Stuff we linked to on Twitter last week

Things we’ve written elsewhere

• In an invited commentary for Earth magazine (solicited in the aftermath of the arsenic life controversy), Chris discusses the impact of social media like blogs and Twitter on peer review and the discussion of published science (spoiler: they’re neither a threat nor a replacement, but could be a useful addition).
  http://www.earthmagazine.org/earth/article/43a-7db-4-1c

Water

Note: Anne will have a separate post up later today with selected links on the on-going flooding on the Mississippi River.

• ‘Floodplains are not regions that just happen to be adjacent to rivers- they exist because of river processes.’
  http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/05/flooding-creates-floodplains/

Environmental

• Finally, a properly scaled time axis!: a plot of oil consumption in historical context
  http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2011/05/05/136023218/peak-oil-in-perspective
  (via @rkerr46)
• Naturally selected renewables: optimising turbine placement in wind farms with evolutionary algorithms
  http://tw.physorg.com/223712036
• Stark time-series of satellite images, map showing deforestation in Amazon (Rondonia, Brazil) 2000 – 2010
  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/WorldOfChange/deforestation.php?src=eoa-ann
  (via @SkyTruth)

Earthquakes & Tectonics

• People trying to escape tsunami by car, then trapped in traffic jams when wave hit, worsened Tohuku quake death toll
  http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20110503a6.html
• Some background on the ‘stuck’/strongly coupled subduction boundary beneath N Island of New Zealand
  http://juliansrockandiceblog.blogspot.com/2011/05/wellingtons-stuck-plate-boundary.html
• Some nice pictures of faults cutting through the Corinth canal at the Paleoseismicity blog
  http://www.paleoseismicity.org/2011/05/05/the-wednesday-centerfault-2-2/
  http://www.paleoseismicity.org/2011/05/06/active-and-inactive-faults/

Volcanoes

• Thomas Jaggar, the man who established Hawaii Volcano Observatory – and made the first acccurate tsunami prediction.
  http://ptonline.aip.org/journals/doc/PHTOAD-ft/vol_64/iss_5/32_1.shtml

Planets

• Exciting times ahead: Summary of the plans for the 15 months of Dawn’s mission at Vesta
  http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00003020/
  (via @elakdawalla)

(Paleo)climate

• Looking for human fingerprints on extreme weather events – and potentially finding some
  http://e360.yale.edu/feature/whats_with_the_weather_is_climate_change_to_blame/2388/
  (via @AJCorner)
• Good point: tracking and forecasting tornados depends upon satellite observation capabilities that face the budgetry axe
  http://hudsonvalleygeologist.blogspot.com/2011/05/tornado-tracks-from-space.html

General Geology

• Some cool pics from Oman for Georneys’ Geology Word of the Week: W is for Wadi.
  http://georneys.blogspot.com/2011/05/geology-word-of-week-w-is-for-wadi.html
  (via @GeoEvelyn)
• The first observations of microbes growing in-situ beneath ocean floor: a poorly known, but potentially important ecosystem.
  http://www.nature.com/ismej/journal/v5/n4/abs/ismej2010157a.html
• Geolojay whets Anne’s appetite For Hanging Rock State Park in NC with two stunning photos
  http://geolojay.com/blog/2011/05/01/hanging-rock-state-park-recon/
• Classic fluvial geomorphology image: Parana River Floodplain, Northern Argentina
  http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/IOTD/view.php?id=50385&src=twitter-iotd
  (via @NASA_EO)

Interesting Miscellaney

• Changing Education Paradigms: cool doodle animation of a thought-provoking talk by Sir Ken Robinson
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U&feature=channel_video_title
• The Bad Astronomer asked his readers for help setting straight a commenter who denied that there were any remaining obstacles for women in science and engineering. Anne offered her take, and other commenters also did a good job taking him down.
  http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/badastronomy/2011/04/29/women-as-planetary-science-role-models/#comment-380695
• It used to be that only 23% of women in physical oceanography got on tenure track. Now? 8% since 1995:
  http://www.washington.edu/news/articles/8-percent-of-women-physical-oceanographers-in-tenure-track-down-from-23-percent
  (via @biochembelle, @DoctorZen)
• Very cool to see Scientific American promoting informal science education, through “Bring Science Home”, a month’s worth of activities to do with kids. We’ll be doing some of these activities in our house. Welcome to ‘Bring Science Home’
  http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/post.cfm?id=welcome-to-bring-science-home-2011-05-02
  (via @sciam, @BoraZ)