Australia Day

Wednesday was Australia Day, the day in which all Australians celebrate being Australian and being in Australia, not a difficult concept. It started a couple of days before Monday night when their's a special public lecture given by a prominent Australian, (or in this case a Brit, Michael Parkinson).  On the Tuesday afternoon there's the Australian of the Year Awards at which the best Australian of the last twelve months is given some applause.  Nobody had heard of him (he did some charity work apparently) and he proceeded to spend the next day and a half conducting interviews bashing the countries flag, anthem and head of state.  Good choice me thinks. Following this there was Australian superstars The Wiggles who gave a kids concert and this was followed by a more grown-up concert featuring several Australian acts of varying quality and lots of clips and presenters congratulating everybody for their Aussie spirit in the face of the floods. I went along to the second concert on the lawns of parliament (which is a cool place to have it) post sailing (where we got a good view of some planes flying round in circles, deliberatlely)

Parliament in the dark

Bad camera phone shot of the stage.

Wednesday is Australia Day proper and we clebrated in true Aussie style, with a BBQ and listening to Triple J's Hot 100 (a music countdown of the best 100 songs of the last year on a decent radio station).  Both of which I believe are actually compulsory on Australia Day, and failure to do so would be punishable by law if it weren't for the fact that the Police also have to be having a BBQ and listening to the radio.

We then went for a walk down to the lake, which was actually a bit of a stupid idea because it was so hot and even an afternoon walk was hot and sweaty and not that pleasant, so we eventually found a space overlooking the lake and sat under a tree.

 Sailing on the lake

 The Carillion, a big set of bells, and a nice lakeside setting, with mountains behind.

 Then we headed round to Commonwealth Park, also on the lake, for the evening's festivities, which included some rowing races.

 And some dragonboat racing.

 All in the the very centre of Canberra (the big circular thing is the Captain Cook Memorial Jet, noramlly a fountain when its on)

 And it got dark

 And there were fireworks, and very good ones too, using the settings of the lake and the bridge and Carillion well.  Not loads but enough to keep you interested and very well done.  A very very good display. And a good day all round.



Stal Polishing

Previously on "My PhD", we went to Tumut to get several stalagmites cut.  Then we drilled little pieces out to analyse them on the Krystalloflex to check whether they were calcite or aragonite and also sent some samples off to be dated.  Over these couple of weeks I'm spending a few afternoons polishing the slabs we cut out the middle of the stalagmites.  This involves a polishing device which rotates different grade polishing things (or some such technical explanation, its late and I'm tired).  Its attached to a hose so fires high pressure water at the same time in that water and electricity mix that makes me nervous.  There are seven grades of polishing to get the slabs level and get rid of bumps and scratches and then to polish so that they are nice and smooth, and shiny even when dry.  It takes ages.  These three pieces took two and a half hours to polish both sides.  Its quite tiring because the machine is uncomfortable to use and the hose isn't that well connected so it occasionally comes off and sprays me in the face and gets me soaking wet.

 This is what the stal slabs look like before:

And this is what the stal looks life afterwards.  Actually it doesn't look much better in these pics I'll admit.  But it really is easier to see all the deatils, theres contrast and the layers are much sharper, and you can see more sub mm structures.  All of this is very good.

So we now can analyse the stal structure in more detail, we can tell better where things are going on such as changes in structure, hiatuses in stalagmite growth.  Having a level smooth slab also makes it easier to drill consistent powders down the middle when we get to that stage.  What I need now are some dates so I can work out exactly which of the collected stalagmites I need to use.  Unfortunatly this bit is outsourced to Melbourne. And so we wait.

England beating Australia, its just not cricket.

Every year there's a one-day cricket match held in Canberra as part of an away team's tour against an Australian side picked by the Prime Minister.  Its called the PM's Eleven, oddly enough.  So every four years its England, and post Ashes, I thought it would be a great oppourtunity to see some of the stars who have retained the ashes (It has been so much fun being in Australia the past couple of months and mocking all the australian cricket fans!) and spend a day watching some good cricket, with some friends. BH, an australian cricket fan and I went along with BF and EG (a German and Canadian respectively) to teach them the fine game that is cricket.  We've been indoctrinating EG for a few weeks and he actually now understands the rules and whats going on, and, dare I say it, even enjoys cricket!

The England team contained a few of the victorious ashes group, especially the batters since some of them only had to bat six times during the entire ashes series!! And also gave the one-day bowlers a chance to stretch their legs.  The PMs eleven is usually pretty similar, a few young guys trying to make their mark, a couple of the older experienced cricketers and a few of the one-day team warming up for the upcoming series.  So it was a damp but still warm (and very hot in the bursts when the sun did come out) day and a good time was had.

 Dignitaries in the middle, tossing coins for a laugh.

 The start was delayed by 45 minutes due to rain

 Australia bat first, setting a modest total with wickets falling reasonably quickly after a good opening partnership.

 KP fielded on the boundary near us on occasion, but wouldn't autograph any of the kids bats between balls or overs.  Grouchy sod.

There was another rain delay, and another later on.

Collingwood took an excellent catch in front of us. Here he is being all captainy.

Brett Lee was playing for the Aussies,

 An English batsmen looking suprised at a rare decent Australian ball.

 Runs!

 In the end, a comfortable victory, with wickets in hand, the run-chase was carefully timed and executed well.

The PM, Julia Gillard makes a speech or two during the awards ceremony.

Of course, since then, the sun has returned, it has been hot and sunny and England have begun losing at cricket again.  The true Australian summer has finally arrived!!!

Brisbane Underwater

This is a news story that has been across the world over the past couple of days so I won't go over the details apart from an interesting fact:

The area of Queensland underwater is bigger than France and Germany, thats a lot of water.

I've had my first scientific paper accepted for publication (subject to a major revision of course), which, as its on the subject of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) now makes me qualified to talk about the flooding on a scientific level.  I went over the fact we're in a La Nina year in a previous post on the rain in Canberra at the start of December and the flooding in Queensland is an extension of that.  Rainfall in Australia should return to normal levels by April.

However I focused on sea surface temperatures, which, as this very interesting article discusses, may not be the whole story: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/42858.html
The strength of a La Nina is typically measured by the sea-surface temperature in the eastern equatorial Pacific which as this page demonstrates (http://ggweather.com/enso/oni.htm), is lower than we've had it for a reasonable but not a long time. However as the planet is warming up the baseline of temperatures is rising. Thus the absolute temperature may not be drastically low, but the anomaly may be larger than it appears as its dropping from a now higher baseline.  Thus it is the ocean pressures (the southern oscillation part of ENSO, typically measured as the air pressure difference between Tahiti and Darwin) which reveal that this year may actually be a big big event, the biggest since 1917 (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/current/soihtm1.shtml), as these are recording a much larger anomaly, and help control the actual weather that this climatic phenomenon tends to cause.  This is the kind of thing I find interesting! (Although I feel that those people writing the comments section ought to be shot for stupidity, the article is hardly about global warming, the fact we have a strong La Nina has nothing (probably) to do with the changing climate, its just how we measure it that we're having to adapt (surely proof in itself that the climate is getting hotter if we're having to change how we measure things to cope)  Grrrr!)

Of course its not just Queensland underwater.  The second major story on the news tonight was the floods in Victoria, the third was flooding in Tasmania, and the fourth was flooding in New South Wales.  The floods in Brazil came in about eighth!

A department divided

One thing that was apparent at the department christmas do just before the break was the number of people that I didn't recognise.  The hidden half of the department emerged.  And I heard lots of people saying the same thing. As someone who is pretty much always at the departmental seminars, beer and nibbles, and makes it to morning coffee at least once a week I don't think its my fault, it's theirs!
The problem, at least in part lies in the division of the department on two sites (though this doesn't fully explain everybody).  Historically, when the university was first set up many of the subjects were split into a research section (research school) and a section (department), so that those who didn't want to teach didn't have to. The teaching section continued to do some research though.  It lead to a few quirks, not all universities have an experimental petrology group, we had two, working completly independantly in what was effectively two departments.  This of course, is rather silly, so the two sections were united a few years back into one body. But having two buildings, especially when they're reasonably far apart, has created a bit of a them and us approach.  As part of the environmental section of the department, we're especially split between the two buildings, other groups are less so.  LB, one of my best friends in the department is down the hill in the "other" department. But its also the case that the honours students (equivalent of an undergrad masters in Oxford) are also a bit isolated from the hustle and bustle of the larger research school.  However, there are some positives, given that the first year scientists are not yet tied to a department, keeping teaching space close to the other sciences and the undergrad halls certainly increases footfall.

 This is about to change though, with the destruction of one of the buildings which no-one really used anyway (it was old and basically a tin-shed) and the creation of a brand-spanking new 9th building (we have quite a few!) which will contain lecture facilities, undergrad teaching space and office and lab space.  The department will eventually become one on a single site and hopefully the integration will be a little better.

Apparently they want to build this place within a year, erm, really?? I know the old building didn't have foundations so the site was cleared very quicky, but still.  Good luck to them!

Mint Slices

Along with the Tim-Tam (which I've yet to review properly on this blog!) the Mint Slice is another aussie biscuit favourite.  Unfortunately, unlike the Tim-Tam, the Mint Slice just isn't that good.  Its just a bit soft, and mint kind of works better when crunchy.  Its certainly not up to a Viscount biscuit (the closest UK equivalent) or a mint Club. A bit disappointing to be fair.