Rebecca Bell gave a talk entitled “Did the Earth move for you?” as part of the London events for the Pint of Science Festival 2014, held at the Hoop & Toy in South Kensington. The talk introduced members of the public to the recent discovery of slow slip seismic events at subduction zones, and even included a few interactive demonstrations!

Susie Maidment is currently undertaking three months of fieldwork in Colorado, Wyoming and Montana, where she is studying and palaeomag sampling the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation, which is home to all of the best dinosaurs! (Stegosaurus, Allosaurus, Diplodocus...) Good luck Susie! 

As part of his Visiting Scientist position, Chris Jackson spent two weeks at the Bureau of Economic Geology (BEG), University of Texas at Austin, working with members of the Applied Geodynamic Laboratory (AGL). Together they focused on the use of 3D seismic reflection data to image complex internal structures within salt diapirs. Ongoing work will use scaled physical models to investigate the controls on salt diapir growth and internal deformation.

Azli Abu Bakar also visited the Iron Mountain Core Store in Aberdeen and the BGS Core Store in Keyworth (26-30th May) as part of his study of the sedimentology of the Upper Jurassic deposits of the Central North Sea. His previous visits last year were focused on the marine deposits of the Fulmar and Pentland formations, while in this trip he focused on the deepwater(-ish?) deposits of the Heather and Kimmeridge Clay formations. His time there was graced by the presence of his eminent supervisors, Chris Jackson, who accompanied him for two days (which included a sleeper train trip of death from Aberdeen to Nottingham via Crewe and Derby), and Howard Johnson, who managed a quick trip to view the cores on the last day in Keyworth. A total of around 350 m of cores were logged and, overall, he has obtained more than 1.5 km of core data from 27 offshore wells in the CNS. Plenty to keep him busy for the rest of his study - good luck Azli!