory and co-lead author of the paper . Provided by DOE/Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-planets-stars-exception.html

56. Quasicrystal is extraterrestrial in origin

The rock sample from the mineral collection of the Museo di Storia Naturale in Florence was unearthed in the Koryak Mountains in Russia and found to include grains of icosahedrite, the first quasicrystalline mineral to be discovered in nature. Analysis of the oxygen isotope abundances in the rock indicate it is a fragment of a meteorite formed at the formation of the solar system over 4.5 billion years ago. Credit: Luca Bindi

January 13, 2012, By Catherine Zandonella. A rare and exotic mineral, so unusual that it was thought impossible to exist, came to Earth on a meteorite, according to an international team of researchers led by Princeton University scientists. The discovery provides evidence for the extraterrestrial origins of the world's only known sample of a naturally occurring quasicrystal. Found in a rock collected in a remote corner of far eastern Russia, the natural quasicrystal was most likely formed during the early days of the solar system, roughly 4.5 billion years ago, making the mineral perhaps older than the Earth itself, according to the research team. The results, which come three years after the team identified the mineral as the first natural quasicrystal, recently were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. "The finding is important evidence that quasicrystals can form in nature under astrophysical conditions, and provides evidence that this phase of matter can remain stable over billions of years," said physicist Paul Steinhardt, the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton and one of the leaders of the research. Although quasicrystals are solid minerals that look quite normal on the outside, their inner structure makes them fascinating to scientists. Instead of the regularly repeating clusters of atoms seen in most crystals, quasicrystals contain a more subtle and intricate atomic arrangement involving two or more repeating clusters. As a result, a quasicrystal's atoms can be arranged in ways that are not commonly found in crystals, such as the shape of a 20-sided icosahedron with the symmetry of a soccer ball.

The concept of quasicrystals — along with the term — was first introduced in 1984 by Steinhardt and Dov Levine, both then at the University of Pennsylvania. The first synthetic quasicrystal, a combination of aluminum and manganese, was reported in 1984 by Israeli materials scientist Dan Shechtman and colleagues at the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology, a finding for which Shechtman won the 2011 Nobel Prize. Since Shechtman's work was published, scientists have created about 100 types of synthetic quasicrystals, some of which are now used in durable coatings and surgical blades. Scientists are also exploring them for use in frying-pan coatings and heat insulation for engines More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-quasicrystal-extraterrestrial.html

57. Black hole jets January 16, 2012. Black holes are irresistible sinks for matter and energy. They are so dense that not even light can escape from their gravitational clutches. Massive black holes (equal to millions or even billions of solar masses) develop during collisions between galaxies. More ordinary, stellar-mass-sized black holes form as remnants of the explosive deaths of stars, and are thought to contain not more than about twenty solar masses of material. Astronomers study black holes not only because they are bizarre. They are also fundamental to our understanding of gravity and to the evolutionary cycle of stars and galaxies. Observational research is possible because, despite their reputation for being pitiless devourers of matter and energy, black holes are often sources of powerful radiation, for the following reason. When the black hole has a companion star orbiting it, matter from the companion can form a disk of material close to the black hole. These disks often radiate brightly from the heat of friction. Moreover, clumps of material from the companion star, if they fall onto the disk, can result in the occasional ejection of powerful jets of charged particles, sometimes at speeds approaching that of light. What actually powers these jets has been a mystery. Astronomers and physicists have known that a black hole that spins could in principle produce a jet, but a mechanism for doing so has been a puzzle. Some scientists have suggested that magnetic fields in the vicinity of an accreting, rotating black hole could become

Jets emitted from the accretion disk around a black hole that has an orbiting companion star (an artist's conception). New research is consistent with the idea that the spin of the black hole powers the jets via magnetic fields in the disk

twisted, enabling them to carry away energy as an electromagnetic jet, but there has been no direct observational evidence for such a link. Until now. CfA astronomers Ramesh Narayan and Jeffrey McClintock have been able to estimate the spin of a black hole using models for the X-rays that are emitted. They made such estimates for four black hole binaries. Then they examined the strength of the radio continuum emission from these objects, emission that is a measure of the jet activity. The four objects span a wide range of spins and jet powers. They find for the first time convincing, direct evidence that the jet power scales with the black hole spin, consistent with (though not proof of) the idea that the jets are driven directly by the spin energy of an accreting black hole. Provided by Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. At http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-black-hole-jets.html


58. Extreme Stars Found Thriving in Galaxies "Death Zones"

January 15, 2012. "I was dumbfounded. These stars are truly 'living on the edge.' Don Neil, CalTech "We’re finding stars in extreme galactic environments where star formation isn't supposed to happen," explains NASA GALEX project scientist Susan Neff of the Goddard Space Flight Center. “This is a very surprising development." The image above shows long octopus-like arms of star formation stretching far away from the main disk of spiral galaxy M83. Like our own Milky Way Galaxy. M83, is a prominent member of a group of galaxies that includes Centaurus A and NGC 5253, all of which lie about 15 million light years distant. To date, six supernova explosions have been recorded in M83. An intriguing double circumnuclear ring has been discovered at the center of M83.GALEX, which stands for “Galaxy Evolution Explorer,” is an ultraviolet space telescope with a special ability: It is super-sensitive to the kind of UV rays emitted by the youngest stars. This means the observatory can detect stars being born at very great distances from Earth, more than halfway across the Universe. The observatory was launched in 2003 on a mission to study how galaxies change and evolve as new stars coalesce inside them. "In some GALEX images, we see stars forming outside of galaxiesin places where we thought the gas

density would be too low for star birth to occur," says GALEX team member Don Neil of Caltech. Stars are born when interstellar clouds of gas collapse and contract under the pull of their own gravity. If a cloud gets dense and hot enough as it collapses, nuclear fusion will kick in and—voila!--a star is born. The spiral arms of the Milky Way are a "goldilocks zone" for this process. "Here in the Milky Way we have plenty of gas. It’s a cozy place for stars to form," says Neil. But when GALEX looks at other more distant spiral galaxies, it sees stars forming far outside the gassy spiral disk. The observatory has also found stars being born: --in elliptical and irregular galaxies thought to be gas-poor (e.g., 1, 2)--in the gaseous debris of colliding galaxies (1, 2)--in vast "comet-like" tails that trail behind some fast-moving galaxies (1, 2)--in cold primordial gas clouds, which are small and barely massive enough to hang together. According to GALEX, stellar extremophiles populate just about every nook and cranny of the cosmos where a wisp of gas can get together to make a new sun. “This could be telling us something profound about the star-forming process,” says Neff. “There could be ways to make stars in extreme environments that we haven’t even thought of yet.” The Daily Galaxy via Science@NASA; Image credits: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT, ESO At http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/extreme-stars-found-thriving-in-galaxies-death-zones-1.html#more

59. Mystery Deepens Over Where Sun Was Born

A Hubble picture of a star-forming cloud of dust and gas called the Orion Nebula. Image courtesy ESA/NASA

Dave Mosher for National Geographic News. January 17, 2012. New 3-D computer simulations have delivered a crushing blow to the strongest contender for our sun's birthplace, astronomers say, returning the quest for the solar system's origins to square one. Stars like the sun typically form in clusters with other stars. Many clusters are spread out so that the stars drift apart, but others are denser, and gravity keeps their stars close together. The sun now stands alone, so astronomers think our star—and its newborn solar system—was either ejected from its birth cluster or drifted away from its siblings about 4.5 billion years ago. Messier 67, or M67, is a hundred-light-year-wide ball of stars that recently passed some crucial "paternity tests" for being the sun's birthplace. The cluster not only harbors stellar bodies similar in temperature, age, and chemistry to our sun, but M67 also drifts a relatively close 2,900 light-years away. A new study of M67, however, undermines the existing lines of evidence and leaves almost no chance that our star could hail from the region.

Computer simulations show that a rare chain of events—two or three massive stars lining up just right to make a gravitational slingshot—would have been needed to kick the sun out of M67 and get it where it is today. Such a powerful event is a probabilistic Hail Mary and, even if it had occurred, the speed of the kick would have ripped our nascent solar system to shreds. "When you have that kind of gravitational disruption, planetary disks evaporate, and existing planets acquire energy and can be expelled," said study leader Barbara Pichardo, an astrophysicist at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Sun and Its Siblings Born "Like Popcorn" Practically all of our galaxy's 200 to 400 billion stars, including the sun, were born through the gravitational collapse of diffuse clouds of dust and gas sprinkled across the Milky Way by previous generations of long-dead stars. These star-forming clouds mix a little bit, but stars of similar chemistry tend to appear within the same clouds around the same time. "It's like popcorn," Pichardo said. "They heat up for a long time and then pop-pop-pop, they are born." To look for solar siblings, astronomers can use the spectrum of light shining from a star of a similar age and tag its chemical makeup, which can then be compared to the sun's. So far, only two probable sun siblings are know to exist anywhere close by—that is, within the best existing data set of stars, which includes about a hundred thousand stars just 325 light-years in any direction from Earth. According to that data set, the closest existing cluster with sunlike stars is M67. The star cluster is a bit too far away and possibly younger than the sun, but at first these didn't seem like insurmountable problems to astronomers. So Pichardo and her team performed their yearlong run of 3-D computer simulations, fully expecting to add another piece of evidence to the pile. More at http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/01/120117-sun-solar-system-born-stars-m67-space-science/?source=link_fb20120118news-sunwasborn


60. Goldilocks moons January 16, 2012 by Mike Simonsen, Universe Today. The search for extraterrestrial life outside our Solar System is currently focused on extrasolar planets within the ‘habitable zones’ of exoplanetary systems around stars similar to the Sun. Finding Earth-like planets around other stars is the primary goal of NASA’s Kepler Mission. The habitable zone (HZ) around a star is defined as the range of distances over which liquid water could exist on the surface of a terrestrial planet, given a dense enough atmosphere. Terrestrial planets are generally defined as rocky and similar to Earth in size and mass. A visualization of the habitable zones around stars of different diameters and brightness and temperature is shown here. The red region is too hot, the blue region is too cold, but the green region is just right for liquid water. Because it can be described this way, the HZ is also referred to as the “Goldilocks Zone”.

The Goldilocks Zones around various type stars. Credit: NASA Kepler Mission

Normally, we think of planets around other stars as being similar to our solar system, where a retinue of planets orbits a single star. Although theoretically possible, scientists debated whether or not planets would ever be found around pairs of stars or multiple star systems. Then, in September, 2011, researchers at NASA’s Kepler mission announced the discovery of Kepler-16b, a cold, gaseous, Saturn-sized planet that orbits a pair of stars, like Star Wars’ fictional Tatooine. This week I had the chance to interview one of the young guns studying exoplanets, Billy Quarles. Monday, Billy and his co-authors, professor Zdzislaw Musielak and associate professor Manfred Cuntz, presented their findings on the possibility of Earth-like planets inside the habitable zones of Kepler 16 and other circumbinary star systems, at the AAS meeting in Austin, Texas. “To define the habitable zone we calculate the amount of flux that is incident on an object at a given distance,” Billy explained. “We also took into account that different planets with different atmospheres will retain heat differently. A planet with a really weak greenhouse effect can be closer in to the stars. For a planet with a much stronger greenhouse effect, the habitable zone will be further out.” More at http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-goldilocks-moons.html

61. Other stories! - What if the earth had two moons? December 28, 2011 By Amy Shira Teitel, Universe Today. The idea of an Earth with two moons has been a

science fiction staple for decades. More recently, real possibilities of an Earth with two moon have popped up. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-earth-moons.html

- Wanted: Habitable moons. January 6, 2012 By Nola Taylor Redd. As the Kepler space telescope continues to search for potentially habitable planets, it also may reveal moons that could host life. Three new simulations will help astronomers identify rocky satellites that could hold water on their surface, if the parent planet circles close enough to its sun. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-habitable-moons.html

- Little galaxies are big on dark matter. December 30, 2011 by Tammy Plotner, Universe Today. Dark matter... It came into existence at the moment of the Big Bang. Within its confines, galaxies formed and evolved. If you add up all the parts contained within any given galaxy you derive its mass, yet its gravitational effects can only be explained by the presence of this mysterious subatomic particle. It would be easy to believe that the larger the galaxy, the larger the amount of dark matter should be present, but new research shows that isn’t so. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-galaxies-big-dark.html

- Echoes from Eta Carinae's great eruption. December 29, 2011 By Jon Voisey, Universe Today. During the mid 1800's, the well known star η Carinae underwent an enormous eruption becoming for a time, the second brightest star in the sky. Although astronomers at the time did not yet have the technology to study one of the largest eruptions in recent history in depth, astronomers from the Space Telescope Science Institute recently discovered that light echoes are just now reaching us. This discovery allows astronomers to use modern instruments to study η Carinae as it was between 1838 and 1858 when it underwent its Great Eruption. http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-12-echoes-carinae-great-eruption.html

- Scientists gear up to take a picture of a black hole. January 14, 2012. On Wednesday, Jan. 18, astronomers, physicists and scientists from related fields will convene in Tucson, Ariz. from across the world to discuss an endeavor that only a few years ago would have been regarded as nothing less than outrageous. The conference is organized by Dimitrios Psaltis, an associate professor of astrophysics at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory, and Daniel Marrone, an assistant professor of astronomy at Steward Observatory. "Nobody has ever taken a picture of a black hole," Psaltis said. "We are going to do just that." http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-scientists-gear-picture-black-hole.html

- New map of the universe reveals its history for the past six-billion years. January 13, 2012 By Michael Wood-Vasey. The scientists of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), including astronomers at Penn State, have produced a new map of the universe that is in full color, covers more than one quarter of the entire sky, and is full of so much detail that you would need five-hundred-thousand high-definition TVs to view it all. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-universe-reveals-history-six-billion-years.html

- Loss of planetary tilt could doom alien life. January 12, 2012 By Adam Hadhazy. Although winter now grips much of the Northern Hemisphere, those who dislike the cold weather can rest assured that warmer months shall return. This familiar pattern of spring, summer, fall and winter does more than merely provide variety, however. The fact that life can exist at all on Earth is closely tied to seasonality, which is a sign of global temperature moderation. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-loss-planetary-tilt-doom-alien.html

- Astronomers release unprecedented data set on celestial objects that brighten and dim. January 12, 2012. Astronomers from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and the University of Arizona have released the largest data set ever collected that documents the brightening and dimming of stars and other celestial objects—two hundred million in total. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-astronomers-unprecedented-celestial-brighten-dim.html

- New class of planetary systems: Astronomers find two new planets orbiting double suns. January 11, 2012. Using data from NASA’s Kepler Mission, astronomers announced the discovery of two new transiting “circumbinary” planet systems -- planets that orbit two stars. This work establishes that such “two sun” planets are not rare exceptions, but are in fact common with many millions existing in our Galaxy. The work is published today in the journal Nature and presented at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Austin, TX. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-astronomers-planets-orbiting-suns.html

- Mystery of Supermassive Black Holes --Were They Formed Early in the Universe? January 15, 2012. Astronomers concluded that the center of the specatacular spiral galaxy, NGC 253, the largest member of the Sculptor Group of Galaxies, the nearest group to our own Local Group of Galaxies, hosts a twin of Sagittarius A*, the bright radio source that lies at the core of the Milky Way and which we know harbors a massive black hole. http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2012/01/mystery-of-supermassive-black-holes-were-they-formed-early-in-the-universe.html#more

- Re-thinking an alien world. January 16, 2012, By Dr. Tony Phillips. Forty light years from Earth, a rocky world named "55 Cancri e" circles perilously


close to a stellar inferno. Completing one orbit in only 18 hours, the alien planet is 26 times closer to its parent star than Mercury is to the Sun. If Earth were in the same position, the soil beneath our feet would heat up to about 3200 F. Researchers have long thought that 55 Cancri e must be a wasteland of parched rock. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-re-thinking-alien-world.html

- 'Proplyd-like' objects discovered in Cygnus OB2. January 16, 2012 By Jon Voisey, Universe Today. The well known Orion Nebula is perhaps the most well known star forming regions in the sky. The four massive stars known as the trapezium illuminate the massive cloud of gas and dust busily forming into new stars providing astronomers a stunning vista to explore stellar formation and young systems. In the region are numerous “protoplanetary disks” or proplyds for short which are regions of dense gas around a newly formed star. Such disks are common around young stars and have recently been discovered in an even more massive, but less well known star forming region within our own galaxy: Cygnus OB2. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-proplyd-like-cygnus-ob2.html

- New computer model shows Titan atmosphere more Earth-like than thought. January 16, 2012 by Bob Yirka. Two scientists from the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Paris have built a computer model that simulates the atmosphere on Titan, one of Saturn’s sixty two moons, and as a result now believe that Titan has two different atmospheric boundary layers, the lower of which appears to impact the formation of methane clouds, dune movement on the surface and wind patterns. The researchers, Benjamin Charnay and Sébastien Lebonnois have published their findings in Nature Geoscience. http://www.physorg.com/news/2012-01-titan-atmosphere-earth-like-thought.html

INTERESTING SITES • Want to know about energy? Go to energy-pedia news at http://www.energy-pedia.com/ • Worthy to watch this video about the Azores volcanic islands at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGCHxH5bgTQ&feature=share • Global Maps: NASA satellites give us a global view of what’s happening on our planet. To explore how key parts of Earth’s climate system change from

month to month, click http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/GlobalMaps/ • Planet Quest: New Worlds Atlas: http://exep.jpl.nasa.gov/atlas/atlas_index.cfm

BOOKS / JOURNALS / MAPS / NEWSLETTERS /ETC • Geosciences, the academic Open Access Journal (ISSN 2076-3263, http://www.mdpi.com/journal/geosciences).

We are glad to inform you that Geosciences has released the first issue: http://www.mdpi.com/2076-3263/1/1/

PAPERS ON AFRICA

• Tyrone O. Rooney, Claude Herzberg, and Ian D. Bastow. Elevated mantle temperature beneath East Africa. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 27-30 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/27?ct=ct

OTHER INTERESTING PAPERS

• Jade Star Lackey, Gabriel A. Romero, Anne-Sophie Bouvier, and John W. Valley. Dynamic growth of garnet in granitic magmas. Geology. published 16 December 2011, 10.1130/G32349.1 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/G32349.1v1?ct=ct

• G. J. Hearn. Slope materials, landslide causes and landslide mechanisms. Geological Society, London, Engineering Geology Special Publications. 2011; 24(1): p. 15-57 http://egsp.lyellcollection.org/cgi/content/extract/24/1/15?ct=ct

• Tyrone O. Rooney, Barry B. Hanan, David W. Graham, Tanya Furman, Janne Blichert-Toft, and Jean-Guy Schilling. Upper Mantle Pollution during Afar Plume-Continental Rift Interaction. J. Petrology. published 18 December 2011, 10.1093/petrology/egr065 http://petrology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/egr065v1?ct=ct

• Janos Kodolanyi, Thomas Pettke, Carl Spandler, Balz S. Kamber, and Katalin Gmeling. Geochemistry of Ocean Floor and Fore-arc Serpentinites: Constraints on the Ultramafic Input to Subduction Zones. J. Petrology. published 18 December 2011, 10.1093/petrology/egr058 http://petrology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/egr058v1?ct=ct

• Hamed Sanei, Stephen E. Grasby, and Benoit Beauchamp. Latest Permian mercury anomalies. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 63-66 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/63?ct=ct

• Christian Tueckmantel, Quentin J. Fisher, Tom Manzocchi, Sergey Skachkov, and Carlos A. Grattoni. Two-phase fluid flow properties of cataclastic fault rocks: Implications for CO2 storage in saline aquifers. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 39-42 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/39?ct=ct

• Birger Rasmussen, Ian R. Fletcher, Courtney J. Gregory, Janet R. Muhling, and Alexandra A. Suvorova. Tranquillityite: The last lunar mineral comes


down to Earth. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 83-86 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/83?ct=ct • Jacopo Dal Corso, Paolo Mietto, Robert J. Newton, Richard D. Pancost, Nereo Preto, Guido Roghi, and Paul B. Wignall. Discovery of a major negative

{delta}13C spike in the Carnian (Late Triassic) linked to the eruption of Wrangellia flood basalts. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 79-82 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/79?ct=ct

• Chunhui Tao, Jian Lin, Shiqin Guo, Yongshun John Chen, Guanghai Wu, Xiqiu Han, Christopher R. German, Dana R. Yoerger, Ning Zhou, Huaiming Li, Xin Su, Jian Zhu, and and the DY115-19 (Legs 1-2) and DY115-20 (Legs 4-7) Science Parties. First active hydrothermal vents on an ultraslow-spreading center: Southwest Indian Ridge. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 47-50 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/47?ct=ct

• Nathan T. Bridges, Mary C. Bourke, Paul E. Geissler, Maria E. Banks, Cindy Colon, Serina Diniega, Matthew P. Golombek, Candice J. Hansen, Sarah Mattson, Alfred S. McEwen, Michael T. Mellon, Nicholas Stantzos, and Bradley J. Thomson. Planet-wide sand motion on Mars. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 31-34 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/31?ct=ct

• Daniel R. Franco, Linda A. Hinnov, and Marcia Ernesto. Millennial-scale climate cycles in Permian-Carboniferous rhythmites: Permanent feature throughout geologic time? Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 19-22 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/19?ct=ct

• Isobel Yeo, Roger C. Searle, Kay L. Achenbach, Tim P. Le Bas, and Bramley J. Murton. Eruptive hummocks: Building blocks of the upper ocean crust. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 91-94 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/91?ct=ct

• Vlad C. Manea, Marta Perez-Gussinye, and Marina Manea. Chilean flat slab subduction controlled by overriding plate thickness and trench rollback. Geology. 2012; 40(1): p. 35-38 http://geology.gsapubs.org/cgi/content/abstract/40/1/35?ct=ct

• Janos Kodolanyi, Thomas Pettke, Carl Spandler, Balz S. Kamber, and Katalin Gmeling. Geochemistry of Ocean Floor and Fore-arc Serpentinites: Constraints on the Ultramafic Input to Subduction Zones. J. Petrology. published 18 December 2011, 10.1093/petrology/egr058 http://petrology.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/egr058v1?ct=ct

EVENTS The events not announced in former Bulletins are highlighted with dates in red bold .

Africa

2012.02.06-09 Investing in African Mining 2012, Mining Indaba LLC, Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.miningindaba.com/ 2012.02.06-26 International School for Young Astronomers (ISYA 2012), Cape Town, SA. http://isya2012.saao.ac.za/ 2012.02.15-17 2nd GFZ-AEON Shale Gas Workshop and Think Tank, Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University, Port Elizabeth, South Africa.

http://fs2.majesticinteractive.co.za/admin/uploads/53/documents/Shale%20Gas%20Feb%202012%20Announcement%20%20%20a.docx 2012.02.18 Twentieth Annual Conference of the Sedimentological Society of Egypt, Ain Shams University, Egypt. [email protected] 2012.02.21-22 Thorium & Rare Earths 2012. Cape Town, SA. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-

events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=18 2012.02.27-29 Sustainable Water Supply and Sanitation Conference (SWSSC 2012). Cairo, Egypt. http://swssc.hcww.com.eg 2012.03.12-18 1st SGA-SEG-UNESCO-IUGS Short Course on African Metallogeny: “Precious and Not-so-precious Metals in Old Cratons”. Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso.

Contact: [email protected] 2012.03.05-07 6th Africa Economic Forum and 5th Sub-Saharan Africa Business Briefing, Cape Town, SA. http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=728 2012.03.20-22 The Geology of The Nile Basin Countries Conference (GNBCC-2012), Alexandria, Egypt. http://www.gnbcc.org/ 2nd circular available 2012.03.20-22 THORIUM 2012 CONFERENCE. Cape Town International Convention Centre, South Africa.

http://fs2.majesticinteractive.co.za/admin/uploads/53/documents/SAIMM%20Thorium%2020-22%20Feb%202012.pdf 2012.03.26-28 3rd Eastern African Oil Gas & Energy and 3rd Eastern Africa: Strategy Briefing, Nairobi, Kenya. http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=746 2012.03.26-30 6th International Congress Geotunis 2012. Tunisia. http://www.geotunis.org 2012.03.28 Cost & Supply of South African Energy, Midrand, SA. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-

events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=22 2012.03.29-30 Zimbabwe Coal Indaba, venue to be confirmed, Zimbabwe. http://www.fossilfuel.co.za/files/FFF%20-

%20Zimbabwe%20Coal%20Indaba%202012%20(29%20&%2030%20March%202012).pdf 2012.04.04-06 1st International Congress on the Management of the Mining Wastes and Post-Mining (GESRIM2012), Marrakech, Morocco.

http://www.gesrim2012.gesrim.com 2012.04.17-20 9th International Mining History Congress, Johannesburg, South Africa. http://www.imhc.co.za/ or [email protected] 2012.04.23-24 7th International Symposium On Geophysics ISG-7, Tanta University, Egypt . http://www.tanta.edu.eg/ar/Conf/isg_7/index.html&

http://alaamasoud.tripod.com/id16.html 2012.04.24-25 3rd edition of the Mozambique Mining & Energy Conference and Exhibition, Maputo, Mozambique: “Utilising Mozambique resources as the engine for

sustainable development and economic integration”. http://www.mozmec.com/ 2012.05.10-12 2ème Colloque International Sur la Gestion et la Préservation des Ressources en Eau (CIGPRE 2). Meknès, Morocco.

http://www.oieau.org/spip.php?article1841 2012.05.14-16 2nd Southern Hemisphere International Rock Mechanics Symposium (SHIRMS), Sun City, SA. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-

events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=14 2012.May First National YES Morocco Symposium. Rabat, Morocco. http://yes-morocco.blogspot.com/ 2012.06.12-13 Manganese Ferroalloy Production School. Craddle of Mankind, Gauteng, SA. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-

events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=19 2012.July SEANAC 2012 Southern & Eastern Africa Network of Analytical Chemists, Maputo, Mozambique, July. Websit to be released (SEANAC website

http://www.seanac.org/). 2012.07.08-12 IV SEANAC International Conference - Analytical Chemistry for the Environment, Health and Water”. Maputo, Mozambique.

http://www.seanac.uem.mz or http://www.seanac.org 2012.08.06-10 XI Congresso de Geoquímica dos Países de Língua Portuguesa (XI Geochemical Congress of the Portuguese Speaking Countries). Luanda, Angola.

http://www.geologia-uan.com/ 2012.09.17-21 Platinum Conference 2012, Sun City, SA. http://www.saimm.co.za/saimm-events/upcoming-

events?page=shop.product_details&category_id=2&flypage=flypage_events.tpl&product_id=20 2012.09.24-28 17th International Symposium on Earth Tides. Cairo, Egypt. Contact: Khaled Zahran: [email protected]


2012.10.25-27 3rd Conference Terrestrial Mars Analogues, Marrakesh, Morocco, http://www.ibnbattutacentre.org/conf/mars2012/ 2012.10.29 – 2012.11.02

19th Africa Upstream Conference, 9th African Independents Forum and 14th Scramble For Africa: Strategy Briefing, Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=755

2012.11.07-09 Process Mineralogy '12. Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.min-eng.com/processmineralogy12/index.html 2012.11.12-13 Precious Metals '12. Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.min-eng.com/preciousmetals12/index.html 2012.11.14-15 Processing of Nickel Ores and Concentrates '12, Cape Town, South Africa. http://www.min-eng.com/nickelprocessing12/index.html 2012.11.14-16 Water resources in the arid and semi-arid regions: challenges and prospects. Case of the African continent. REZAS'12 conference. Beni Mellal, Morocco.

http://www.fstbm.ac.ma 2012.11.21-23 1º Congresso de Geologia de Moçambique (1st Congress of Geology of Mozambique). Maputo, Mozambique, with pre-event (18-20) and post-event (24-

26) excursions. Contact: [email protected] 2013.01.08-14 The 40th Anniversary of the Geological Society of Africa (1973-2013). Theme "40 Years of GSAf (1973-2013): Earth Sciences Solutions to African

Development Challenges" will be conducted at the United Nations Economic Commission Conference Center (UNECA), Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. The Ethiopian Geosciences and Mineral Engineering Association (EGMEA) will organize this joint conference and will distribute the first circular shortly. Details will be posted on the websites at: http://www.geologicalsocietyofafrica.org/ and http://www.egmea.org.et/

2013.05.04-10 FIG (Federation Internationale des Geometres) Working Week and General Assembly. Abuja, Nigeria. http://www.fig.ng 2014 10th Congress of the international Council of Applied Mineralogy (ICAM), SA http://www.bgr.de/icam/home.html 2014 12th Geochemical Congress of the Portuguese Speaking Countries, Mozambique 2014.08.31 – 2014.09.05

The 21st General Meeting of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). Johannesburg, SA. http://www.ima2014.co.za/ 2015 67th Annual Meeting of the ICCP (International Committee for Coal & Organic Petrology), Tete, Mozambique. 2016 35th International Geological Congress (IGC), Cape town, South Africa. Contacts: Danie Barnardo ([email protected]), Juanite van Wyk

([email protected]) and Martin Lekotoko ([email protected]).

Rest of the World

2012.02.01-04 2012 Northern Lights, Joint Project of the Labrador North & Baffin Regional Chambers of Commerce, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. http://www.northernlightsottawa.com/

2012.02.02-03 6th Alpine Glaciology Meeting, Zürich, Switzerland. Contact: Martin Lüthi [email protected] or Martin Funk [email protected] 2012.02.04-06 Atlantic Geoscience Society, Annual Colloquium, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada. http://ags.earthsciences.dal.ca/ags.php 2012.02.05-09 10th Asia-Pacific Microscopy Conference (APMC-10), Perth, Australia, http://www.ifsm.uconn.edu/PDFs/apmc-10.pdf 2012.02.06-11 10th International Kimberlite Conference, Bangalore, India. http://www.10ikcbangalore.com/index.html 2012.02.08-09 UN-SPIDER International Expert Meeting – Ensuring Access to Existing Opportunities, Vienna, Austria. For more information: contact

[email protected] 2012.02.08-10 EuroCOW (European Calibration and Orientation Workshop) 2012. Castelldefels, Spain, http://www.ideg.es/page.php?id=1094 2012.02.09 Africa’s Future - Economics, Corporate Strategies, Investments, Business, Governments, London, UK, http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=761 2012.02.09-10 The Geophysics of the Cryosphere and Glacial Products: Properties, Processes, and Technical Advances. London, UK.

http://www.swan.ac.uk/environment_society/newscentre/latestevents/bgacryosphericgeophysics.php 2012.02.10-11 2012 Pacific Northwest Ground Water Expo, Portland, Oregon, USA. http://www.ngwa.org/Events-Education/conferences/6031/Pages/6031feb12.aspx 2012.02.13-15 Snow and Ice Research Group (SIRG) New Zealand Annual Workshop 2012 (International Glaciology Society New Zealand Branch Meeting 2012), Lake

Ruataniwha Rowing Complex, New Zealand. http://www.sirg.org.nz/ 2012.02.15-16 UNRCC PCGIAP International Symposium, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. http://www.fig.net/events/2012/unrcc_pcgiap_feb_2012.pdf 2012.02.16-18 SPG India 9th International Conferences & Exposition of Petroleum Geophysics, Hyderabad, India. http://www.spgindia.org/index.php 2012.02.19-22 SME Annual Meeting and Exhibit, Seattle, USA. http://www.smenet.org/calendar/detail.cfm?eventKey=1049 2012.02.20-24 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. http://www.tos.org/conferences.html 2012.02.20-24 4th International Maar Conference, Auckland, New Zealand. http://www.cvent.com/events/4th-international-maar-conference/event-summary-

8da8b43ec50c46f3ad4276879992c4aa.aspx?i=2793859e-8f6e-453d-9125-ed9f4e2a9953 2012.02.20-24 AGU Chapman Conference on Remote Sensing of the Terrestrial Water Cycle, Kona, Hawaii, USA. http://www.agu.org/meetings/chapman/2012/acall/ 2012.02.20-24 2012 Ocean Sciences Meeting. Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. http://www.sgmeet.com/osm2012/ 2012.02.21-23 International Conference on Traditional Knowledge for Water Resources Management. Yazd, Iran. http://conference.icqhs.org/Index.php/tkwrm/2012 2012.02.22-23 Wisconsin Wetlands Association 17th Annual Conference, Urban Wetlands. Lake Geneva, Wis., USA. http://wisconsinwetlands.org/2012conference.htm 2012.04.22-27 EGU General Assembly, Vienna, Austria. http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2012 2012.02.24-28 Association of American Geographers (AAG). New York City, New York USA. http://www.aag.org/annualmeeting/call_for_papers 2012.02.25 20th Meeting of Swiss Sedimentologists. Fribourg, Switzerland. http://www.swisssed.ch/ 2012.02.26-29 22nd ASEG Conference and Exhibition: Unearthing New Layers, Australian Society of Exploration and Geophysicists, Brisbane, Australia.

http://www.aseg2012.com.au/ 2012.02.27-28 NGWA’s 15th Annual Groundwater Industry Legislative Conference, Washington, D.C, USA. http://www.ngwa.org/flyin/Pages/default.aspx 2012.02.27 2012.03.02

2nd International School on “Least Squares Approach to Modeling the Geoid. Johor Bahru, Malaysia. http://www.infra.kth.se/geo/events/IGS-2012.pdf 2012.03.02-03 Symposium on Precise Point Positioning (PPP) for Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) GNSS applications, Frankfurt am Maine, Germany.

http://igs.bkg.bund.de/ntrip/symp 2012.03.04-07 EAGE GEO 2012, The 10th Middle East Geosciences Conference and Exhibition, Manama, Bahrain. http://www.geo2012.com/index.html 2012.03.04-07 PDAC 2012 International Convention, Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada, Toronto, Ontario, Canada. http://www.pdac.ca/ 2012.03.04-07 XIV EMPG (Experimental Mineralogy, Petrology and Geochemistry) Meeting, Kiel, Germany. http://www.EMPG2012.uni-kiel.de 2012.03.06-08 APPEX London 2012, The International A&D forum to buy, sell and promote worldwide E&P deals, London, England.

http://www.appexlondon.com/2012/index.cfm 2012.03.11–15 The Minerals Metals & Materials Society (TMS) TMS 2012: Linking Science and Technology for Global Solutions, Orlando, FL, USA.

http://www.tms.org/meetings/annual-12/AM12home.aspx 2012.03.12-17 6ème Forum Mondial de l’Eau (6th Water World Forum). Marseille, France. http://www.riob.org/spip.php?article1951 2012.03.14-17 Hydrogeology of Arid Environments, Hannover, Germany. http://www.bgr.bund.de/hydro-arid-2012 2012.03.15-17 Ressource et Gestion des aquifères littoraux. Cassis, France. http://www.oieau.org/spip.php?article883 2012.03.18-21 2012 AWWA Sustainable Water Management Conference, Portland, Oregon, USA.

http://www.awwa.org/Conferences/SpecConf.cfm?ItemNumber=56511&showLogin=N 2012.03.19-22 SLALOM2012 (Sea-Level and Adjustment of the Land: Observations and Models) Conference. Athens, Greece. http://slalom2012.geol.uoa.gr/ 2012.03.19–23 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC 2012), The Woodlands, TX, USA. http://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/lpsc2012 2012.03.22-23 6th Colloguium "Rock Mechanics - Theory and Practice" with "Vienna-Leopold-Muller Lecture", Vienna, Austria. [email protected]


2012.03.25-29 243rd American Chemical Society (ACS) National Meeting & Exposition, San Diego, Ca., USA. http://www.eag.eu.com/education/conferences/ 2012.03.26-29 2012 International Planet Under Pressure Conference, London, UK, http://www.planetunderpressure2012.net/ 2012.03.26-30 The 8th Annual Asia Mining Congress 2012, Singapore. http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/asia-mining-congress/ 2012.04.01-08 First Latin American Congress of Speleology, Mendonza, Argentina. http://www.fade.org.ar/not_circular_IV_CONAE.htm 2012.04.09-13 MRS Spring Meeting, San Francisco, CA, USA. http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/index.asp 2012.04.10-13 The Fifth Global Workshop on Digital Soil Mapping, Sydney, Australia, http://www.pedometrics.org/dsm_oz/ 2012.04.16-18 18th Latin Upstream and 8th Latin Petroleum Strategy Briefing. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=741 2012.04.17-19 Interexpo Geo-Siberia-2012. Novosibirsk, Russia. Http://www.expo-geo.ru 2012.04.17-20 World CTL 2012 Conference, Beijing and Baotou, China. http://www.world-ctl.com/ 2012.04.19 13th Annual Network Conference (and EU LIFE+ RESTORE Project Workshop), Delivering River Restoration - Recipes for success. Nottingham, UK.

http://www.oieau.org/spip.php?article1840 2012.04.19-20 7th ICA Workshop on Digital Approaches to Cartographic Heritage. Barcelona, Spain, http://xeee.web.auth.gr/ICA-

Heritage/2011_2015/BARCELONA_2012/index.htm 2012.04.19-22 Arctic Science Summit Week, Montréal, Canada. http://www.assw2012.org/ 2012.04.22–25 AAPG Annual Convention & Exhibition, Long Beach, CA, USA. http://www.aapg.org/meetings 2012.04.22-27 International Polar Year (IPY) Conference - "From Knowledge to Action", Montreal, http://www.ainc-inac.gc.ca/ai/mr/nr/s-d2009/23301-eng.asp 2012.04.22-27 European Geosciences Union: General Assembly 2012, Vienna, Austria. http://meetings.copernicus.org/egu2012/ 2012.04.23-26 Desalination for the Environment – Clean Water and Energy, Barcelona, Spain. http://www.desline.com, http://www.edsoc.com 2012.04.23-26 Interpraevent 2012 – 12th Congress: Protection of Living Spaces from Natural Hazards, Grenoble, France. http://www.interpraevent2012.fr/ 2012.04.23-27 Geospatial World Forum: Geospatial Industry and the World Economy. Amsterdam, The Netherlands. http://www.geospatialworldforum.org/ 2012.04.23-27 XVIIIth International Hydrographic Conference. Monaco. http://www.iho.int 2012.04.25-28 Sandstone Landscapes III conference, Kudowa-Zdrój, Poland, http://www.geogr.uni.wroc.pl/sandstone 2012.04.25-28 Mercator Revisited – Cartography in the Age of Discovery International Conference, Sint-Niklaas, Belgium. http://www.mercatorconference2012.be/ 2012.04.30-2012.05.02

2012 Global Geomechanics. Praxis Interactive Technology Workshop. Bali. Indonesia. http://praxis-global.com/popUp.aspx?Genid=1&rt=0 2012.04.30-2012.05.03

AGU’s inaugural Science Policy Conference, Washington, D.C., USA. http://sites.agu.org/spconference/ 2012.04.30-2012.05.05

Course on "Seagrass Carbonate Production: from modern to fossil environment". Mallorca, Spain. http://www.museucienciesnaturals.org/en/news.php/seagrass_carbonate_sediment_posidonia_course

2012.05.01-04 Geoamericas 2012, Lima, Peru. http://www.geoamericas2012.com/ 2012.05.01-04 The 8th International Symposium Agro Environ, Wageningen, the Netherlands, http://www.agroenviron.com/ 2012.05.07-09 GEOBIA 2012 - 4th International Conference on GEographic Object Based Image Analysis 2012. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, http://www.inpe.br/geobia2012 2012.05.11-12 GeoCAD 2012. Alba Iulia, Romania. http://www.fig.net/events/2012/geocad2012_alba_iulia.pdf 2012.05.12-15 5th International UNESCO Conference on Geoparks – GEOPARKS 2012. Unzen Volcanic Area Global Geopark, Japan. http://www.geoparks2012.com/ 2012.05.12-17 6th World Water Forum. Marseille, France. http://www.worldwaterforum6.org/en/ 2012.05.12-19 I Congresso Internacional “GeoCiências na CPLP” (I International Congress of Geosciences in CPLP-Community of Portuguese Speaking Countries) -

GeoCPLP2012, Coimbra, Portugal. http://www.uc.pt/congressos/GeoCPLP2012/ (Portuguese) 2012.05.13-17 IAGLR’s 55th Annual Conference on Great Lakes Research. Cornwall, Ont. Canada. http://iaglr.org/conference/ 2012.05.13-18 IWA World Congress on Water, Climate and Energy. Dublin, Ireland. http://www.oieau.org/spip.php?article1506 2012.05.14-17 Global Geospatial Conference 2012, Spatially Enabling Government, Industry and Citizens. Joint GSDI World Conference (GSDI 13), the 14th GEOIDE

Annual Scientific Conference, the 7th 3DGeoInfo Conference , and the Canadian Geomatics Conference 2012, Quebec City, Canada. http://www.gsdi.org/gsdiconf/gsdi13/index.html

2012.05.14-17 PEDOFRACT VII : International Workshop on Scaling in Particulate and Porous Media: Modeling and Use in Predictions, Coruña, Spain, http://www1.etsia.upm.es/pedofract/

2012.05.14-18 12th International Circumpolar Remote Sensing Symposium. Levi, Finland. http://alaska.usgs.gov/science/geography/CRSS2012/index.php 2012.05.15-17 CHC 2012 - Canadian Hydrographic Conference. Niagara Falls, Canada. http://chc2012.ca/ 2012.05.15-17 2nd International Conference and Exhibition on Mapping and Spatial Information (ICMSI2012) and 19th National Geomatics Conference. Tehran, Iran.

http://conf.ncc.org.ir 2012.05.16-17 7th International Conference on 3D GeoInformation, 3D Geoinfo 2012. Quebec, Canada, http://www.3dgeoinfo2012.ulaval.ca 2012.05.20-23 10th International Symposium on Ceramic Materials and Components for Energy and Environmental Applications. Dresden, Germany.

http://www.cmcee12.de/contact.html 2012.05.21-24 GwFR 2012 - International Conference on Groundwater in Fractured Rocks. Prague, Czech Rep. http://web.natur.cuni.cz/gwfr2012/ 2012.05.21-25 1st International Congress on management and awareness in protected volcanic landscapes. Olot, Spain. http://www.volcandpark1.com 2012.05.24-28 4th African Gas-LNG Conference, 5th Nigeria Upstream, and 4th African Gas Business: Strategy Briefin. London, UK,

http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=735 2012.05.21-25 VOLCANDPARK Congress. Olot, Spain. http://www.volcandpark1.com/ 2012.05.27-30 EUROCK 2012 - ISRM European Regional Symposium - Rock Engineering and Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, [email protected] 2012.05.27-2012.06.01

IAIA12 Energy Future: The Role of Impact Assessment. Porto, Portugal, http://www.iaia.org/iaia12/ 2012.05.28-30 2nd International Conference On Performance-Based Design In Earthquake Geotechnical Engineering. Taormina, Italy. Contact: Michele Maugeri,

[email protected] 2012.05.28-30 EUROCK 2012 - The 2012 ISRM International Symposium - Rock Engineering and Technology for Sustainable Underground Construction, Stockholm,

Sweden, http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=2974&show=conf 2012.05.28–30 Geological Association of Canada and Mineralogical Association of Canada Annual Meeting, St. John’s, NL, Canada. http://www.gac.ca/activities 2012.05.28-2012.06.01

International symposium on seasonal snow and ice. Lahti, Finland. http://www.igsoc.org/symposia/2012/finland/ 2012.05.28-2012.06.02

BALWOIS 2012 on Water, Climate and Environment. Ohrid, Macedonia. http://www.balwois.com/2012 2012.05.31-2012.06.02

Geodetic Scientific-Technological Conference EUROmatyka2012.pl, Poznan, Poland. http://www.euromatyka2012.pl 2012.05.31–2012.06.10

Erice School: Present and Future Methods for Biomolecular Crystallography, Erice, Sicily, Italy. http://www.crystalerice.org/Erice2012/2012.htm 2012.06.03-08 14th International Peat Congress - Peatlands in Balance, Stockholm, Sweden, http://www.ipc2012.se/ 2012.06.03-08 XV Glaciological Symposium: Past, Present and Future of the Cryosphere. Arkhangelsk, Russia. http://glac2012.igras.ru/ (available from 15.01.2012) 2012.06.03-08 IUSS Inter-Congress Council Meeting, Jeju, Korea,

http://www.iuss.org/images/stories/upcomingmeetings/Intercongress_council_meeting_Jeju_2012_1st_circular.pdf 2012.06.04-06 United Nations Conference on Sustainable Development (Rio+20). Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. http://www.uncsd2012.org/rio20/ 2012.06.04-08 25th World Gas Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, http://www.wgc2012.com/


2012.06.05-06 Processing of Industrial Minerals & Coal '12, Istanbul, Turkey, http://www.min-eng.com/pimc12/ 2012.06.06-07 3rd Iran International Zeolite Conference, Arak, Iran, http://www.3zc.ir/home.htm 2012.06.09-23 6th International Siberian Early Career GeoScientists Conference. Novosibirsk, Russia. http://sibconf.igm.nsc.ru/index.php?lang=english 2012.06.11-14 7th International Conference Interfaces Against Pollution (IAP2012), Nancy, France. http://www.iap2012.fr/ 2012.06.11-14 International Conference on Soil Classification: Towards a Universal Soil Classification System, Lincoln, Nebraska, USA.

http://clic.cses.vt.edu/IUSS1.4/Conf_Soil_Classification_2012/index.htm 2012.06.11-15 GEOSTATS 2012 Ninth International Geostatistics Congress, Oslo, Norway, http://www.geostats2012.no 2012.06.11-15 AGU Chapman Conference on Volcanism and the Atmosphere. Selfoss Hotel, Iceland. http://www.agu.org/meetings/chapman/2012/bcall/ 2012.06.11-15 International Summer School on Mobile Mapping Technology 2012, Tainan, Taiwan, http://conf.ncku.edu.tw/mmt2013/ 2012.06.12-14 26th International Forum for Research into Ice Shelf Processes (FRISP). Utö, Stockholms Archipelago, Sweden. http://rechenknecht.natgeo.su.se/FRISP2012 2012.06.13-25 XXXII SCAR and Open Science Conference, Portland, Oregon, USA. http://www.scar.org/events/ 2012.06.17-20 European Conference on Crystal Growth, Glasgow, Scotland, http://eccg4.org/ 2012.06.17-21 SWIM 2012 (Salt Water Intrusion Meeting). Buzios, Brazil. Email: [email protected] 2012.06.17-22 SOPE-2012 Rhodes Conference - The 22nd International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference, Rhodes, Greece, http://www.isope2012.org/ 2012.06.17-23 12th International Multidisciplinary Scientific GeoConference & EXPO SGEM2012. Albena Resort, Bulgaria. http://www.sgem.org 2012.06.18-20 Bio- & Hydrometallurgy '12, Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom, http://www.min-eng.com/biohydromet12/index.html 2012.06.18-22 4th International Conference on Cartography and GIS. Albena, Bulgaria. http://www.cartography-gis.com/4thConference/Index.html 2012.06.21-22 Processing of Zinc Ores and Concentrates '12, Falmouth, Cornwall, United Kingdom, http://www.min-eng.com/zincprocessing12/index.html 2012.06.24-29 Goldschmidt Conference, Montreal, Canada, http://www.goldschmidt2012.org/ 2012.06.25-29 10th International Conference on Permafrost (TICOP), Tyumen, Russia, http://ipa.arcticportal.org/index.php/tenth-international-conference-on-permafrost.html 2012.06.25-29 The Fifth International Conference on Environmental Science and Technology, Houston, Texas, USA. http://www.aasci.org/conference/env/2012/ updated 2012.06.25-29 International symposium on glaciers and ice sheets in a warming climate. Fairbanks, Alaska, http://www.igsoc.org/symposia/2012/alaska/ 2012.06.26-29 17th International Nitrogen Workshop, Wexford, Ireland. http://www.nitrogenworkshop.com/ 2012.06.27-28 Rewetting of Raised Bogs II. Schneverdingen, Germany, 27- 28 June 2012. http://www.dmtev.de 2012.07.01-05 16th Joint Geomorphological Meeting Morphoevolution of tectonically active belts. Rome, Italy, http://www.geomorph.org/sp/arch/16_JGM_Circ1.pdf 2012.07.02-06 EuroSOIL, Bari, Italy, http://www.eurosoil2012.eu/ 2012.07.03-06 GI Forum 2012. Salzburg, Austria. http://www.gi-forum.org/ 2012.07.05-07 VIII South American Symposium on Isotope Geology (SSAGI), Medellin, Colombia. http://www.ssagi.co/principal.php 2012.07.09-11 17th Asia Upstream Conference and 21th Asia Petroleum Strategy Briefing. Singapore, http://www.petro21.com/events/?eventid=754 2012.07.09–13 Inter/Micro: 63rd Annual Applied Microscopy Conference, Chicago, IL, USA. http://www.mcri.org 2012.07.13-25 XXXII SCAR Open Science Conference. Portland, Oregon, USA. http://www.scar.org 2012.07.14-22 39th COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) Scientific Assembly; Mysore, India. http://www.cospar-assembly.org/ 2012.07.15-19 4th International Congress on Ceramics, Chicago, IL, USA. http://ceramics.org/4th-international-congress-on-ceramics-icc4/ 2012.07.15-20 35th Annual Meeting of the British Zeolite Association, Chester, UK, http://chemweb.bham.ac.uk/~hriljaja/bza2012/index.htm 2012.07.15-21 9th International Symposium on Environmental Geochemistry (ISEG). Aveiro, Portugal. http://9iseg.web.ua.pt 2012.07.16-19 5th SCAR Open Science Conference, Portland, Oregon, USA http://www.scar.org/conferences/Portland/2012_SCAR-COMNAP_Portland.pdf 2012.07.22-27 Second international Conference on Hydropedology, Leipzig, Germany, http://www.ufz.de/hydropedology2012/ 2012.07.23-27 Esri International User Conference, San Diego, California, USA. http://www.esri.com/events/user-conference/index.html 2012.07.28-2012.08.01

International Symposium on Zeolites and Microporous Crystals (ZMPC2012), Hiroshima, Japan , http://www.zmpc.org/ 2012.07.28–2012.08.02

American Crystallographic Association (ACA) Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, USA. http://www.AmerCrystalAssn.org 2012.07.28-2012.08.05

Tidalites 2012 (8th International Conference on Tidal Environments). Caen, France. http://www.unicaen.fr/colloques/tidalites2012/index.php 2012.07.29–2012.08.02

Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012. Phoenix, AZ, USA. http://www.microprobe.org/events/microscopy-microanalysis-2012 2012.07.30-2012.08.03

16th International Conference on Clouds and Precipitation, ICCP-2012. Leipzig, Germany. http://iccp2012.tropos.de/ 2012.August ECM-27 – XXVII European Crystallographic Meeting, Bergen, Norway.

http://www.crystallography.fr/ecasig5/Activity.php?PHPSESSID=87296d119dbf0970ede5113c365c127b 2012.08.02-10 34th International Geological Congress. Brisbane, Australia. http://www.34igc.org/ First Circular available at

https://mymail.ezemsgs.com/em/mail/view.php?id=1785200344&a=8781&k=4dfcea6 2012.08.02-10 INHIGEO will meet in conjunction with the 34th International Geological Congress in Brisbane, Australia. 2012.08.03-05 Challenges in Nanoporous and Layered Materials for Catalysis, Jeju Island, South Korea. http://home.sogang.ac.kr/sites/zeoliteworkshop/Pages/default.aspx 2012.08.06-10 61st Annual Conference on Applications of X-ray Analysis. Denver, CO. USA. http://www.dxcicdd.com/ 2012.08.08-10 ISRM Regional Symposium - II South American Symposium on Rock Excavations, San Jose, Costa Rica,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3116&show=conf 2012.08.12–17 Annual meeting of the Meteoritical Society, Cairns, Queensland, Australia. http:// www.meteoriticalsociety.org 2012.08.13-15 The XXVII Nordic Hydrological Conference - Nordic Water 2012. Oulu, Finland. http://nhc2012.oulu.fi/index.html 2012.08.19–23 244th ACS National Meeting & Exposition, Philadelphia, PA, USA. http://www.acs.org 2012.08.20-24 12th Latin American Hydrogeological Congress. Cartagena de Indias, Colombia. http://www.asociacioncolombianadehidrogeologos.org/congreso/ 2012.08.20-25 Clays & Zeolites: Environmental & Medical Uses in 2012 Sino-European Symposium on Environment and Health (SESEH 2012), Galway, Ireland.

http://www.nuigalway.ie/seseh2012 2012.08.20-31 General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union, Beijing, China. http://www.astronomy2012.org/dct/page/1 2012.08.23-30 IPC13 (International Palynological Congresses), Tokyo, Japan, http://wwwsoc.nii.ac.jp/psj3/IPC2012Web/web-content/index.html 2012.08.24-2102.09.03

XXII ISPRS (International Soceity of Photogrametry & Remote Sensing) 2012 Congress. Melbourne, Australia. http://www.isprs2012-melbourne.com/ 2012.08.25-2012.09.01

XXII International Society for Photogrammetry & Remote Sensing Congress (2012 ISPRS). Melbourne, Australia. http://www.isprs2012.org/ 2012.08.26-30 32nd International Geographical Congress, Cologne, Germany. http://www.igc2012.org/ 2012.08.26-30 4th International Disaster and Risk Conference IDRC, Davros, Switzerland. http://idrc.info/pages_new.php/IDRC-Davos-2012/831/1/ 2012.08.26-31 IAGA 2013, 12th Scientific Assembly (International Association of Geomagnetism and Aeronomy), Mérida, Yucatán, México.

http://www.geociencias.unam.mx/iaga2013/ 2012.08.26-31 7th International Acid Sulfate Soil Conference, Vaasa, Finland. http://projects.gtk.fi/7iassc/ 2012.08.27-31 QOS2012, Quadrennial Ozone Symposium, 27-31 Aug. 2012, Toronto, Canada. http://www.cmos.ca/QOS2012/ 2012.09.01-05 8th ICA Mountain Cartography Workshop: Mapping Mountain Dynamics: From glaciers to volcanoes. Taurewa, Tongariro National Park, New Zealand.

http://web.env.auckland.ac.nz/public/mcw2012/ 2012.09.02-06 EMC2012: Planet Earth – From Core to Surface (joint meeting), Frankfurt, Germany. http://emc2012.uni-frankfurt.de


2012.09.04-09 MECC2012 6th Mid-European Clay Conference, Prague, Czech Republic, http://www.mecc2012.org/ 2012.09.05-06 International Glaciology Society British Branch Meeting 2012. Aberdeen, UK. Contact: Douglas Mair [email protected] 2012.09.06-08 Mires and their catchment areas. Schorfheide-Chorin, Werbellinsee, Germany. http://www.dmtev.de 2012.09.09-13 14th Australian CoalPreparation Society Conference, Canberra, Australia.

http://www.sacoalprep.co.za/Other%20Conferences/ACPS2012Conf%20Final%20Call-for-papers.pdf 2012.09.09-13 EMC2012 1st European Mineralogical Conference, Frankfurt/M, Germany. http://emc2012.uni-frankfurt.de/ 2012.09.09-13 EMC2012: Planet Earth - from Core to Surface (joint meeting between MinSoc and six other European Mineralogical Societies), Frankfurt, Germany,

http://emc2012.uni-frankfurt.de/ 2012.09.10-12 2nd International Conference on Transportation Geotechnics (2nd ICTG) Hokkaido, Japan. http://congress.coop.hokudai.ac.jp/tc202conference/ 2012.09.10-13 29th IAS Meeting of Sedimentology, Schladming, Austria. http://www.sedimentologists.org/ims-2012 2012.09.12-13 14th Australian CoalPreparation Society Conference, Canberra, Australia.

http://www.sacoalprep.co.za/Other%20Conferences/ACPS2012Conf%20Final%20Call-for-papers.pdf 2012.09.16-18 19th AutoCarto 2012 International Symposium on Automated Cartography. Columbus, Ohio, USA. http://www.cartogis.org/autocarto.php 2012.09.16-19 EuroGeo5, the 5th European Geosynthetics Congress, Valencia, Spain. http://www.eurogeo5.org/index_i.php 2012.09.16-20 Geoanalysis 2012, Búzios, Brasil. http://www.ige.unicamp.br/geoanalysis2012/ 2012.09.16-21 IWA World Water Congress and Exhibition. Busan, South Korea. http://www.iwa2012busan.org/ 2012.09.16-21 15th European Microscopy Congress, EMC 2012, Manchester, UK, http://www.emc2012.org.uk/ 2012.09.16-23 5th International Workshop on Ice Caves. Barzio and Milano, Italy. http://users.unimi.it/icecaves/IWIC-V/ 2012.09.16-23 IAH Congress. Confronting Global Change. Niagara Falls, Canada. http://www.iah2012.org/ (new website) 2012.09.17–20 Geoanalysis 2012, Búzios, Brazil. http://www.ige.unicamp.br/geoanalysis2012 2012.09.17-21 XII Reunión Nacional de Geomorfología (XII National Meeting on Geomorphology), Santander, Spain. http://www.segsantander2012.unican.es/index.html (in

Spanish, en Español) 2012.09.17-21 12th IGAC Open Science Conference: Atmospheric Chemistry in the Anthropocene, Beijing, China,

http://www.igbp.net/5.1b8ae20512db692f2a6800015595.html 2012.09.18-20 86th Congress of the Italian Geological Society (SGI) "Mediterranean: a geological archive from past to the present". Cosenza, Italy.

http://www.sgi2012.unical.it/info_eng.html 2012.09.18-21 GIScience 2012. Columbis, Ohio USA. http://www.giscience.org/ 2012.09.23-28 GV and SEDIMENT - Of Land and Sea: Processes and Products. Hamburg, Germany. http://www.gv-hamburg2012.de/ 2012.09.23-29 4th International Workshop on Collapse Calderas. Vulsini, Italy. http://www.gvb-csic.es/CCC.htm 2012.09.24-27 HydroPredict’2012. International Interdisciplinary Conference on Predictions for Hydrology, Ecology, and Water Resources: Water Resources and Changing

Global Environment. Vienna, Austria. http://web.natur.cuni.cz/hydropredict2012/ 2012.09.24-28 15 WCEE 15th World Conference on Earthquake Engineering. Lisbon, Portugal. http://15wcee.com/ 2012.09.26-30 At the Edge of the Sea: Sediments, Sea Level, Tectonics and Stratigraphy as Main Elements of a Multidisciplinary Approach and Correlation in Studying

Quaternary Changes. Alghero, Italy. Email [email protected] 2012.09.27-29 International Conference on Information and Automation for Sustainability (ICIAfS 2012), Beijing, China, http://iciafs.org/ 2012.09.27-29 Calcium and magnesium in groundwater - distribution and significance. International Seminar. Katowice, Poland. http://camgseminar.pgi.gov.pl/ (new website) 2012.09.30-2012.10.02

GRC's 36th Annual Meeting and GEA Trade Show. Geothermal: Reliable, Renewable, Global. Reno, Nevada, USA. http://www.geothermal.org/meet.html 2012.09.30 – 2012.10.05

46th Brazilian Geologic Congress, Santos, SP, Brazil. http://www.46cbg.com.br (still not working) (in Portuguese) 2012.10.01-03 Mires and peat as a raw material - GeoHanover 2012. Hannover, Germany, http://www.dmtev.de 2012.10.01-05 International Symposium on Ice Core Science, IPICS. Giens, France. http://www.ipics2012.org/ 2012.10.01-05 63rd IAC International Astronautical Congress, Naples, Italy, http://www.iafastro.com/index.html?title=IAC2012 2012.10.07–11 MS&T’12: Materials Science & Technology Conference and Exhibition, combined with ACerS 114th Annual Meeting, Pittsburgh, PA, USA.

http://www.matscitech.org 2012.10.09-11 INTERGEO 2012. Conference and trade fair for geodesy, geo information and land management. Hannover, Germany.

http://www.intergeo.de/en/englisch/index.php 2012.10.13-20 Interdisciplinary Climate Change Research Symposium. Colorado Springs, Colorado, USA. http://disccrs.org/application_instructions 2012.10.15-19 IAG/AIG International Workshop on Objective Geomorphological Representation Models: Breaking through a New Geomorphological Mapping

Frontier. Salerno, Italy. http://www.geomorph.org/wg/arch/Salerno2012_1circ.pdf 2012.10.15-19 ARMS 2012 - ISRM Asian Regional Symposium - 7th Asian Rock Mechanics Symposium, Seoul, Korea,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3099&show=conf 2012.10.17-19 How to combine Forest Management, Local Development and Protection of Surface and Groundwater. Semeau International Conference. Vulcania, France.

http://www.life-semeau.eu/ 2012.11.01-03 5th International Conference of the European Society for the History of Science. Athens, Greece. http://5eshs.hpdst.gr 2012.11.04-07 Geological Society of America (GSA) Annual Meeting, Charlotte, NC, USA. http://www.geosociety.org/meetings 2012.11.15-17 4th International Conference on Science in Society. Berkeley, United States. http://science-society.com/conference-2012/ 2012.11.18-23 Cities on Volcanoes 7. Colima, Mexico. http://www.citiesonvolcanoes7.com 2012.11.26–30 MRS Fall Meeting, Boston, MA, USA. http://www.mrs.org/s_mrs/index.asp 2012.12.02-07 Soil solutions for diverse landscapes, Hobart, Australia, http://www.soilscience2012.com/ 2012.12.10-14 5th Asian Regional Conference on Geosynthetics. Bangkok, Thailand. http://www.geosyntheticssociety.org/Events.aspx 2012.12.18-21 The Assessment and Management of Groundwater Resources in Hard Rock Systems with Special Reference to Basaltic Terrain. 5th International

Groundwater Conference (IGWC 2012). Aurangabad, India. Email: [email protected] or [email protected] 2012.12.27 - 2013.01.20

Antarctic Peninsula, South Georgia, and Falkland Islands - The Most In-depth Expedition. http://www.cheesemans.com/antarctica_jsg.html 2013.02.24-27 SME Annual Meeting and Exhibit, Denver, USA. http://www.smenet.org/calendar/detail.cfm?eventKey=1052 2013.04.22-29 International Summer School on Mobile Mapping Technology 2013, Tainan, Taiwan, http://conf.ncku.edu.tw/mmt2013/ 2013.04.30-2013.05.02

8th International Symposium on Mobile Mapping Technology 2013, Tainan, Taiwan, http://conf.ncku.edu.tw/mmt2013/ 2013.05.20-22 Effective and Sustainable Hydraulic Fracturing - an ISRM Specialized Conference, Brisbane, Australia,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3108&show=conf 2013.05.20-24 8th International Mesostructured Materials Symposium (IMMS 2013), Awaji Island, Hyago, Japan, http://www.imms2013.iis.u-tokyo.ac.jp/ 2013.06.17-21 ISHS-IPS “International Symposium on Growing Media and Soilless Cultivation”, Delft, the Netherlands. http://www.grosci2013.nl 2013.06.23-28 XV ICC International Clay Conference, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. http://www.15icc.org/ (new website) 2013.07.07-12 17th International Zeolite Conference (IZA). Moscow, Russia, http://www.izc17.com/ 2013.07.08-12 ESRI International User Conference, San Diego, California USA. http://www.esri.com/events/uc/index.html 2013.07.08-12 Davos Atmosphere and Cryosphere Assembly 2013 Air, Ice & Process Interactions, Davos, Switzerland. http://www.daca13.org/ 2013.07.20-24 IAVCEI Scientific Assembly - 2013: Forecasting Volcanic Activity: reading and translating the messages of nature for society. Kagoshima, Japan.


http://www.iavcei2013.com 2013.07.22-28 INHIGEO will convene in co-ordination with the 24th International Congress on the History of Science, Technology and Medicine. Manchester, United Kingdom

http://www.inhigeo.org 2013.07.22-26 Joint IAHS-IAPSO-IASPEI Scientific Assembly. Göteborg, Sweden 2013.08.20-22 The 6th International Symposium on Rock Stress - an ISRM Specialized Conference, Sendai, Japan,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3117&show=conf 2013.08.25-30 59th ISI World Statistics Congress, Hong Kong, S.A.R. China, http://www.isi2013.hk 2013.08.25-30 26th International Cartographic Conference, Dresden, Germany. http://www.icc2013.org/ 2013.Sept 9th International Symposium on the Cretaceous System. Ankara, Turkey. http://www.cretaceous2013.org/en/ 2013 Sept IAH Congress, Alice Springs, Australia CANS) Congress, Huelva, Spain, http://rcans.usal.es/ 2013.09.02-06 IAMG (International Association of Mathematical Geosciences) 2013 Annual Conference, Madrid, Spain, http://www.igme.es/internet/iamg2013/ 2013.09.15-22 65th Annual Meeting of the ICCP (International Committee for Coal & Organic Petrology), Sosnowiec, Poland 2013.09.09-13 26th International Cartographic Conference. Dresden, Germany. http://www.gsdi.org/events/eventdetails?event_id=1069 2013.09.16-20 XVth International ISM (International Society for Mine Surveying) Congress, Aachen, Germany, http://www.ism.rwth-aachen.de/index.php/ism-

congresses/2013congress 2013.09.23-26 EUROCK 2013 - ISRM European Regional Symposium - Rock Mechanics for Resources, Energy and Environment, Wroclaw, Poland,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3022&show=conf 2013.10.01-06 XVII International Coal Preparation Congress, Istanbul, Turkey. http://www.icpc2013istanbul.com/ 2013.10.08-10 INTERGEO Conference and trade fair for geodesy, geo information and land management. Essen, Germany. http://www.intergeo.de/en/englisch/index.php 2014.02.23-26 SME Annual Meeting and Exhibit, Salt Lake City, USA. http://www.smenet.org/calendar/detail.cfm?eventKey=1052 2014.05.26-28 EUROCK 2014 - ISRM European Regional Symposium - Rock Engineering and Rock Mechanics: Structures in and on Rock Masses, Vigo, Spain,

http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3119&show=conf 2014.06.09-13 20th World Congress of Soil Science (WCSS) in Korea. http://www.20wcss.org/ 2014 August 24th Congress and General Assembly of the International Union of Crystallography, Montreal, Canada. http://www.iucr2014.org/ (new website) 2014.08.02-10 40th COSPAR (Committee on Space Research) Scientific Assembly; Moscow, Russia. http://cosparhq.cnes.fr/Meetings/sciass.htm 2014.09.28-2014.10.05

4th International Paleontological Congress, The history of life: a view from the Southern Hemisphere. Mendoza, Argentina, http://ipa.geo.ku.edu/pdf/IPC4.pdf 2015.02.22-25 SME Annual Meeting and Exhibit, Denver, USA. http://www.smenet.org/calendar/detail.cfm?eventKey=1052 2015.04.29-2015.05.06

ISRM 13th International Congress on Rock Mechanics, Montreal, Canada, http://www.isrm.net/conferencias/detalhes.php?id=3024&show=conf 2015 27th International Cartographic Conference and 16th General Assembly of ICA. Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. http://icaci.org/calendar

24th Colloquium on African Geology (CAG24) - NNNEEEWWWSSS

CAG24 OFFICIAL WEBSITE OPEN The official website for cag24 is now open.

Link www.cag24.org.et

CAG24 in Brief: The Colloquium of African Geology (CAG) is a major biennial meeting organized under the auspices of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf). Since the first colloquium in 1965, this Colloquium has been hosted by several European and African countries. The African countries that had a chance to organize this event were Swaziland, Zimbabwe, Morocco, Mozambique, Tunisia and South Africa. Based on the decision of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf) General Assembly held on 14 January 2011 at the University of Johannesburg, South Africa (during the 23rd Colloquium), the organization of the next Colloquium of African Geology (CAG24) as well as the 14th Conference of the Geological Society of Africa and the 40th Anniversary of the Geological Society of Africa (1973-2013) was assigned to Ethiopia. This will be conducted atthe United Nations Economic Commission Conference Center (UNECA) in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia from 8 to 14 January 2013. The CAG24 will be organized by the Ethiopian Geosciences and Mineral Engineering Association (EGMEA)

in cooperation with governmental and non-governmental organizations under the auspices of the Geological Society of Africa (GSAf). The Theme of the Conference is: “40 Years of GSAf (1973-2013): Earth Sciences Solutions to African Development Challenges”. (from the CAG24 website)


34th International Geological Congress (34 IGC) - NNNEEEWWWSSS

CALL FOR PAPERS: Invitation to the Geoheritage Geot ourism and Geoparks Symposium IGC 2012, Brisbane, Australia

From: M.brocx [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Dienstag, 10. Jänner 2012 06:14 To: Angus M Robinson Cc: M Brocx Subject: CALL FOR PAPERS: Invitation to the Geoheritage Geotourism and Geoparks Symposium IGC 2012, Brisbane, Australia Dear Colleague We would like to call your attention to a symposium on Geoheritage, Geoparks and Geotourism at the 34th International Geological Congress in Brisbane in August, 2012. http ://34igc.org/FileLibrary/34igc_third_circular_v5.pdf This information supplements the IGC Circular 3. The IGC deadline for abstract submissions is 17th February 2012. Further details about submitting abstracts can be found at http://www.34igc.org/submit-abstracts.php . Could you kindly email this invitation to your email lists. Kind Regards, Margaret Brocx Convenor Standing Committee for Geological Heritage Geological Society of Australia Geoheritage Symposia at the IGC Brisbane 2012 Geoheritage, Geoparks and Geotourism Symposia to supplement the IGC Circular 3 These symposia at the IGC in Brisbane in August 2012 form part of the Theme Geoscience for Society which will be co-ordinated by Hamish Campbell ([email protected]) This Theme encompasses the roles of the geosciences in decisions and approaches that are of wide public interest, including geological heritage and geotourism; geoscience underpinning conservation; geoscience education; communicating geoscience to the public; museum collections; forensic geoscience; and gemstones. 1.1 Geoheritage, geoparks and geotourism Bernie JOYCE (Australia), José BRILHA (Portugal), Ian GRAHAM (New Zealand), Patrick MCKEEVER (Ireland), Nickolas ZOUROS (Greece), Changxing LONG (China), Ross DOWLING (Australia) and Angus M ROBINSON (Australia) __This Symposium will examine the importance and diversity of geological heritage (geoheritage). Key topics will include the identification and quantification of geoheritage, geodiversity and geosites, the significance of geoconservation, UNESCO's geoparks, as well as the growth of geotourism. See conference web site: http://www.34igc.org/scientific-themes-symposia.php#theme-1-geoscience-for-society Symposium title: Geoheritage Convenor: Bernie Joyce (The University of Melbourne - [email protected]) International Convenor: José Brilha (University of Minho, Portugal, and Editor in Chief "Geoheritage" [email protected]) Symposium synopsis: The Geoheritage Symposia will examine the importance and diversity of Geoheritage (geological heritage), its history, geoconservation, geoparks and geotourism. Topics include methodologies for the identification and quantification of geoheritage, geosites and geodiversity, the significance of geoconservation, and how UNESCO World Heritage Properties compare and contrast with Global Geoparks, and the current growth of geotourism. We will consider how to extend the current concept of geosites beyond Europe, making use locally of the expertise of ProGEO, so far confined to Europe. The story of Geoheritage in Australia, its history of growth, its World Heritage Properties and Geoparks, and its continental scale major landscapes in comparison to those of smaller countries will be explored. The Australian Government is committed to the identification, protection and celebration of Australia's geological heritage. Symposia: 1. Assessment, conservation and management of Geosites of National and International significance Co-Convenor: Bill Wimbledon (University of Bristol, UK, and Editor in Chief "Geoheritage"). KEYNOTE. 2. Methodology and Inventory-based Assessments in Geoheritage: including contrasting large and small countries Co-Convenor José Brilha: (University of Minho, Portugal, and Editor in Chief "Geoheritage" [email protected]) 3. Geoheritage in Australia and other Southern hemisphere countries (South Africa, New Zealand, the Pacific, South America): Speakers for Australia to cover The Past (Bernie Joyce), Present (Susan White), and Future (Margaret Brocx). Speakers for other countries to be determined. Co-Convenor Margaret Brocx: (Convenor of GSA Standing Committee for Geological Heritage, and Convenor of Committee for Geological Heritage, Geological Society of Australia (WA Division). 4. Sustainable use of Geoheritage - geodiversity, education. Comparing opportunities for geoconservation in internationally protected World Heritage Properties, Geoparks, and by local planning authorities. Co-Convenor: Lars Erikstad (Executive Secretary, ProGEO, Natural History Museum, P.O. Box 1172, Blindern 0318, Oslo, Norway, and Institute of Nature Research, Norway). 5. Potential Informal EVENING WORKSHOP: Geosites, methodologies, landscape management and local planning. A report on the work of the ProGEO organisation in Europe, and how to make future use in Australia and other countries of the expertise of ProGEO beyond Europe. (This Workshop may be organised and located outside the formal IGC program.) Co-Convenors: Bill Wimbledon, José Brilha, Lars Erikstad, and representatives from countries beyond Europe.


6. Informal Group discussion Fossil heritage - as loss or damage to our fossil geoheritage is of National concern both in Australia, and every country in the world, it would be good to follow up on the ProGEO article as to how we can improve on protecting Fossil sites, and educational programmes 7. Informal Panel Q&A - Improving the protection of sites of geoheritage significance within and outside of conservation areas (including Geoparks), using inventory based geoconservation on a regional basis (including methods used in the UK, ProGEO workgroups, and the Geoheritage Tool-kit), as the basis for conservation both within and outside the conservation estate. Geoparks are being included within the scope of what is being covered. The Symposia will review the growth of geotourism, particularly tourism that features outstanding geology and landscapes, in the context that are commensurate rapid growth of geoparks across the world is providing both challenges and exciting opportunities in Australia and beyond. Ross Dowling, Convenor and Angus M Robinson, Co-Convenor Geotourism and Geoparks Symposium - Geotourism Stream Key topics relating to Geotourism to be discussed will include, but not be limited to: 1. Understanding the full scope of geotourism within the broad context of 'experiential' tourism. 2. Management of geoheritage conservation and protection of areas delineated for geotourism. 3. Strategies and case studies embracing quality interpretation and communication of geoheritage in these areas. 4. Strategies and tools for analysing geodiversity in areas of geological significance. 5. Potential for developing geoparks in existing protected areas and within regions currently embraced by the Australian National Landscapes program. 6. The tangible benefits of geotourism which would include for example, building environmental awareness, providing direct financial benefits for conservation, providing financial benefits and empowerment for local people, respecting local culture etc. 7. Strategies for communicating to geologists (including from within the minerals industry) the 'tourism' element of 'geotourism'. 8. Best practice geotrails as a driver of geotourism activity. 9. Case studies of 'best practice' global geotourism development. 10. New ways (including using digital and social media) of marketing and promoting geotourism. 11. Strategies for repositioning popular natural heritage tourism sites such as cave systems/karst areas as geotourism exemplars. 12. Best Practice geotourism and education/interpretation. We invite you to consider presenting a paper which addresses one or more of these topics. The IGC deadline for abstract submissions is 17th February 2012. Further details about submitting abstracts can be found at http://www.34igc.org/submit-abstracts.php Kind Regards Margaret Brocx Convenor Standing Committee for Geological Heritage Geological Society of Australia Reminder: Abstract submissions will close on 17 February 2012

Dear Geoscientists around the World The response to the call for abstracts to date has been excellent. We would like to ensure that we have the highest quality of content available to all delegates at the 34th IGC and would like to remind you that there is still time to submit your abstract. Please ensure that your submission fully complies with format specifications as non-compliant papers cannot be considered. Click here (http://www.34igc.org/submit-abstracts.php) for detailed information about the call for abstracts and to submit your abstract(s). For more information about the Congress, please refer to the website for up to date information – www.34igc.org

PROFESSIONAL COURSES/WORKSHOPS/SCHOLARSHIPS

Advanced International Training Programme 2012 Integrated Sustainable Coastal Development

Sweden August 20 – September 7, 2012 Tanzania December 3 – 14, 2012

Contact Information: Ramboll Natura AB ITP Programme Secretariat P.O. Box 17009 Se-104 62 Stockholm - Sweden Phone +46 10 615 60 00 Fax +46 10 615 20 00 [email protected] www.rambollnatura.se See prospwect at: http://www.rambollnatura.se/services/capacity%20development%20and%20training/~/media/Files/RSE/Natura/Training%20programmes/ISCD/286B_ISCD%202012.ashx


POST-DOC FELLOWSHIPS FROM BELGIAN SCIENCE POLICY OF FICE Prof. Sospeter Muhongo kindly forwarded us the foll owing e-mail. Please pay due attention to it:

Dear Professor Muhongo, …… I am pleased to inform you that we have now launched our new call for post-doc fellowships. You will find the information on: http://www.belspo.be/belspo/home/calls/postdoc_info_en.stm You will find the elegible federal research institutes at: http://www.belspo.be/belspo/act/institut/index_en.stm, for the institutes depending from the Federal Science Policy Office and at: http://www.coda-cerva.be/ https://www.wiv-isp.be/Pages/FR-Home.aspx http://www.sckcen.be/en/ for the institutes depending from other federal ministries. We also have a list of individual research teams within the Belgian universities that are elegible to receive post-doc fellows under this programme, but as this list is very long, I suggest that any person wishing to receive this information, indicates to us the specific domains he/she is interested in. We will then send the list with the research teams in these specific fields. Please allow me to draw your attention to two important aspects of the selection procedure: 1. Closing date is March 5th, 2012 2. All applications have to be introduced through the Belgian research promotor. Should you need more information about any aspect of this programme or its procedure, please do not hesitate to contact me. Best regards,

Dr. Bogdan Van doninck Belgian Science Policy Office Director-general Coördination and Information Louizalaan 231 Avenue Louise 1050 Brussels

T. +32 (0)2 238 34 88 F. +32 (0)2 230 59 12 W. www.belspo.be @ [email protected]

SNOWDEN PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT TRAINING COURSES Course Location Date Choices for 2012 Resource Estimation

Johannesburg, RSA 5-9 March 18-22 June 10-14 Sept 3-7 Dec

Advanced Resource Estimation 16-20 April 22-26 Oct Managing Risks and Realising Opportunities in the Mining Activity 2 Aug Mining & Sampling Theory for Mine Technicians & Field Assistants 2 April 9 July 19 Oct Successful Sampling & QAQC of Assay Data Johannesburg, RSA 20-21 Feb 21-22 May 27-28 Aug 26-27 Nov

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe 5-6 June Grade Control and Practical Reconciliation Johannesburg, RSA 22-23 Feb 23-24 May 29-30 Aug 28-29 Nov

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe 7-8 June Reporting Resources & Reserves Johannesburg, RSA 17 Feb 25 May 31 Aug 23 Nov Introduction to Geostatistics Johannesburg, RSA 20 Feb 18 May 24 Aug 23 Nov

Bulawayo, Zimbabwe 4 June Practical Variography

Johannesburg, RSA 16 March 2 July 28 Sept

Geology for Non-Geologists 13 Feb 7 May 13 Aug 12 Nov Mining for Non-Miners 14 Feb 8 May 14 Aug 13 Nov Metallurgy for Non-Metallurgists 15 Feb 14 Nov Advanced Financial Modelling 16 Feb 9 May 15 Aug 15 Nov Technical Report Writing 10 May

CONTACT AND REGISTRATION For more information on Snowden’s Training and Mentoring programmes, please contact Diana Titren, Training Division Manager, on +61 8 9211 8670 or [email protected] Please visit www.snowdengroup.com for more information about Snowden training courses

7th SEDIBUD Workshop & SEDIBUD Summer School for Docto ral Students 7th SEDIBUD Workshop Towards an integrated analysis of environmental drivers and rates of contemporary solute and sedimentary fluxes in changing cold climate environments: From coordinated field data generation to integration and modeling and SEDIBUD Summer School for Doctoral Students Quantitative analysis of geomorphologic processes: Field methods, experimental techniques and modeling

Trondheim (September 10–13, 2012) and LoenNordfjord (September 13 – 17, 2012), Norway Amplified climate change and ecological sensitivity of high-latitude and high-altitude cold climate environments has been highlighted as a key global environmental issue. Projected climate change in cold regions is expected to alter melt season duration and intensity, along with the number of extreme


rainfall events, total annual precipitation and the balance between snowfall and rainfall. Similarly, changes to the thermal balance are expected to reduce the extent of permafrost and seasonal ground frost and increase active layer depths. These effects will undoubtedly change surface environments in cold regions and alter the fluxes of sediments, nutrients and solutes, but the absence of quantitative data and coordinated process monitoring and analysis to understand the sensitivity of the Earth surface environment is acute in cold climate environments. Achim Beylich, SEDIBUD WG, Chair At more ... Circular no. 1: http://www.geomorph.org/wg/sb/SEDIBUD_WSS2012.pdf

SOFTWARE DAY - A ONE-DAY SHOWCASE OF GEOLOGICAL SOF TWARE The Directorate of Professional Programmes of the Geological Society of South Africa

Presents SOFTWARE DAY - A ONE-DAY SHOWCASE OF GEOLOGICAL SOFTWARE

Friday 16 March 2012 Glen Hove Conferencing, 52 Glenhove Road, Melrose, Johannesburg

For the announcement please click here: http://fs2.majesticinteractive.co.za/admin/uploads/53/documents/GSSA%20Software%20Day%20Announcement%20-

%20March%202012%20%28EMAIL%29.pdf Please reply to [email protected]

COAL QUALITY FOR TRADE AND UTILISATION HORT COURSES FOR INDUSTRY

COAL SCHOOL 1 – 13-17 February 2012 -

in the series LEADERSHIP IN COAL AND FUEL TECHNOLOGY

COURSE 1 – COAL SAMPLING – DAY 1 Methods, Applications and Limitations of Sampling in Industry

Date: 13 February 2012, 09:00 – 17:00

COURSE 2 – CONVENTIONAL ANALYSES FOR COAL – DAY 2

Conventional Analyses and Specifications Date: 14 February 2012, 09:00 – 17:00

COURSE 3 – ADVANCED ANALYSES FOR COAL – DAY 3 Specialised analyses including Petrography, Mineralogy, FTIR,

CCSEM and others Date: 15 February 2012, 09:00 – 17:00

COURSE 4 – ADVANCED COMBUSTION TESTS – DAY 4 Combustion Tests, Standards and their applications in industry

Date: 16 February 2012, 09:00 – 17:00

COURSE 5 – COAL USER REQUIREMENTS – DAY 5 Contracts, Specifications, Classifications and Market

Requirements Date: 17 February 2012, 09:00 – 17:00

VENUE: The University of the Witwatersrand Sport Administration centre,

Sturrock Park, West Campus, Johannesburg [email protected]

AN INTRODUCTION TO STRUCTURAL GEOLOGY FOR THE MINE GEOLOGIST

The Directorate of Professional Programmes of the Geological Society of South Africa Presents

AANN IINNTTRROODDUUCCTTIIOONN TTOO SSTTRRUUCCTTUURRAALL GGEEOOLLOOGGYY FFOORR TTHHEE MMIINNEE GGEEOOLLOOGGIISSTT A ONE-DAY COURSE FOR A MAXIMUM 50 DELEGATES

Friday 25 May 2012

Glen Hove Conferencing, 52 Glenhove Road, Melrose, Johannesburg

For the announcement please click http://fs2.majesticinteractive.co.za/admin/uploads/53/documents/GSSA%20Structural%20Geology%20Announcment%20May%202012.pdf For the registration form please click http://fs2.majesticinteractive.co.za/admin/uploads/53/documents/GSSA%20Structural%20Geology%20Registration%20Form%20May%202012.pdf


INTERESTING PHOTOS Tsingy de Bemaraha, Madagascar

Images from a PowerPoint received by email


GEOLOGY OF AFRICAN COUNTRIES/TERRITORIES

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

Adapted from: Schlüter, T., 2006. Geological Atlas of Africa. Ed. S pringer. 272 pp : CD-ROM

Documents

Geo logical Society of A · 2013-09-02 · [email protected] ca (GSAf) – Nr. 01; January 2012 – Annum 2. logical Society of A ... Muhongo has co-organized over 100 expert