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Aarhus Universitet

Geoscience newsletter

No. 2/2020 - February 2020

Calendar

  • 17 March
    Three Minute Thesis Competition 2020
  • 23 March
    Introduction day for new employees
  • 17 April
    Alumni Day
  • 22 April
    Festival of Research
  • 20 May
    Geoscience Day
  • 26 June
    Graduation

Award for Denys Grombacher

Denys Grombacher has received NIRAS' "Best presentation award 2020" for his work on finding clean drinking water in Tanzania.

Watch video of the award ceremony

The project is done in collaboration with the Poul Due Jensen Foundation, and is described on the foundation's website.

Marie Curie grants

Anders Damsgaard

Description of Anders' project:

Glaciers and ice streams reshape their beds by erosion, sediment transport, and deposition. The results can be seen at the earth surface of previously glaciated areas, where ice and meltwater flow caused a distinct geomorphological imprint. Contemporary glaciers and ice streams are commonly situated on deforming basal sediments, in particular in areas of fast ice flow. The sediment is typically deposited in wedge-like structures in front of marine-terminating glaciers, and the wedges potentially stabilize the ice against sea-level rise.

Unfortunately, we do not have a way of realistically incorporating this type of sediment movement in ice-flow models, and current models for computing sea-level rise assume that beds are rigid.  Similarly, the lack of understanding challenges interpretation of previous glacial conditions from landforms observed today in the European lowland and elsewhere.

In this project we aim to better understand the interaction between ice flow and sedimentary beds. My previous research at the department focused on simulating sediment mechanics on the grain scale.

This time, I aim to assess the implications on the ice-sheet scale, by upscaling the sediment mechanics and coupling to models of ice flow and hydrology. The department's ring-shear apparatus will be used for model calibration. I will benefit from the strong competences within the department in the fields of geomorphology, sedimentology, palaeoclimate, and computer modeling.

Jan Piotrowski is the project host.

Henrieka Detlef

Description of Henrieka's project:

Earth’s climate is a complex system of different components that interact with each other. Understanding these interactions is key to better predict how our climate will change in the future. One such component, especially relevant in the Arctic, is sea ice.

‘IceLab – Ice-ocean interactions during Heinrich events in the Labrador Sea’ aims to determine the role of sea ice in past events of ice sheet collapse, so-called Heinrich events during the last glacial period.
Specifically, IceLab will investigate if sea ice in the Labrador Sea promoted ice shelf melting by insulating the ocean, causing it to warm. The work will involve national and international collaborations, as well as different laboratories at the department of Geoscience.

Caps has a new machine

A new Cathodo-Luminescence (CL) microscope has been installed in the Advanced Microscopy Lab. This new microscope will allow researchers from the CAPS (Carbonate And Paleoenvironmental Sedimentology) research group to investigate the redox conditions under which carbonates are precipitated.

In general, CL microscopy allows to investigate changes in minerals compositions in all type of rocks, may they be sedimentary, metamorphic or igneous. In this new CL microscope, both uncovered thin-sections and rock block can be used.

The system will be operated by Stephane. We are happy to do a demonstration for those interested.

Intruduction meeting for new employees

The Introduction Day has been moved to March 23.

Goodbye to Marianne

In the week leading up to January 31, 2020, we said goodbye for now to Marianne.
Many thanks to Marianne for good cooperation and best wishes for the future in the new job in the production of cytostatics in the hospital.

Video about information security

New video shows what to do if you fall for a fake email - a so-called phishing email - that tries to entice you to disclose sensitive personal information to IT criminals.

Be like Bob

Safety videoes

Remember that relevant security videos from Geoscience can be found on this YouTube channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1Z7TvaOUxAy2ixAwKDQJ4A

Band aid stations

Plaster stations have been mounted at the washbasin in the toilet compartment, respectively. building 1671 and 1672 (8 places in total) and 1120 (2 places).

The patch is water resistant and elastic. It is self-adhesive but does not stick to the skin.

The patch is rolled up in a dispenser, from which a suitable piece is torn off and the protective film removed.

Remember to clean the wound before it is covered.

Link to video on how to use the patch.

Prevent infection with virus

3 good tips:

  • Good hand hygiene, primarily hand washing, possibly hand disinfection if the hands are clean and dry.
  • Avoid contact with people with symptoms of colds and / or respiratory infection.
  • Cough or sneeze in disposable handkerchief, alternatively in the elbow bend.

This protects both yourself and others from infection.

If you get sick:
If you have symptoms of illness (fever, dry cough or difficulty breathing) 14 days after returning from China or an affected area, it is important that you call your own doctor before you show up.
Outside normal business hours, call the medical center in Central Jutland on tel. +45 70 11 31 31.

News from the lab

Simple price model for lab work

From February 2020, all analyzes are priced according to a new and simple model with only two levels of expenditure, respectively cheap or expensive. The calculation takes into account laboratory time, material consumption and maintenance costs.

Note that the model automatically recognizes price increases in the coming years.

Charlotte will be able to help make a budget for a complete project.

Omnibus' christmas calendar

Due to problems with print servers all over AU, several employees have found that the connection to the printer has been broken.

For some it is enough to restart the PC, others have to uninstall and reinstall the printer.

At the same time, all secure print settings have been deleted and it is necessary to reset this.
Therefore, a repeat from the last newsletter on how to do this:

All employees are encouraged to change their default printer setup to "Secure print"

Instructions can be found on the AU webpage.

Choose: "Configuration and use of Secure print on Xerox - for PC"
(for the printer in the staff room in building 1672)

By using the secure print feature, we avoid a lot of error prints - and there are many!
We also ensure that documents with sensitive information is not left in the mailroom for everyone to see.

THREE MINUTE THESIS COMPETITION 2020

The 3MT competition 2020 will take place Tuesday 17 March 16.00-18.30 in Stakladen at Aarhus University.

In 3MT, PhD students present their research project in three minutes for an audience of non-specialists with only one static slide – and no other resources.

In 2020 the internal winner at AU will win a 35,000 DKK travel grant and the video of the performance will be submitted to the international competition held in the Coimbra Group of more than 35 European universities.

More information about the 3MT competition.

Power outlet for Video conference equipment

The video conferencing equipment must be plugged into a connector marked with VK or V to operate.

Connectors marked with VK or V can be found in the meeting rooms.

Festival of research

On Wednesday 22 April 2020 from 14.00 to 18.00 Aarhus University will be opening its doors to the Festival of Research at Campus Aarhus in and around Stakladen, Fredrik Nielsens Vej 2, 8000 Aarhus C.

 

The massage agreement will be terminated

Due to a lack of use, our massage agreement with Sundhed med Mening will be terminated at the end of March 2020.

It will still be possible to get massages for 30 minutes for DKK 200 at the clinic on Søren Frichs Vej 68.

Information from AU Procurement

Flights with fixed discounts

AU has joined a SKI agreement which gives you a discount if you fly with the following companies:

  • Air France
  • Emirates
  • Finnair
  • Icelandair
  • KLM Royal Dutch Airlines
  • LOT Polish Airlines
  • Norwegian
  • SAS/Singapore Airline

The framework agreement gives you access to 301 routes within the fields of internal, Nordic, European and intercontinental routes.

Please note that hand baggage is always included in the fare.

To obtain the discounts, you MUST order through the travel agency. I.e. direct contact to CWT or through the use of CWT's electronic booking system. This means that you will not have access to discounts on the airlines ' own websites.

Information from AU Student Administration and Services

COPYDAN Survey, SPRING 2020

Before preparations for the new semester really take off, we would like to remind you of the rules for uploading material to Blackboard.

The three most important rules are:

  1. You must always link directly to (legally) available material on the Internet. This applies to both free material and the e-resources for which the library has acquired access.
    Read more about how to ensure your links also work outside Campus.
  2. You may copy and scan physical material (e.g. books and journals), but with these limitations:
    - You may copy (upload) 20% of a material, but no more than 50 pages of the same material per student per semester.
    Remember that scanned files may only be shared via Blackboard and must always be accompanied by a source specification.
  3. Your local AU Library library offers to create semester shelves or to set up textbooks in study halls, to give your students easy access to copy the teaching material themselves. There are no limitations on the extent to which the students are allowed to copy or scan when it is for their own use.

In the spring Semester 2020, Copydan and AU will also carry out a sample survey of the use of copyrighted material on selected courses in Blackboard. We do this in order to determine the price for the agreement in the future. The Copydan agreement is a national agreement, and random surveys are carried out at all Danish universities.

50 courses will be picked for the spring semester of 2020. The courses will be randomly drawn by Copydan among the courses of the spring. The courses are distributed across all subject areas. The basis for study is course material in Blackboard as well as any printed compendiums associated with the course. All material will be treated confidentially. It will only be relevant for you if your course is drawn to a sample. You will be notified directly if your course is chosen.

Read more about the rules and the Copydan agreement on AU Library's website: copyright for teaching staff.

Questions regarding the survey is very welcome and can be sent to the project manager Anne Luther: anl@au.dk.

If you have any questions about the rules for sharing material, please write to copydanAUL@kb.dk

Information from IAS

Fake phone calls from Danish Immigration

International Academic Staff Services / Guest Researcher Support have become aware of a case where a foreign employee has been stripped of money and personal information.

The employee was reportedly called by the Agency for International Recruitment and Integration (SIRI - which is the authority that processes applications for work and residence permits) with the message that something was wrong with his or her work and residence permit. To get things corrected, money had to be transferred through Western Union while providing personal information. Unfortunately, this is what they are doing and the "fake" SIRI is now asking for more money.

Please note never to transfer money or give personal information to Danish immigration (SIRI) by phone or by private email. If you get a telephone call or a private email from someone claiming to be from SIRI and he/she asks you to transfer money and give your personal information in order to have your current work and residence permit revised or extended, it is fraud.

Immigration (SIRI) will never call you on the phone or send you a private email in such a case. Instead, you will receive a letter in your Danish digital mailbox/e-Boks. 

If you are in doubt whether the call or email is fake or not, please contact SIRI to ask whether you should do something, and we recommend you to contact the Danish police as well.

We inform you about this, because we have heard of an international researcher at AU, who received such a call or email, so we wish to ask you to be aware.

News from the library

Open access

Open Access is about the free access of publicly funded research, i.e. free access to read and use academic literature, including the possibility of unrestricted downloads from academic publications.

Have you had your articles published, and are now considering if they can be made Open Access, but think the journals rules on the matter are a bit confusing?

AU Library offers to look at the rules for you, if you send us the accepted manuscript* of your article through the OA Submission Form. The reason that we ask for the accepted manuscript and not the final published article is that we in most cases are permitted to upload the accepted manuscript in Pure, according to the rules the publisher sets forth.

If you send in the accepted manuscript, we will look at the journal rules regarding archiving in Pure, and will make a coversheet for the document, containing a reference and link to the final published version.
You can read more about Open Access on this site.

* An Accepted Manuscript is the version of an article or other publication that is accepted for publication; i.e. after peer review and the author's inclusion of any corrections and additions. The Accepted manuscript is thus, content-wise, substantively similar to the finished publication, but will often differ from it in typography and layout.

Publishing

If you have an unpublished monograph manuscript that you would like to publish as an e-book, the library can also help you though our Scholarly Publishing Services.
You can read more about this service here.

Would you like to run and publish your own Journal, then this can also be done through our Open Journal Systems (OJS).
You can read more about it here.

New magazines

  • Petrophysics (2019) Vol. 60, Nr 5
  • Economic Geology (2019) Vol. 114, Nr 8
  • Newsletters on Stratigraphy (2020) Vol. 53, Nr 1
  • Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geowissenschaften (2019) Bd. 170, H. 2
  • Zeitschrift der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Geowissenschaften (2019) Bd. 170, H. 3/4
  • Vækst (2019) Nr. 4
  • Vand & Jord (2019) Årg. 26, Nr. 4

 

The magazines are in the lunch room in building 1672

New books

  • Verma, S. P. (2020) Road from Geochemistry to Geochemometrics. Springer.
  • Novák, V. & Hlaváciková, H. (2019) Applied Soil Hydrology. Springer.
  • Xue, Q. (2020) Data Analytics for Drilling Engineering. Springer.
  • Huissteden, J. (2020) Thawing Permafrost. Springer.

 

The books are a prt og the Geoscience collection at AU Library, Ny Munkegade 118.

New members of staff

Jane Lund Andersen

I received my ph.d. from Geoscience in Aarhus in 2017. Since then I have worked on reconstructing paleo-ice dynamics and configurations of the East Antarctic Ice Sheet in Dronning Maud Land with a Carlsberg Foundation Internationalization Fellowship. I have divided my time between Purdue University in the United States and the Geological Survey of Norway in Trondheim. I am now employed as a postdoc in Vivi K. Pedersen’s group, to investigate the relations between erosion and sea level in Scandinavia.

Peng Bai startet as Guest PhD on February 1st and will be here until August 1st, 2020.

New holiday rules

Information about the new holiday rules and the transition period is available under AU's staff service.

Please make sure to check your holiday registrations on a regular basis via mit.au.dk.
Concurrent holiday days balance cannot be checked on mit.au. Please contact the Secretariat for a status.

Office hours / ST and AU partners

Partners with office hours, room 1671-134:

  • Dan Guldborg, IT support | aarhus.st.it@au.dk 
    Monday 9-12 
  • Mette Møller Larsen, controller, ST finance | mmla@au.dk
    Wednesday 8.30-15.30 
  • Jakob Steen Olesen, Project Finance Administrator, ST finance | jakob.steen.olesen@au.dk 
    Wednesday 8-15 and Friday 8-14
  • Louise Godt (maternity leave), Research Support Office | logo@au.dk
    Thursday 9-12
  • Rikke Märcher Rochat (maternity cover), Research Support Office | rmr@au.dk
    Thursday 9-12
     

Other partners:

  • Maiken Dazelle Nielsen, studies/ courses & exams | maiken@au.dk 
  • Morten Hjorth Gad, AU Library | mhga@kb.dk
  • HR-related questions should be adressed to HR ST Team 1 | HR.ST.team1@au.dk
  • Questions regarding absence due to sickness, maternity leave or jobs on special terms should be sent to HR ST Specialisttem | HR.ST.team.specialist.dk
  • Rikke J. Ljungmann, Advisor, special consultant, ST PhD-administration | rjl@au.dk
  • Claus Palle, AU Research Support and External Relations - Technology Transfer Office | cpa@au.dk

 
Bo Holm Jacobsen's office hours for students:
Tuesday 10-12 and Thursday 16.15-17


The above information is also available at: geo.medarbejdere.au.dk/en/

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