Errata : Old Carbon

 Dear Email Subscribers,

A correction to my last post on ancient human footprints from New Mexico. I mistakenly typed their estimated age as 22,0000 (Two hundred and twenty thousand). The correct assigned age in the paper I referred to is 22,000 (Twenty two thousand). 

Google Reader Is Shutting Down on July 1 2013

Just a reminder that Google Reader will be shutting down come July 1 2013. If you have been reading this blog via my RSS Feed in Google Reader do change over to an alternative. Feedly seems to be a popular choice, with a feature to import your aggregated Google Reader feed at a click. although there are many others too. Here are two articles that explore replacements for Google Reader.

Moving On From Google Reader

There Is No Google Reader Replacement, Only Alternatives

Again, here is my RSS Feed and as always, thanks for your support.

Another Good Writer In The Geology Blogosphere

Dana Hunter is good, but we have another writer in the geoblogosphere:

On a corner in the road, at the entrance to the small village of Churchill in the English Cotswold Hills, is a small monument that seems out of place in its sleepy, pastoral surroundings. It is made from a rough-hewn, locally quarried limestone, which succumbs to the gentle Oxfordshire climate by a modest growth of encrustations of lichen and moss. Turning the corner, one sees an impressive gothic church set within a neat low stone wall, with its steeples reaching skywards, in perfect architectural proportions to itself, but oversized relative to the settlement that it serves, as if history had abandoned it, consigned it as a picturesque relic. There must be many stories to be told about this small village. Only one of them is that an inconspicuous child was born here of a blacksmith father in 1769. His name was William Smith; he is known as the ‘Father of English Geology’ and he drew the ‘Map that Changed the World’[1].

That was Prof. Philip Allen who writes Earth-Literally blog. He comments on a meeting he recently attended on the theme of Strata and Time and where the discussions ranged from stratigraphic completeness to cyclicity to sediment budget and fluxes..

 Enjoyable and educational.

Request To Indiabioscience.org: More Science Please

Why don't Indian scientists working in India write about their research on open platforms? There are scientists who are blogging, but they write about campus life and the sociology of sciences and not about their research. And recently I came across a group blog Indiabioscience.org, which is a platform for biologists to:

The goal of IndianBioscience.org is for Indian biologists (junior and senior, working in India or abroad) to unite as a community- to find and exchange information, to make new contacts and find collaborators, to share perspectives, to attract a new generation of young people to scientific careers, and to welcome back talented Indians who previously might have established their careers abroad.

I went through the collection of posts from the contributors. Most of them are opinions of how to improve science education and the status of science in India, or on their personal experience of setting up research labs in India or negotiating the administrative maze, or advice to young postdocs and PhD candidates. 

All very useful.. but where is the Science? 

One of the stated goals of this initiative is " to attract a new generation of young people to scientific careers". I am not sure that young people will find it engaging to follow this blog and be inspired to take up a career in science if all the scientists on this forum come across as experts in university administration and pedagogy and have little to say about their research.

I find it boring to read post after post on "my views on improving Indian Universities / education / how to deal with various personal problems". 

Instead, why not tell us more about your own work?.. start a conversation with young aspiring students about your day in the lab and the nitty-gritty of science.

Interesting Blogs I've Started Following Of Late

Here are a few interesting blogs I've come across over the past year or so:

Anubhooti: Blog Of A Forest Officer - An Indian government officer blogging? !! Hurray.. :) Mohan Chandra Pargaien is a Forest Officer and blogs about environmental issues.

Earth Science Erratics - Erin Parker - Extremely engaging conversations on the challenges of teaching geology to school students. 

Earth Pages - In this Wiley-Blackwell’s  community site for the earth sciences, Dr Steve Drury writes about interesting research in the earth sciences.

Midway - Short opinions about Indian education and society by an academic.

Musings of Dheeraj Sanghi - Mostly about the Indian higher education system by a professor at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Paleowave - Kaustubh Thirumalai writes about stable isotopes, foraminifera and paleo-oceanography.

The Archaeobotanist -  Among other things, opinions and views on the evolution and history of crops by Dorian Fuller.

The Salt - A food blog at NPR.

Watershed Moments - Musings of a Canadian hydrologist. 

Why Nations Fail -  Economic and political perspectives by Daron Acemoglu and James Robinson.

Paleowave Is A New Earth Science Blog By An Indian Academic

A few weeks ago I complained that I knew of only one geology blog by an Indian geologist besides mine. Kaustubh Thirumalai responded by pointing out that he has been blogging at Isotope Dope. That was his old blog. He now has a brand new blog titled Paleowave.

Kaustubh is a stable isotope geochemist with an interest in  reconstruction of Holocene paleo-climate and paleo-oceanographic conditions using foraminifera as a proxy.

I have dabbled quite a bit in stable isotopes of oxygen and carbon for my research on diagenesis in Ordovician carbonate rocks, using the proportions of different isotopes of oxygen and carbon that occur in carbonate rocks to infer both the origin of fluids flowing through the rock and the temperature of the fluid. That in turn can be used to infer basin history, more specifically the timing and extent of sea-levels changes and the establishment of fresh water aquifers and also the subsequent burial history of the sediment.

So I am looking forward to reading and learning more about Kaustubh's research which applies the stable isotope tool to understand a different aspect of the more recent past.

My Popular Posts Over The Last Two Years

Its nearly year end and time to get a little reflective. I'm basing this on Google Stats for the last two years. Here are 5 of my most popular posts:

Indian Sedimentary Basins And Shale Gas

Plate Motions: Is The Driver Bottom Up or Top Down

Mapping India: Land Degradation and Desertification

India Basin-Wise Shale Gas Estimates

Geology Will Be Central To India's Climate Change Challenge

Two of them are about the hot energy source of the day and two about ecological challenges we face. My post on the recent Sikkim / Nepal earthquake came a close sixth.

My blogging is not restricted to topics about India but in a sense I am pleased that my writings about Indian geology continue to capture a fair amount of attention. There is not much information about Indian geological issues in the popular media and in the public domain, so I guess I am contributing somewhat to redressing that lacunae.

Thanks all for supporting this blog.

New Geosciences Blog By Author Of Basin Analysis

Professor Philip Allen of Imperial College London and one of the authors of the book Basin Analysis: Principles and Applications is blogging.

Check out this great post on Dynamic Topography.

Another Indian Academic Blogging: Sheila Mishra on Archaeology

It's always big news when an Indian academic starts a blog. Here is a very interesting one. Sheila Mishra is writing with gusto on her work and on the work of colleagues in the field of archaeology and anthropology.

Dr. Mishra is with the Department of Archaeology, Deccan College, Pune. She also maintains a publication page where you can download many of the papers on various aspects of the Indian Quaternary.

The content on the blog so far is mostly on the Indian archaeological record of various lithic cultures ("stone age cultures") with implications for human migration and evolution.

Tip: John Hawks Weblog

Reporting on a Revolution Has Been Renamed Rapid Uplift

I got me a new blog name this new year. In a civil ceremony Reporting on a Revolution has been rechristened Rapid Uplift.

I think the new name has a restless dynamic geologyey feel to it. It is more in tune with the broad theme of my blog of a changing planet..being reshaped and re sculpted through geological processes and biological evolution. I have to admit that the focus of this blog has changed somewhat over the last two years. My initial purpose of keeping a tab on poor and sensationalistic science reporting especially by the Indian media prompted the blog title Reporting on a Revolution.

Over time though I have found myself writing more and more on geology related themes often not taking cues from media reports or without any intent to criticize media reporting but writing simply because I found a particular story interesting.

Rapid Uplift will continue this geology centered science outreach attempt.

Do update your blogrolls. The page and feed URLs are unchanged.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year!

Not Left Out! My Interview At The Reef Tank Is Online

There is a geology bonanza going on over at The Reef Tank which is a blog and forum dedicated to marine science topics including climate change, marine energy, ocean acidification and marine conservation. There have started a marine geology section in their community blog. Brian@ Clastic Detritus was the first to be interviewed. Dr. Erik W. Klemetti of Eruptions was second. The Lost Geologist was interviewed a few days ago.

Now its my turn. My interview is online (thanks to Brian who recommended my name) on their community blog page. I thought the questions were quite challenging and interesting dealing with how carbonate sedimentology relates to marine sciences and ecosystems and what my background in carbonates tells me about the current crises marine ecosystems may be facing due to global warming. There were a couple of questions on my posts on groundwater.

My favorite question though and I thank Ava the blog moderator for asking that-

You also blog on evolution. How important was/is marine life and marine ecosystems to the theory of evolution and why? 

I got a chance to write about how carbonate sediments help us understand evolution and also the question gave me a chance to highlight the work of two of my advisers who inspired me into studying carbonates and evolution.

Go over to The Reef Tank and take a look.

Some Very Strange Maps

Once in a while I stumble upon, not StumbleUpon, just stumble upon a blog that makes me press the subscription button at once.

Strange Maps is one of these sites. A wonderful collection of weird, creative and humorous ways of depicting the world in "maps".

Having spent long late afternoons in Appalachia sipping sweet tea after a day's fieldwork this one I could relate to all too well; the north to south distribution of McDonald's selling unsweet and sweet tea in Virginia.



Source: Eightoverfive.com via Strange Maps

I am not sure how many geo-bloggers have this site on their blogroll. It's a refreshingly different spot. You can't really categorize it as a geoscience blog although there are posts on geology related topics. But it's just the spatial depiction of information that caught my interest. Maps always give you a different perspective, makes you ponder over previously unrecognized connections. You can create your own story of places visited, geology observed, people you have met. Definitely worth a regular visit.

Hat Tip: Geology News