This week was notable for two major milestones. On Wednesday, the United States and China announced a joint plan to reduce carbon dioxide emissions in the two countries (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/12/world/asia/china-us-xi-obama-apec.html). That same day, a spacecraft successfully landed on a comet nucleus for the first time (http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/13/science/space/european-space-agencys-spacecraft-lands-on-comets-surface.html?rref=science/space&module=Ribbon&version=context®ion=Header&action=click&contentCollection=Space%20%26%20Cosmos&pgtype=article). (The latter came just 16 years after Bruce Willis acted as though he’d accomplished the same feat in a movie.)
Another item of good news this week is that Yael Kiro, a Postdoctoral Research Scientist in our Geochemistry Division, has received the 2014 Bentor Award from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem for the best Ph.D. thesis in 2013. The same award was given four years earlier to Adi Torfstein, a former Postdoctoral Research Scientist and Lamont Assistant Research Professor at the Observatory and now an Assistant Professor at the Hebrew University (http://earth.huji.ac.il/Bentor.asp).
The Lamont Hall Restoration Committee met for the first time on Monday afternoon. The committee, chaired by Mo Raymo, has been asked to recommend future uses for the ground floor of Lamont Hall, once the library closes, and also to provide advice on renovations needed to improve the building’s infrastructure and functionality while restoring aspects of the building’s historical design and condition. The committee – which also includes John Armbruster, Mary Ann Brueckner, Bärbel Hönisch, Jon Nichols, Paul Richards, Lynn Sykes, and Mary Pasquince from the Center for Agriculture and Food Security, as well as Pat O’Reilly and Pete Sobel as ex officio members – welcomes input from campus colleagues.
Lamont Hall was the site Wednesday of the Observatory’s Annual Chili Cookoff. Organized by our graduate students and boasting a long and distinguished history (http://lamontlog.tumblr.com/post/102536868702/2014-chili-cook-off), the competition this year was described by Kyle Frischkorn as “fierce.” The winners were John Templeton, Zach Eilon, Logan Brenner, and Cassy Rose in the categories of meat chili, veggie chili, cornbread, and dessert, respectively. Congratulations to our winners, and thanks to all who had a part in the organization of festivities!
On Thursday morning, I attended the monthly meeting of the Council of Deans. Agenda topics included best practices on faculty searches to ensure that a diverse range of candidates is considered, planning for campus emergencies, and quality-of-life issues for faculty, including tenure clock stoppage for parental relief, schooling and child care benefits, housing, and retirement incentives.
A paper by Taro Takahashi, John Goddard, Cheng-Chuan Ho, Colm Sweeney, and coauthors in a recent issue of Marine Chemistry published global maps of monthly pH values in ocean surface waters from measurements of carbon dioxide partial pressure, total alkalinity, and nutrient concentrations. Their work documents seasonal variations and longer-term secular changes in ocean acidity across the world’s oceans and provides a benchmark for future studies. A story by Kim Martineau posted last Friday on our website (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/news-events/new-global-maps-detail-human-caused-ocean-acidification) has drawn media attention this week (http://motherboard.vice.com/read/acidic-oceans-detailed-map-1110).
Our scientists have been active in public outreach this week. On Wednesday night, Meredith Nettles gave a lecture at the American Museum of Natural History. Her talk was on the topic of “Glacial earthquakes: Using seismic and GPS observations to map changes in glaciers and ice sheets worldwide” (http://www.amnh.org/calendar/glacial-earthquakes-using-seismic-and-gps-observations-to-map-changes-in-glaciers-and-ice-sheets-worldwide). Also on Wednesday, a link was posted on the Lamont website to Maya Tolstoy’s radio interview as part of the Conversations with Creative Women series on The Sandi Klein Show (http://the51percent.podbean.com/e/dr-maya-tolstoy/).
Adam Sobel had a particularly busy week of outreach events. On Monday, he held a reading at Book Culture (http://www.bookculture.com/event/112th-adam-sobels-storm-surge) of his new book, Storm Surge. He was interviewed midweek by The Village Voice on the role of the polar vortex in New York City’s latest bout of cold weather (http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2014/11/polar_vortex_to_hit_nyc_this_week_twitter_reacts.php). And on Thursday evening, he gave an Earth Institute Distinguished Lecture on “Predictions and responses to climate change: Lessons from Hurricane Sandy.”
On Monday evening next week, Ben Holtzman will lead a reprise staging of SeismoDome: Sights and Sounds of Earthquakes and Global Seismology, in Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History. If you missed the premiere last June of the video and audio exhibit of earthquake seismicity and wave propagation that Ben created in partnership with Jason Candler, a musician and sound engineer affiliated with the Tisch School of the Arts at New York University, you should make every effort to see the second show. A reservation is required (http://www.amnh.org/learn-teach/adults/hayden-planetarium-programs/seismodome-sights-and-sounds-of-earthquakes-and-global-seismology2).
This afternoon’s Earth Science Colloquium will be given by Kristine Larson, a Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at the University of Colorado, Boulder (http://spot.colorado.edu/~kristine/Kristine_Larson/Home.html). An expert in the use of the Global Positioning System for geodesy, Kristine will be speaking on the topic of “GPS can’t do that, can it?” (http://www.ldeo.columbia.edu/files/uploaded/image/file/Kristine%20Larson.pdf). If you’d like to learn what GPS can do that you thought it could not, I hope that you will join me in the audience.
Sean