AWESOME RAD
All Earth Science Folk- AWESOME RAD is a weekly hour-long session at the Earth Sciences Department of Syracuse University where students, faculty, and research staff discuss a recently published Geological Science article. The discussion is a round-table type of format with tea, coffee, and cookies and no true moderator. A volunteer will begin the session with a brief description of what the article was about and the discussion will go from there. AWESOME RAD was created to provide -a stimulus to read papers outside of personal research topics -a setting that eliminates the professor-student boundaries that can limit scientific discussion -an introduction to critical evaluation of science articles for undergraduate and new graduate students -a voluntary learning environment (in contrast to traditional university lecture courses) How it works. Each week during the semester, a short published article is selected and distributed to the department email listing. Anyone interested in taking part in the session will read the article (if they can get to it) and then attend the discussion. Simple as that. As of December 2011, AWESOME RAD has had 3 successful seasons at the Earth Sciences Department The articles are typically selected from GEOLOGY, PNAS, Science, Nature, Nature Geoscience, etc. because by targeting shorter articles, more participants may be able to find the time to fit reading it into their teaching and research schedules. The Spring 2013 Awesome RAD reading list: 1/06/13 "Mixing of Source Populations Recorded in Detrital Zircon U-Pb Age Spectra of Modern River Sands" by Joel Saylor and others; Journal of Geology, January, 2013. 1/16/13 "A detection of Milankovitch frequencies in global volcanic activity" by Kutterolf and others (2012). 1/23/13 "Causation and avoidance of catastrophic flooding along the Indus River, Pakistan" by Jim Syvitski and Bob Brakenridge (2013). 1/30/13 "Hot summers in the Bighorn Basin during the early Paleogene" by Kathryn Snell and others; Geology, January, 2013. 2/6/13 "Mixing of Source Populations Recorded in Detrital Zircon U-Pb Age Spectra of Modern River Sands" by Joel Saylor and others; Journal of Geology, January, 2013. 2/13/13 "Earth is (mostly) fl at: Apportionment of the fl ux of continental sediment over millennial time scales" by Jane Willenbring and others; Geology, January, 2013. 2/20/13 "Zn isotope evidence for immediate resumption of primary productivity after snowball Earth" by Marcus Kunzmann and others; GEOLOGY, January 2013; v. 41; no. 1; p. 27–30. 2/27/13 "Applying Benford’s law to volcanology" by A. Geyer and J. Martí; GEOLOGY, 2012; v. 40; p. 327–330. A copy of this puppy can be found at: 3/06/13 "Rethinking the emplacement and evolution of zoned plutons: Geochronologic evidence for incremental assembly of the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, California" by Coleman, Gray, and Glazner; GEOLOGY, 2004; v. 32, p. 433–43640. 3/20/13 "Detrital zircons indicate no drainage link between southern California rivers and the Colorado Plateau from mid-Cretaceous through Pliocene" by Ingersoll and others (GEOLOGY, 2013; v. 41; p. 311–31404. 3/27/13 "Detrital zircons indicate no drainage link between southern California rivers and the Colorado Plateau from mid-Cretaceous through Pliocene" by Ingersoll and others (GEOLOGY, 2013; v. 41; p. 311–31404. 4/03/13 "Are Mantle Plumes Periodic?" by Rampino and Prokoph (EOS, 2013; p. 1130-115). 4/10/13 "Intra-oceanic subduction shaped the assembly of Cordilleran North America" by Sigloch and Mihalynuk (Nature, April, 2013). 4/17/13 "Zircon U-Pb Geochronology Links the End-Triassic Extinction with the Central Atlantic Magmatic Province" by Blackburn and others (Science - 21 March 2013). 4/24/13 "A Vestige of Earth’s Oldest Ophiolite by Furnes and others that appeared in v. 315 of Science in 2007. 8/29/12 “Terrestrial carbon isotope excursions and biotic change during Palaeogene hyperthermals” by Abels, Clyde, Gingerich, Hilgen, Fricke, Bowen, and Lourens.” 9/05/12 “Tracing two orogenic cycles in one eclogite sample by Lu–Hf garnet chronometry” by Herwartz, Nagel, Münker, Scherer, and Froitzheim. 9/12/12 “Methane contamination of drinking water accompanying gas-well drilling and hydraulic fracturing” by Osborn, Vengosh, Warner, and Jackson. 9/19/12 "Short-term episodicity of Archaean plate tecton" Jean-François Moyen and Jeroen van Hunen, March 2012 9/26/12 "Griffin et al. 2011, Archean lithospheric mantle beneath Arkansas: Continental growth by microcontinent accretion" 10/3/12 "Lowland–upland migration of sauropod dinosaurs during the Late Jurassic epoch" Henry C. Fricke, Justin Hencecroth1, & Marie E. Hoerner 10/10/12 Pollitz et al., 2012- "The 11 April 2012 east Indian Ocean earthquake triggered large aftershocks worldwide" 10/17/12 "April 2012 intra-oceanic seismicity off Sumatra boosted by the Banda-Aceh megathrust" by Delescluse and others (2012) 10/31/12 "Detrital zircon record and tectonic setting" by Cawood and others, 2012, Geology, v. 40; p. 875–878 11/14/12 "Professional Physical Scientists Display Tenacious Teleological Tendencies: Purpose-Based Reasoning as a Cognitive Default" by Kelemen and others (2192) 11/28/12 "Pumice from the ∼3460 Ma Apex Basalt, Western Australia: A natural laboratory for the early biosphere" by Brasier and others (2012) To see examples, the Spring 2012 AWESOME RAD reading list was:
Although it just isn’t going to be the same without our founding fathers, Joe and Jim, for those not yet caught up on learning our craft and/or who are interested in reading and talking about some fun science papers, Pat Bickford and Dan Curewitz and Bruce Wilkinson will continue the tradition of AWESOME-RADing this year. To that end, we will meet (with appropriate refreshments) in 115 Heroy on most Wednesday afternoons from 3:30 on toward 5:00 (depending on fervor of discussions).
Anyone, at any level, that is interested in any aspect of these matters, is warmly invited to attend our gatherings. Anyone, at any level, that has seen a paper that they would like to be put into the pool for consideration should send a PDF to Pat (mebickfo@syr.edu) or Dan (dcurewit@syr.edu) or Bruce (eustasy@syr.edu).
Hope to see you there!
Pat, Dan, and Bruce
The Fall 2012 Awesome RAD reading list was:
10/24/12 “Negative C-isotope excursions at the Permian-Triassic boundary linked to volcanism” by Shen and others 2012 Geology (v. 40, p. 963–966)
12/5/12 " Apatite 4He/3He and (U-Th)/He Evidence for an Ancient Grand Canyon" by Floowers and Farley" (2012).