I am willing to bet most people have never heard of paleotempestology before. I hadn’t heard of it before I took a marine geology course. In a course I am taking this semester, we decided to reexamine the topic because a lot of individual studies are debatable. So, if the title of this post didn’t already give it …
Have you ever noticed a rip current at the beach? If you or someone you know was caught in a rip current, would you know what to do? If you’ve been paying attention to the coastal news along North Carolina recently, you may have noticed recent stories about rip currents and rip current safety. Dr. …
Having no publications to my name and only nebulous drafts of several (hopefully) publishable papers, I am not an expert on how to get published. This is why I attended a student workshop on this very topic at the 2018 ASLO summer meeting in Victoria, BC. In this workshop a panel of editors in chief …
Martín Benavides is a PhD student in Marine Sciences at UNC Chapel Hill. His research focuses on the variability of coastal shark communities in both time and space. He is also interested in the movement ecology of sharks in estuarine systems. Martín is a proud father of two boys and provides a unique prospective to …
Applications have been submitted. Recruitment weekends are near (or have already come and gone). Funding source notification dates are coming up. And most exciting of all–graduate school acceptances are around the corner. It is an exciting time to see your hard work pay off. But wait. Hold your horses. Here are some things you should …
The ocean is home to some strange and mysterious critters – including some that could give the Justice League a run for their money. From immortal invertebrates to flying fish, here are four super powered ocean animals. The one that can walk on land While there are a number of amphibious fish out there, …
The National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (NSF GRFP) application season is here. I was fortunate enough to receive a fellowship for my application is 2017 after an unsuccessful one in 2016. From one rejected and one accepted, here is a list of resources that helped get me through it, a bit of my personal …
Most productivity gurus say that when you hit a wall, you should switch tasks. This is how I ended up reading a paper about beavers who managed to hijack a wetland restoration for their benefit. So congratulations! You’re in the right place to learn some fancy philosophy terms and think about wetlands from a whooole …
As modern marine scientists, we spend a lot of time learning to effectively communicate science to various audiences. That’s mostly so we can make friends at parties, but has some nice side benefits like educating the general public, whatever. Sometimes though, and I’m probably admitting to a cardinal sin of outreach here, there’s a certain …
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 week, another attempt at a comic! The paper it discusses is open access, so check it out for more information (and a heck of a lot more math, if you’re into that sort of thing). Continue reading
If you were walking down the street, mulling over your latest research conundrum, and were suddenly accosted by a mad-eyed figure demanding the name of an ocean-themed poem, you would probably shout over your shoulder as you sprinted away, “The Chambered Nautilus!” (Either that or Feedback, if the insane number of hits Kelsey’s post receives … 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
Today is April 22nd, also know as “Earth Day.” Today people will bake earth shaped cookies, bike to work, do city cleanups, plant trees, and maybe even recycle. All of this stuff is great! The earth is a pretty imporatnt place. We live here and it’s our home. The only one we’ve ever known and … Continue reading
I want to apologize in advance for what may seem like a disheartening post. I didn’t mean to, but I started writing about an issue I’ve always wondered about, and it sort of just happened. I promise my next post will be so uplifting, you’ll feel like standing up and dancing like this miniature poodle. … Continue reading
The current drought in California has taken over the environmental sciences news headlines (not that there are a whole lot of environmental science headlines in the first place…) with the recent announcement of drastic mandatory cutbacks in water issued by the state’s governor. Having lived on the east coast for the last 20 years of … Continue reading
In the past year or so, the idea of drone robots filling our skies has captured our collective imagination. Drones have already been used for not-so-great things, such as the U.S’s drone strikes, but they have also been used to collect scientific data, in filmmaking, as a part of search and rescue operations, to prevent … 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
This week, we have a special guest post from Joey Murphy, a former UNC undergraduate and current Research Assistant at the UNC Institute for Global Health and Infectious Diseases, on why science issues never seem to come up during U.S elections. Why you gotta be like that, politics? See his post to learn why we should … Continue reading
UNder the C 