Virtual Reality (VR) has had an arduous and disheartening history over the past several decades, but things have recently been looking up. There are many reasons you aren’t currently able to play Fallout 4 in a computer generated landscape projected right onto your eyes, but the foremost probably comes down to limitations in technology. VR … Continue reading
A couple of weeks ago, I presented at my first big conference in Washington D.C.! It was aptly named Oceans but was a great departure from a lot of the ocean themed academia I see every day. There was a theme this year of “marine energy” but -I’m told- the conference is typically ocean engineering … Continue reading
Oceanographic field work has to take place in – you guessed it – the ocean. Most of the time, I sit at my computer and play with Matlab scripts and gigantic stores of data, but every so often one of my fellow Seim lab graduate students (and researcher at the Coastal Studies Institute) Mike Muglia … Continue reading
Last Wednesday, our very own Kelsey Ellis defended her Master’s Thesis in front of a crowd of thousands of people. Just kidding, there weren’t quite that many people, but I’m sure it feels like that to a nervous student on the brink of one of the most stressful times of their graduate career. A ‘defense’ … Continue reading
It seemed the South remained the last holdout, but with the news that its first industrial scale wind project* will also be producing electricity by 2016 in North Carolina, America’s embrace of the industry seems to be growing. Continue reading
I’ve written before about America’s struggle with accepting offshore wind energy development, specifically the controversy surrounding the Cape Wind project in Massachusetts. The process has been fraught with opposition since somebody first though, “Hey, could we get an offshore wind farm here in America.” As a result, it has been sitting in ‘renewable energy project … Continue reading
This past week, I attended the State Energy Conference in Raleigh, NC. Not your typical scientific conference, but I would suggest looking for more of these types of events to all graduate students. Look for something that’s related to your field but is not catered solely to the academic community. It will really broaden your … Continue reading
(I’m stretching the limits of what this blog will allow ya’ll…) Also, disclaimer: some of these might seem like I somehow think less of you if you fall into one of these categories (what even is nutri-genomics??), but please know, I love all science and it’s all in good fun. Biogeochemists – Targaryen Let’s be … Continue reading
Even if you are interested in wind energy in North Carolina (this blogger), and even if you attempt to feign interest in local policy matters (again, this blogger), the news last week that our governor’s office has requested an extended buffer against offshore wind farms may have flown under your radar. The NC Department of … Continue reading
This post might be aiming for a bit of a niche market out there, but I’m going for it. As a graduate student in the Department of Marine Sciences at UNC-Chapel Hill, we have to take four core marine science courses: Marine Geology, Biological Oceanography, Chemical Oceanography, and Physical Oceanography (THE ONLY THING THAT MATTERS). … Continue reading
UNder the C 