How Not to Lose Wireless GPS Receivers

In Fall of 2005 I participated in "The Stretch", the trimester-long geology field camp run by Dartmouth College. In recent years, the field camp has taken place in the western continental US. Many years ago, the field camp also took place in Central America, Hawaii, and other locations.

The year I went on The Stretch, we studied geology in Wyoming, Montana, Utah, Nevada, California, and Arizona. We drove thousands of miles and did dozens of geology field projects, ranging from small one-day assignments to week-long mapping exercises. I recently discovered my old field notebooks and journal (I often wrote about my day in the evenings) from The Stretch, so I'll probably blog occasionally about my field camp experience and post some pictures. I've already written about our ternary personalities exercise.

I had an amazing time on The Stretch. I was very lucky to spend an entire trimester studying geology with a wonderful group of students, professors, and TAs. Except for the driving days, I spent every day outside. I came back tan and happy with a head filled with geology. I often look back on photos from The Stretch and think about field camp fondly.

For our first mapping exercises on The Stretch, we learned traditional compass-and-paper mapping. Later on, we did some electronic mapping using tablet PCs and wireless GPS receivers. During previous Stretches, the somewhat expensive wireless GPS receivers would occasionally go missing. To solve this problem, one of our field instructors came up with a creative solution: velcroing the wireless GPS receivers to the tops of Dartmouth "Rox" hats. Students using the receivers had to wear these ridiculous hats. Periodically throughout the day, the professor would count the number of hat receivers to ensure that none had been lost.    

Me + "Rox" Hat + Wireless GPS Receiver, Arizona, Fall 2005.

But why a "Rox" hat? The Department of Earth Science at Dartmouth is known as the "Rox" Department as a play on Dartmouth's motto. The college motto is "Vox clamantis in deserto" which translates to "A voice crying in the wilderness." This is sort of a strange motto, but it comes from Dartmouth being a "frontier school" when it was founded back in 1769. Actually, Dartmouth is still somewhat in the wilderness-- the Appalachian Trail even runs right through campus.

The Department of Earth Science has its own version of the Dartmouth motto: "Rox clamantis in deserto" which translates to "A rock crying in the wilderness." Well, not really. "Rox" isn't actually a Latin word. But it sounds cool. It's okay- geologists aren't always the best linguists. If the motto were in proper Latin, I think it would actually be "Petra clamantis in deserto" or perhaps "Lapis clamantis in deserto." "Petra" and "Lapis" are some of my favorite words, but I have to admit they're not as cool-sounding as the imaginary "Rox." The Department of Earth Science also has its own version of the Dartmouth logo: rather than native Americans being illuminated by a glowing book of knowledge (hey Dartmouth, isn't this logo sort of racist?), a dinosaur is about to be hit by a fiery meteor.

A rock crying out in the wilderness-- I like it. After all, isn't this what geologists do? We listen to the rocks. 

Traditional Dartmouth logo. Image taken from here.

Dartmouth's Department of Earth Science logo. Note the typo in the motto (clamatis rather than clamantis). Again- geologist are not the best linguists. Image taken from the department website here.

Geology Word of the Week: Q is for Quaternary

Quaternary Girl. Base image taken from here.

def. Quaternary:
The most recent Period of geologic time. We have been in the Quaternary Period for the past ~2.6 million years. The Quaternary Period is located within the Cenozoic Era and is further sub-divided into the Pleistocene and Holocene Epochs.

A Poor Disaster in a Rich Country

With at least 75 people dead and extensive damage throughout the city of Christchurch, the toll of the recent New Zealand earthquake is already a heavy one. A number of factors contributed to make this earthquake so deadly-- the magnitude, the closeness of the epicenter to Christchurch, the shallowness of the epicenter, the time of day, and the fact that much damage from the September 2010 Christchurch earthquake had yet to be repaired.  The death toll and damage caused by the recent earthquake in first world New Zealand is nothing like what occurs when large earthquakes hit third world countries, such as Haiti in January 2010, but for a first world country the destruction is fairly high. 

I hope that New Zealand recovers quickly and that the earth-shaking quiets down long enough for proper rebuilding. A geologist colleague of my fiance is currently in New Zealand, just outside of Christchurch, and he told us, "the place is like a warzone." He's not sure when he'll back able to make it home (to South Africa), but he says he just feels lucky to be alive.

Thinking about the toll of the recent New Zealand earthquake, I was reminded of a post about "rich and poor disasters" that I wrote a few years back for Skepchick. Before I started a geology blog, I used to sporadically blog about geology over at Skepchick. These days, I blog here at Georneys about geology, and I blog over at Skepchick about other skeptical and scientific things, such as why skeptics should be interested in statistics. Occasionally, I will re-post some of my old geology posts from Skepchick. I will also sometimes cross-post on both blogs. The post below originally appeared on Skepchick in 2007 here. New Orleans still hasn't fully recovered from Hurricane Katrina.

I don't want to distract from the all the devastation that recently occurred in New Zealand, but I think Hurricane Katrina is a good example to ponder when considering what factors-- both geologic and socioeconomic--affect the toll of natural disasters and the eventual recovery-- or lack thereof-- of a region from a natural disaster.

A boy bikes past homes unrepaired since Hurricane Katrina, on the eve of the storm's five year anniversary in the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans. Image from Reuters: Lee Celano.

A few weeks ago [note: in 2007] I listened to a talk by John Mutter, a geologist at Columbia University. Mutter has two roles at Columbia. First, he is a geophysist in the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory doing traditional research in marine geology and seismology. Second, he is a faculty member in Columbia’s Earth Institute doing research on the links between Earth Science and Social Science.

Some Links and Videos Related to the New Zealand Earthquake

Many geobloggers and news agencies have been reporting on the recent magnitude 6.3 earthquake that occurred in Christchurch, New Zealand about six hours ago. This initial earthquake was quickly followed by two magnitude >5.5 earthquakes.

There has been some incredible damage and the latest report is that at least 65 people have died.

Below are a few links and videos related to the recent earthquake.

Here are some links from the geoblogosphere:
Highly Allochthonous: Magnitude 6.3 earthquake rocks Christchurch

Eruptions: Another sizable earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand

The Landslide Blog: First news of the Mw=6.3 earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand


Here are some links from news agencies:
New Zealand Herald: Updates on fatalities and damage; pictures, and videos

New York Times: Latest update

CNN: Latest update


Finally, here are a few videos, all taken from youtube. Just a warning that some of the footage is graphic and disturbing. These videos show the devastating destruction that results when a large earthquake hits a highly-populated area.

From TV New Zealand:

From  the Associated Press:

From CNN:

A Presidents' Day Rock: Granite (& Mica Schist)

Presidents carved in granite. Image taken from wikipedia here.

Happy Presidents' Day, everyone!

Lab is nice and quiet today, in honor of our nation's presidents. Excellent. I always accomplish more on holidays! Fewer people around to distract me.

In honor of Presidents' Day, here is a document published by the U.S. National Park Service about the geology of Mt. Rushmore:

Mount Rushmore National Memorial Geologic Resource Evaluation Report

And here is a simple geologic map of the Mt. Rushmore area taken from the above document:

Simple geologic map of the Mt. Rushmore area. Figure taken from here.

A Million Random Digits

Cross-posted on Skepchick. 

First page of random digits in "A Million Random Digits" book. Image taken from Amazon.com.

Earlier this evening I met up with three classmates (all girls, by the way; my statistics class is about 90% female) to work on programming our latest statistics homework into MATLAB. Working in a group is easier as four pairs of eyes tend to catch code errors faster than one pair of eyes. Also, we can eat Chinese food and giggle and have fun as we work.

One of the things we had to do this evening was use the "rand" function in MATLAB. This function calls upon a computer algorithm that generates random-- or really pseudorandom since they're calculated by a computer-- numbers. The "rand" function calls upon a random number between 0 and 1 as a default, though you can tell it to use other ranges.  Random numbers are very important for many types of statistical analyses and numerical simulations. These days, many computer programs, such as MATLAB, have pseudorandom number generators built in. For most types of applications in mathematics and science, a pseduorandom number is nearly as good as a random number.

But what if you need actual random numbers?

And how did people generate random numbers before computers became fancy enough to generate pseudorandom numbers?

The Power and Beauty of Statistics

As I have recently been writing about over at Skepchick, I am taking an applied statistics course this semester and very much appreciating and enjoying it. Some Skepchick readers sent me a couple of videos about statistics, and I thought I would share them with you here. Enjoy!

200 Countries, 200 Years, 4 Minutes
Hans Rosling

 Video taken from YouTube.

Here's a link to a longer Hans Rosling video.