Migrations #conference starts today! See the attachment for a list of free public events - I'll be moderating the film keynote on Friday. Come on out and sit in the a/c - escape the heat dome AND learn ;)
Have you ever thought about how dinosaurs lived on a warm, swampy Earth and how we live on one that’s cold enough to keep pretty much the entirety of Greenland and Antarctica buried under kilometers-thick sheets of solid ice and wondered, hmm, how did we get from there to here? The short answer is that it took 50 million years of declining atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations and dropping temperatures, not to mention building an ice sheet or two. For the longer story of the last 50 million years of climate change, including some of the reasons why, catch this episode of our podcast with Dr De La Rocha! You’ll hear about plate tectonics and continental drift, silicate weathering, carbonate sedimentation, and the spectacular effects the growth of Earth’s ice sheets have had on Earth’s climate. There are also lessons here for where anthropogenic global warming is going and whether or not its effects have permanently disrupted the climate system. Fun fact: the total amount of climate change between 50 million years ago and now dwarfs what we’re driving by burning fossil fuels, and yet, what we’re doing is more terrifying, in that it’s unfolding millions of times faster.
!!Nerd alert!! If you're interested in the primary scientific literature on the subject, these four papers are a great place to start:
-Dutkiewicz et al (2019) Sequestration and subduction of deep-sea carbonate in the global ocean since the Early Cretaceous. Geology 47:91-94.
-Müller et al (2022) Evolution of Earth’s plate tectonic conveyor belt. Nature 605:629–639.
-Rae et al (2021) Atmospheric CO2 over the last 66 million years from marine archives. Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 49:609-641.
-Westerfeld et al (2020) An astronomically dated record of Earth’s climate and its predictability over the last 66 million years. Science 369: 1383–1387.
#CFP for "Symposium on Black Methods in Science, Technology, and Innovation Research in Canada and Beyond" closing today -- there's still time to submit!
@petersuber@academicchatter It's a bit strange that most of the Nature commentary goes out of its way to quote other Chinese scientists who claim things are not that bad, actually.
I've gotten to that delirious, sleep-deprived point of the submission process where looking up a list of species names has me thinking that "Gorilla gorilla gorilla" is something I need to share with other humans.
Can #UK#academics explain these spammy emails from publication agencies who want to feature my academic articles? I've been told this this a scam, but I'm not sure how -- do they charge money to do this? Is this related to the dreaded #REF?
As far as I'm concerned, if some publication wants to write a feature based on one of my publications... go for it. You don't need to contact me about it.
Stoked for the MIgrations: ALECC 2024 Conference next week! If you're in #WaterlooRegion, come check it out!
PS: the reception snacks on the first night actually start with registration at 6:15; the library closes at 9pm so we don't have much time to hang around and eat.
Seven a.m. and I cannot sleep. Very happy to say that my doctoral defense yesterday went as well as it could.
So, as my co-supervisor put it, I'm now "on the academic market" :D
I think the best part of this (except for my wonderful colleagues and friends, who celebrated me yesterday) is that I may now write about whatever I feel like (after finishing the projects I'm already involved in …)! #PhDlife @academicchatter
I'm invited to be jury of a #PhD thesis in #Porto 🇵🇹 which defence could be attended either in person or remotely. I find a decent route by #train from #Marseille 🇫🇷 , via #Madrid 🇪🇸 for a total of 4 trains to reach the destination and about 2 days in the train / stations, both ways for 2 days in Porto.
Regardless of the cost,, and considering the potentiel benefit in terms of exemplarity, would you attend in person ?
@AlexSanterne
I think you know the answer already. 😃
And I'm pretty sure it will be also a better experience for the candidate, in particular if you have the chance to talk to him/her in person before the defence. @jknodlseder@academicchatter
Let me count some ways that Academia Edu has declined in its zeal to monetize. The latest is that no URLs in articles that I've seen are active links anymore!
Before, non-members could scroll down to read articles, but now they have to provide personal info.
As a free member I'm usually hit with a pop-up on arrival. They flatter users by citing a large but false number of mentions to get them to become paying members. One Indian professor was boasting on FB thousands of citations, but I found only 27 for him on Google Scholar. When I pointed that out, he blocked me.
There were Academia Letters and then journals, first free and then pay to publish (like $2,000).
Academia Edu can amplify our works if they want, with nearly 300 million users signed up. That's the attraction to us, but their temptation to exploit. Comments?
After many criticisms of Academia Edu, I didn't have space to discuss alternative research repositories like ResearchGate, or open access repositories like Knowledge Commons (which also maintains a sizeable Mastodon instance) -- details under: https://hcommons.social/@SteveMcCarty/112635424860940626
ResearchGate purports to be more exclusive but still allows non-members to scroll down to read in-text articles. However, they might also be tempted toward #enshittification (in Cory Doctorow's colorful parlance). To an extent we have to hold our nose ;-) to gain the network effects of Academia Edu and ResearchGate, but if they become too unethical or difficult to reach readers, we can move our works and links to an open access repository like Knowledge Commons. Most members use it additionally for blogging, but I recommend it as a free Website host as well, such as my central Website on Japan, online education, bilingualism, and the academic life: https://japanned.hcommons.org