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Despite Dust Storms, Solar Power Is Best For Mars Colonies
Is sending solar-powered robots to the Red Planet a bad idea? Mars is a very dusty planet, and Mars dust sticks to everything, especially solar arrays. After all, NASA's Lander Phoenix's death was probably hastened by a Sun-blocking dust storm, and rover Spirit was battered by the combined solar panel-coated dust layer plus dust storm, nearly draining its batteries (as can be seen in the comparison right, after two years on the Martian surface, Spirit's dusty layer was already an acute problem).Like any space travel endeavour, efficiency is paramount; astronauts will need to utilize every last energy-generating ounce of equipment sent to Mars (including back-up systems).
Commenting on this Mars energy solution, Professor Colin Pillinger, planetary scientist with CEPSAR and head Beagle 2 scientist said the solar array's old foe — dust — shouldn't be too much of a problem after all. "Dust storms tend to start in well-known places in the southern hemisphere as it warms up, so it shouldn't be too difficult to avoid them".
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NASA's rover Spirit collected a lot of dust on its surfaces in two years.
Image: NASA/JPL |
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CEPSAR Researcher In Japan
CEPSAR researcher Dr Mahesh Anand is visiting Japan to carry out a collaborative research project on Apollo lunar samples with Dr Kentaro Terada from Hiroshima University. The two researchers have pioneered the application of Sensitive High-Resolution Ion Micro Probe (SHRIMP) technique for dating phosphate minerals in the lunar samples. This technique relies on measuring the precise ratios of abundances of radioactive element uranium (U) and its daughter element, lead (Pb). This method is commonly known as U/Pb dating.
Dr Anand's visit is supported by a Japanese Society for Promotion of Science (JSPS) award. Find out more about Dr Anand's research by following this link. |
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Dr Mahesh Anand (left) with his Japanese host Dr Kentaro Terada of Hiroshima University. |
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Life: From The Earth To The Galaxy
Today sees four inaugural lectures by CEPSAR Professors.
Recent developments in our understanding of life in extreme environments, in exploration of our Solar System and in the detection of exoplanets have led to the real possibility of detecting life beyond the one environment where it is known to exist, if indeed it does exist elsewhere.
Four of CEPSAR’s Professors, each of whom is involved in a different way in the search for life, will present their particular views of this subject.
This will be followed by a panel discussion, chaired by Quentin Cooper of BBC Radio 4’s “Material World”.
Programme -
A celebration of Research in the Faculty of Science, sponsored by CEPSAR
Berrill Lecture Theatre
14.20 Assemble in the Berrill Lecture Theatre
14.25 Welcome by Vice Chancellor, followed by
14.40 Inaugural lecture: Charles Cockell
15.00 Inaugural lecture: Ian Wright
15.20 Inaugural lecture: Monica Grady
15.40 Inaugural lecture: Glenn White
16.00 Tea and refreshments
16.30 Panel discussion 'Life in the Universe' chaired by Quentin Cooper
17.30 Reception in the Berrill Cafe |
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Life: From the Earth to the Galaxy is a series of four inaugural lectures by CEPSAR Professors, who are all involved in different ways of detecting life in our solar System.
Image: NASA |
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CEPSAR Students At UK Planetary Forum
Postgraduate students from CEPSAR presented talks at the UK Planetary Forum’s 6th Early Careers Planetary Scientists’ meeting held at University College London earlier in November. PSSRI's Ben Rozitis showed some beautiful graphics to explain how his thermophysical models of asteroids could help with future sample return missions. Tim Tomkinson also from PSSRI presented both his PhD work looking at re-creating and further investigating the carbonate minerals found in Martian meteorites and his part in the European Student Moon Orbiter ESMO (find out more about ESMO by clicking here.
Susan Conway from Earth and Environmental Sciences talked about her recent work on gullies on Mars, which indicate that liquid water could be active on the surface of Mars. A reporter from Astronomy Now was present at the conference and Susan’s work is presented in the latest edition. Find out more about the article by following the link below.
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Gullies like this on the Earth are usually formed by flowing water, but on Mars liquid water is unstable. Research into what has created the recent gullies on Mars is an active area of research for current early career scientists. Image: Malin Space Science Systems, MGS, JPL, NASA. |
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Jupiter - Friend or Foe? II: The Centaurs
This is the second of three papers by CEPSAR members Dr Jonti Horner and Emeritus Professor Barrie Jones that model the effect on Earth bombardment of giant planets of various masses in Jupiter's orbit. In the first paper, about to appear in the IJA we modelled a population derived from the asteroid belt (Jupiter - Friend or Foe? I: the Asteroids). We obtained the surprising result that Jupiter offers less shielding than no Jupiter at all, and a Saturn-mass "Jupiter" results in several times the bombardment rate than that obtained with Jupiter.
Much the same result is obtained for the Centaurs, a population on its way inward from the Edgeworth-Kuiper Belt.
Paper III will present results when the bombarders are derived from the Oort Cloud. |
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CEPSAR Member Joins The European Space Agency
PSSRI's Dr Andrew Ball has accepted a two-year assignment to work at the European Space Agency's ESTEC establishment in Noordwijk in the Netherlands. He joins ESA's project team to work on ExoMars, Europe's next mission to the red planet. He will be working on interfaces between ESA, the payload instrument teams and industry, helping to ensure that the experiments will be ready for the mission and performing well. CEPSAR members are planning several contributions to ExoMars, including two of the instruments.
The latest edition of BBC Sky At Night magazine features an article by Dr Ball, written shortly before his departure for ESA. In marking the 10th anniversary of the launch of the first element of the International Space Station, he comments on how the UK might best become involved in human spaceflight, suggesting that it would be better value for money for the UK to focus on sending a geologist to the Moon as part of an international mission, rather than joining the ISS now that it is almost complete.
Read more about the Sky at Night by following the link below. |
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Dr Andrew Ball |
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CEPSAR Scientist To Give Prestigious Lecture
PSSRI's Professor Monica Grady is to give this year's Royal Astronomical Society's 2008 Harold Jeffreys Lecture. The lecture entitled Astronomy by Microscope. The lecture will take place at the Geological Society's Lecture Theatre, Burlington House, Picadilly, London on Friday 14 November.
The lecture is open to all; admission is free for RAS members. For further details of location and times visit the RAS website by following the link below, or phone the Society on
020 7734 3307. |
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Professor Monica Grady |
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CEPSAR Increases Links With China
CEPSAR's links with the Chinese Academy of Science's Institute of Botany in Beijing were strengthened further recently with the highly successful completion of a joint RCUK/China-funded summer school on "Plants and Changing Climate". Research students from Leeds, Aberdeen, Oxford and The Open University joined fellow participants from across China for fieldwork in the mountains west of Beijing and lectures and practical work in the Institute of Botany. The lecture sessions covered the methodology and applications of plant palaeoclimate proxies as well as the fundamentals of climate modelling of the past, present and future. Lively debates focussed on the uncertainties that are inherent in both the proxies and the models and the practical work provided new data for assessing the precision of one of the most widely used plant proxies known as CLAMP.
Find out more about CLAMP by following the link below. |
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Summer School Participants at the Xiaolongmen Field Station west of Beijing. |
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CEPSAR, Moon and iTunes
As a part of a recent initiative to reach wider audiences,The Open University has teamed up with Apple's iTunes to make selected audio and visual content available as free downloads. CEPSAR researcher, Dr Mahesh Anand, has been involved in the production of an iTunes video about his research on Moon rocks as a part of University's efforts to showcase its research excellence. In this contribution, he talks about his research on lunar samples and also discusses the importance of Moon in the exploration of the Solar System, and in unravelling the past geological history of the Earth. You can download the video and find out more about lunar research at the Open University by clicking here.
Dr Anand and fellow CEPSAR member Dr David Rothery are Co-investigators on an X-ray spectrometer onboard Chandrayaan-1, Indian's first Moon mission, launched earlier today. Find out more about Chandrayaan-1 by clicking here and the UK's involvement in this mission by following the link below. |
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Founding CEPSAR Professor On American TV
Professor Bob Spicer recently featured in a NOVA TV special in the USA that focussed on the presence of dinosaurs near the North Pole just prior to the end of the Cretaceous Period 65 million years ago. The programme followed the driving of a tunnel into the permafrost-stabilised cliffs along the Colville River in north Alaska to recover the remains of dinosaurs which at the time they were alive, were at a latitude of 85°N. Prof. Spicer's particular interest was in the composition and structure of the polar forests at that time and what they tell us about the polar light regime and ancient climate.
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Image of Dinosaurs in North Alaska 70 million years ago by John Watson (The Open University). |
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Mars' South Pole Warmer Than Expected
First results from the Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) instrument on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter show a warmer than expected atmosphere above the winter pole, a result of a vigorous over-turning circulation. CEPSAR member Dr Stephen Lewis (a member of the MCS team) has developed a Mars global circulation model, run at The Open University and used to predict the strength of the polar warming and to interpret the new observations of the martian atmosphere made by MCS. The results were published in Nature Geoscience, you can read more on the results by following the link below. |
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NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
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CEPSAR Scientists Make Headlines In Ecuador
Scientists from CEPSAR's Earth and Environmental Sciences department have made press headlines in Ecuador's largest selling broadsheet "El Comercio" for research currently being carried out there.
The group led by Dr Will Gosling along with PhD students Macarena Cardenas and Joe Williams are carrying out fieldwork in Cosanga, Ecuador, collecting samples and studying volcanic ash deposits up to 200,000 years old for tree and plant fossil material down to the size of pollen grains. This enables a comparison to pollen grains found today and how the natural vegetation of the region has changed over time.
They are currently in the Andes collecting further samples for analysis. |
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CEPSAR scientists Dr William Gosling in the foreground and PhD students Joe Williams (centre) and Macarena Cardenas (right) analysing photos of plants from the Cosanga region.
Image: El Comercio |
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Boltysh Impact Crater Drill Core Samples Arrive In UK
One hundred and two core boxes containing over 400m of core from the Bolytsh impact crater in the Ukraine have arrived in Aberdeen as part of the NERC funded project into the environmental effects that resulted from this 65 million year old impact crater. CEPSAR scientists Dr Jon Watson, Prof. Simon Kelley and Dr Iain Gilmour joined their
University of Aberdeen colleague Dave Jolley for an exciting day doing an initial sampling of the core. Core recovery is over 95% providing the team with a near complete geological record starting from the impact rocks of the crater floor through nearly 400m of sediments from the lake that filled the crater after the impact.
The initial sampling comprised some 200 samples that will form part of the detailed geochemical and palynological examination that the team will be undertaking in the coming months. The project is examining the possibility for several impacts at the 65 million year old Cretaceous-Tertiary boundary and their separate and combined consequences for
life on Earth at the time. |
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Drs Dave Jolley (left) and Jon Watson unloading some of the cores taken from the Boltysh crater. |
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Nuffield Student Project With CEPSAR Member Wins Top European Prize And Invitation To Attend 2008 Nobel Prize Ceremony
Ms Elisabeth (Lilly) Muller, a Bedford High School student who carried out a Nuffield-funded lunar project with CEPSAR scientist, Dr Mahesh Anand, has won two top awards at the EU contest for Young Scientists, which was held in Copenhagen, Denmark, from 19-26 September, 2008. Lily's project entitled "From Microcosm to Magma Oceans: A Lunar Meteorite Perspective" was one of the three projects which received the first prize of ?7000. Elisabeth also received an honorary award for Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar, and to attend the 2008 Nobel Prize ceremonies, meet the Nobel Laureates and take part in a series of other scientific/cultural activities during the week. |
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Lilly Muller on her stand at the Young Scientists contest in Copenhagen. |
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BA Festival of Science - Liverpool 08
The Open University had a significant presence at Europe's largest science festival, the BA Festival of Science, held in Liverpool last month. The Festival was launched by TV-presenter Adam Hart-Davis, and began with a two-day hands-on Science Explosion event at the World Museum Liverpool.
The first day saw OU Region 08 Associate Lecturers Carole Arnold, Alan Knott, Harry Mountain and Sue Warburton run two of the OU's BLAST! activities: "Who stole the car?", a forensic science based activity and "Making electric motors", which even Adam Hart-Davis was amazed by. The second day saw Caroline Douglas, Vic Pearson, Alison Scott and Mark Jones run an Earth and planetary science activity incorporating a local geology quiz with an OU/BBC "Fossil Detectives" prize, fossils and Rocks From Space. The meteorites were a big hit and being able to touch a rock from Mars amazed people of all ages. Visitor numbers were very high at this event, which coincided with Capital of Culture events in the same area.
The OU also organised two star speakers - Professor Barrie Jones (Physics & Astronomy) and Professor Monica Grady (PSSRI) - to lead an afternoon panel debate about "The Search for Extraterrestrial Life". This event was very well attended, with many of the attendees being current OU students.
The Festival schools' programme was also treated to Rocks From Space and Rosetta on the Road workshops. Several students from Ysgol Glan Clwyd School, North Wales were interviewed handling the meteorites by Welsh TV channel S4C as they were the only Welsh speaking school to attend the Festival. At one point a pupil asked his teacher what the Welsh word was for meteorite - we are happy to share with you that the answer is "meteoryn".
The OU's contribution to the BA Festival had inspirational value for all of the participants but also gave a huge boost to the OU's profile as a local university in the Liverpool and Merseyside areas. |
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CEPSAR On BBC Radio 4's Material World
The Open University has once again collaborated with BBC Radio 4 to co produce 4 of the programmes in their popular, long running, natural science series, The Material World. Each programme will follow the research of a scientist from the University.
The scientists are Dr David Robinson, Senior Lecturer in Biological Science, and CEPSAR members Dr John Murray, Senior Research Fellow in Earth and Environmental Sciences (on Nov 20), John Zarnecki, Professor of Space Science and CEPSAR Director (on Nov 27), and Dr Vincent Gauci, Lecturer in Earth Systems and Ecosystem Science (on Dec 4).
For more information about the programmes go to open2.net by following the link below. |
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Induction For New Postgraduate Students
Tomorrow and Friday (2-3 October) sees the induction for all new postgraduate students to The Open University. The full programme can be seen in pdf format by following the link below.
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CEPSAR Students Attend ESA Workshop
PhD students from CEPSAR have recently attended a two day (24-25 September) workshop at the European Space Agencies Science and Technology headquarters based at ESTEC, Netherlands. The students were invited by ESA and the purpose of the workshop was to support the ongoing work of the student team in developing an instrument for a future moon orbiter mission, the European Student Moon Orbiter (ESMO).
The student's instrument is known as BioLEx (Biological Lunar Experiment) and has recently been made the primary science payload of ESMO following two years of hard work by the student team. The aim of BioLEx is to understand how the space environment affects simple lifeforms beyond Earth's protective ionosphere and into interplanetary space. The work carried out by the team is voluntary and performed in addition to their PhDs providing unparalleled skills development and the opportunity to experience a full space mission very early in their academic careers.
The teams' representatives at the workshop were Paul Wilkinson, Tim Tomkinson and Andrew Morris. Over the two days they met with ESA experts in biological instrument development, were given a tour of the resources available to the team and met with the ESMO mission co-ordinator. There were detailed meetings and all aspects of the teams work were discussed. The outcome of the workshop was a tremendous amount of feedback for the student team with ESA personnel becoming excited by the team's proposals. Invitations were made to the team to return further into the mission and to use the available state of the art laboratories on site.
Find out more about ESMO by following the link below. |
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Andrew Morris (left) was one of three CEPSAR students to attend a workshop at ESA's ESTEC Science and Technology Headquarters in the Netherlands. |
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CEPSAR Coffee And Cakes For Macmillan Cancer Support
Last Friday CEPSAR held a coffee and cake morning in support of Macmillan Cancer Support. Organised by Dr Louise Thomas as part of The Biggest Coffee Morning with other members baking a variety of delicious cakes the event raised over £120 for Macmillan.
The event was held in the newly refurbished social area in Earth and Environmental Sciences, pictured on the right. |
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Mongolian Mantle - Why Did It Melt?
Nigel Harris, CEPSAR’s Professor of Tectonics, and Alison Hunt a NERC-funded CEPSAR PhD student, have just returned from fieldwork in central Mongolia where they have studied a remote field of Quaternary volcanoes. Over the last one or two million years the Mongolian crust has been peppered by volcanic craters, some as young as a few thousand years old.
Most volcanoes on Earth form along plate margins, but the Mongolian vents lie about as far from a margin as is possible. Their presence raises some intriguing questions – are they related to the rifting of the crust further north around Lake Baikal, or to the Indian-Asian collision forming the Tibetan Plateau further south? The volcanoes are scattered around a geomorphological rise, the Hangai Dome – does this indicate an unusually hot upper mantle below? Answering such questions will tell us about how the structures of the Earth’s continental crust interact with the heat flow beneath it to cause magmatic activity at the surface.
Alison is studying the geochemistry of the lavas, working out how and when they have formed – she is also supervised by CEPSAR colleagues Dr Ian Parkinson, Dr Nick Rogers and Dr Tiffany Barry. Prof. Harris's work focuses on the fragments of mantle brought up by the basaltic flows, carrying information on the depths and temperatures from where they have originated. He was supported by an award from the W. G. Fearnsides fund of the Geological Society. |
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The crater of Togoo volcano. This is one of the remote Quaternary volcanoes in Central Mongolia studied by CEPSAR scientists. |
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CEPSAR Student Returns From 10 Week Trip Designing Asteroid Mission With NASA
CEPSAR PhD student Ben Rozitis has recently returned from a 10 week trip to NASA Ames Research Center, California. He participated in the 2008 Small Spacecraft Summer Study Project (S4P) on Near Earth Objects, run by NASA Ames' University Affiliated Research Center (UARC).
The programme consisted of 11 students competitively selected from Universities across the world, whose brief was to develop and test rigorously one or two concepts for NEO small spacecraft exploration. The team of 11 students (pictured right), advised by Erik Asphaug (UCSC), produced the Didymos Explorer (DEx for short) mission concept, a low cost space mission to the binary (and potentially hazardous) near Earth asteroid (65803) Didymos. The DEx mission aims to accomplish the first in situ investigation of a binary asteroid, and visit an uncommon and previously unvisited spectral class. DEx will take measurements of the two asteroidal bodies in the Didymos system, in order to characterise the surface geology, shapes and gravity fields, Yarkovksy and YORP effects, and macroscale surface composition variations.
After making imaging, spectroscopic, and thermal observations, it will conclude with the deployment of a tetrahedral picolander for in situ characterisation. The DEx mission would launch in November 2014, rendezvous with Didymos in May 2016, and conclude in October 2016. Ben provided expertise and knowledge in the spacecraft characterisation of the Yarkovsky and YORP effects acting upon an asteroid.
The work completed will have direct relevance to his Ph.D., which includes producing a new asteroid thermophysical model suitable for modelling the Yarkovsky and YORP effects. The DEx mission concept is currently under an in-house review by NASA Ames' Mission Design Center to assess the feasibility of the mission. If the review is successful then the DEx mission concept will be proposed at the next NASA Discovery round, where Ben will become a co-investigator for the project.
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New Departmental Seminar Room Opened
Following the recent refurbishment of part of one of CEPSAR's departments, the newly fitted seminar room in Earth and Environmental Sciences was opened yesterday. The honour of presenting the first seminar went to former Head of Earth Sciences, Professor Chris Hawkesworth who is now at the University of Bristol.
Prof. Hawkesworth presented a well received seminar entitled Granulites, Granites and Crustal Growth.
The seminar room occupies former laboratory space. Previously laboratories run by PSSRI and latterly an Ar-Ar and Noble Gas Laboratory for Earth and Environmental Sciences occupied this area. The space became available with new purpose built laboratories being constructed on the Walton Hall campus.
Pictured right, above is E&ES Head of Department Dr Nick Rogers in the empty laboratory in July, prior to the refurbishment, and below is Prof. Chris Hawkesworth giving the first talk yesterday in the newly opened E&ES seminar room. |
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Double Leverhulme Trust Success
Two prestigious Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowships have been won by CEPSAR scientists Dr Alison Blyth, currently a CEPSAR visiting research fellow from the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research in Cambridge, and Dr Carly Stevens, currently a post-doctoral research fellow in CEPSAR. The fellowships, which are co-supported by The Open University’s Faculty of Science for 3 years will enable Alison to pursue her research on organic geochemical proxies of environmental change and Carly to further her studies on nitrogen biogeochemistry.
“It’s a privilege for us to be able to support the careers of such promising young scientists” says the Faculty of Science’s Associate Dean for Research, Dr Iain Gilmour, “The Leverhulme scheme is one of the best, it will give a real boost to Alison’s and Carly’s research plans”. |
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CEPSAR Meets Modern Art
This evening, CEPSAR Director, Professor John Zarnecki, will be taking part in a discussion at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, London entitled “ From Spacemen to Undersea Adventures: John Zarnecki and Simon Patterson in conversation with Lisa Le Feuvre”. Simon Patterson is the artist who created the artwork outside the Robert Hooke Building on the Walton Hall Campus of The Open University entitled "Gort, klaadu barada nikto," an alien language line from the 1951 sci-fi film The Day The Earth Stood Still.
John and Simon discuss art, science, space and exploration with the Museum’s Curator of Contemporary Art, Lisa Le Feuvre, exploring systems of understanding and misunderstanding.
Find out more about this event by following the link below. |
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Gort, klaadu barada nikto - artwork outside the Robert Hooke building. |
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CEPSAR Researchers Find A New Breed Of Black Hole Star System
CEPSAR members Drs Robin Barnard, Simon Clark and Ulrich Kolb have identified a new class of black hole system, after observing two exceptionally rare binaries with the XMM-Newton satellite observatory. IC10 X-1 has been recently confirmed as a black hole + Wolf-Rayet binary, and NGC300 X-1 is thought to be one. Only one other candidate is known, making these systems ~1 in a trillion. Both IC10 X-1 and NGC300 X-1 exhibited strong time variability characteristic of the typical black hole high state; however, the corresponding emission spectra (i.e. colours) were completely different.
They believe the difference may be that IC10 X-1 and NGC300 X-1 are permanently bright, while normal black hole binaries are transient; the transient BH binaries may lose their corona during the outburst, while the IC10 X-1 and NGC300 X-1 keep theirs.
This paper was published in Astronomy & Astrophysics 488,
p 697 (September 2008), and was one of three papers highlighted by the editors of the journal as being of particular interest to those outside the field.
Find out more about this article by following the link below.
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Major Milestone For Rosetta Approaches
CEPSAR PhD student Dan Andrews (pictured right) working on the Rosetta mission, nervously awaits to see if an asteroid fly-by passes off without a hitch.
The Rosetta spacecraft is about halfway through its 6.3 billion kilometre journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Dan has been involved with the Ptolemy instrument, a GCMS (Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometer), onboard the comet lander Philae, currently mated to the Rosetta spacecraft. In the past few weeks Ptolemy has successfully completed a comprehensive test of its mass spectrometer, returning valuable calibration spectra. Rosetta is now fast approaching its next major milestone, a flyby of the ~5 km wide asteroid Steins, at a relative speed of 8.6 km/s (31,000 km/h). The closest approach to the
asteroid will be made at 19:37 BST on Friday 5th September, at a distance of
800 km.
Rosetta is currently at a distance of 2.4 AU (360,000,000 km) from
Earth, with the flyby being carried out autonomously, without direct
communications - first re-contact with Rosetta should be made a nail-biting
90 minutes after the closest approach, with images of the asteroid and other
data being returned during the night to the eagerly awaiting scientists.
If all goes to plan then Rosetta will continue on its journey with further
flybys of Earth in 2009 and asteroid Lutetia in 2010 before finally arriving
at the comet in 2014. |
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After The Olympics........An Opportunity To Attend Beijing Summer School. Deadline Imminent.
Founding CEPSAR Director Professor Bob Spicer and Chinese colleagues at the Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing have been awarded funding by RCUK/China to hold a Summer School in Beijing on the topic of "Plants and Changing Climate".
The school, which will be held in Beijing from 5 to 14 October 2008, will provide research training on what the past tells of the future using a range of palaeoclimate proxies, and climate model comparisons. Emphasis will be on vegetation dynamics in the context of climate change, the strengths and weaknesses of land plants as palaeoclimate proxies, evaluating uncertainties in quantitative methods and exploring how best to undertake and evaluate comparisons between proxy data and model retrodictions/predictions. Two days of fieldwork, followed by a week of laboratory practical sessions and seminars make up the programme. No prior knowledge of any of the subject areas involved will be assumed so as to make the programme as accessible as possible.
The school is aimed at established researchers, postdoctoral researchers and postgraduate students in the climate change, Earth and Plant Sciences communities. Six funded places (travel to and from Beijing to a maximum of £650 and accommodation and subsistence in Beijing) are available for UK participants. Applicants are requested to supply (1) a CV (2) a short (maximum 500 words) statement explaining how attendance at the Summer School in Beijing is likely to be beneficial to their research and (3) a letter of support from an academic referee familiar with the applicant's research. CVs and statements should be emailed to: earth-sciences-recruitment@open.ac.uk. Applicants will be informed of the outcome of the selection process shortly after the deadline for applications which is 8 September 2008.
To find out more details about the Summer School follow the link below. |
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Shining New Light On Changes In The Ozone Layer
Researchers from The Open University, University of Sheffield, Imperial College London and University of Cambridge have developed an ingenious way to reveal long term records of how much ultraviolet light has been reaching the Earth's surface. The work is published today in Nature Geoscience.
Ultraviolet radiation is harmful to life but fortunately is screened out by our stratospheric ozone layer. Yet this protective layer is not always at full strength and its variability is governed by both human and natural influences. Ozone depleting chemicals released by industry, natural cyclic changes in the strength of sunlight, volcanic events and climate change all have an effect on the thickness of the ozone layer.
Understanding how the ozone layer, and the damaging ultraviolet light it blocks, varies through time is difficult because the instruments that record the changes are a relatively recent development. The team has avoiding this limitation by studying the chemistry of spores that are produced each year by clubmoss plants. These spores can be found in collection centres called herbaria or extracted from lake sediments or peat cores.
Read more on this story by following the link below. |
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Lycopodium plants - parts of which were analysed for the study.
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