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29 January 2009
My next self-indulgence…
…might have to be this t-shirt. “God’s Volcano Project” from BustedTees When I saw the title, I immediately thought, “Obviously they’re talking about the God from Monty Python and the Holy Grail, and he’s going to bust out with ‘I TOLD YOU PEOPLE TO QUIT WITH THE PSALMS!’”
15 December 2008
100 (geologic) things meme
Looks like another fun meme going around the geoblogosphere. Let’s see how I score… (Things I’ve done are in bold, and my comments are in italics.) 1. See an erupting volcano 2. See a glacier3. See an active geyser such as those in Yellowstone, New Zealand or the type locality of Iceland4. Visit the Cretaceous/Tertiary (KT) Boundary. Possible locations include Gubbio, Italy, Stevns Klint, Denmark, the Red Deer River Valley …
6 December 2008
The Fish Lake Plateau: “A most eligible summer camping-place” (Accretionary Wedge #14/15)
I haven’t done a whole lot of research yet, but I always enjoy a good chance to get out in the field. For my undergraduate thesis, this meant spending a few weeks in south-central Utah, on the High Plateaus. The work was part of the 2006 NSF Fish Lake Research Experience for Undergraduates, a joint effort between the College of William & Mary and Coastal Carolina University. The project was …
29 October 2008
More evidence for water on Mars
And guess how they know? Opal! (Here’s another article, and here is a link to a PDF of the original article in Geology.) Score for mineralogy! This interests me at the moment for a number of reasons, besides the fact that finding out anything new about Mars is just cool. First reason: I’m taking a remote sensing class right now, and we’re getting ready to do projects that involve tasks …
23 October 2008
Miracle Mud
On Thursday, our department lecture series brought Dr. Lynda Williams of Arizona State University to talk about antibacterial clays. Now, mineralogy was never my strong point, but this talk brought a whole new perspective to it – that mineralogy can contribute to medical research! For a little background: There’s a kind of mycobacteria (yep, that’s spelled right) that exists in African swamps that gets onto the pincers of a biting …
Jessica Ball is a volcanologist at the U.S. Geological Survey, researching volcanic hydrothermal systems and stability, and doing science communication for the California Volcano Observatory. She previously worked at the Geological Society of America's Washington DC Policy Office, learning about the intersection of Earth science and legislative affairs. Her Mendenhall postdoc and PhD focused on how water affects the stability of volcanoes, and involved both field investigations and numerical modeling applications. Her blogging covers a range of topics, from her experiences in academic geosciences to science outreach and communication to her field and lab work in volcanology.