Goldschmidt 2020: Honolulu, Hawai'i
March 09, 2017
(image courtesy of Hawaii Tourism Authority)
The GS and EAG are excited to announce that the 2020 Goldschmidt Conference® will take place June 21-26 at the Hawai'i Convention Center in Honolulu, HI, USA. The geologically fascinating state of Hawai'i will provide a warm welcome to delegates from around the world. Mark your calendar for upcoming conferences and plan to participate in the world's premier meeting devoted to geochemistry!
Jill Banfield Named 2017 V.M. Goldschmidt Medalist
February 22, 2017
Jill Banfield, professor in the Department of Earth and Planetary Science at the University of California, Berkeley, will receive the 2017 V. M. Goldschmidt Award this summer. The Goldschmidt Award recognizes major achievements in geochemistry or cosmochemistry consisting of either a single outstanding contribution or a series of publications that have had great influence on the field. Prof. Banfield studies the structure, metabolic potential and functioning of natural microbial communities in sediments, soil, water, biofilms and animals. She develops and applies new methods in molecular geomicrobiology and microbial ecology. She also studies nanoparticle formation and the behavior of nanoparticles and clay minerals in the natural environment (nanogeoscience). The award will be formally presented at the Goldschmidt 2017 conference in Paris, France this August.
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs Named 2017 C.C. Patterson Medalist
February 22, 2017
Kai-Uwe Hinrichs, professor of organic geochemistry in the Department of Geosciences/MARUM, University of Bremen, will receive the 2017 Clair C. Patterson Award this summer. The Patterson Award recognizes an innovative breakthrough of fundamental significance in environmental geochemistry, particularly in service of society, consisting of either a single outstanding contribution or a short series of papers published within the last decade. Prof. Dr. Hinrichs is recognized for his work on the interactions between microbial life and the carbon cycle on a range of spatial, temporal and molecular scales. The award will be formally presented at the Goldschmidt 2017 conference in Paris, France this August.
Francis McCubbin Named 2017 F.W. Clarke Medalist
February 22, 2017
Francis M. McCubbin, astromaterials curator in the NASA Johnson Space Center's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Division, will receive the 2017 F.W. Clarke Award this summer. The Clarke Award recognizes an early-career scientist for a single outstanding contribution to geochemistry or cosmochemistry published either as a single paper or a series of papers on a single topic. Dr. McCubbin is recognized for his work on water in apatite that changed our understanding of volatiles in the moon. The award will be formally presented at the Goldschmidt 2017 conference in Paris, France this August.
John Hayes (1940-2017)
February 10, 2017
(Image courtesy of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)
John Michael Hayes, born September 6, 1940, passed away at his home in Berkeley, California, on February 3, 2017. John Hayes was a leader in the fields of organic geochemistry and biogeochemistry who opened these fields to stable isotopes with his pioneering work in compound specific isotopes (CSIA). The impact of CSIA in present day chemistry has been wide-reachin; it is used in drug analyses, forensic geochemistry, food processing, blood testing, and environmental geochemistry, and it has entered the popular culture via forensic science focused TV shows. His generosity of spirit and enthusiasm for bringing together the ideas and practitioners of geology, chemistry, and biology to inform each other, was at the core of his impact across disciplines. His ground-breaking work in CSIA and his legacy of an interdisciplinary approach to research was transformative and contributed profoundly to our understanding of the Earth's organic processes.
Nominate a Colleague for the GS Distinguished Service Award
February 03, 2017
Do you know someone who has made an extraordinary contribution to the Geochemical Society or to the scientific community? The Distinguished Service Award was established to recognize them. Learn more about the award and the nomination process and submit your nomination by March 10, 2017.
New Lecture Honoring Robert Berner
October 05, 2016
Students and friends of the late Bob Berner are working to establish an annual lecture at the Goldschmidt Conference to commemorate his intellectual legacy in geochemistry. The lecture will be on a 'Berner' subject, which includes a wide range of topics associated with elemental cycling at the Earth's surface (molecular to planetary scale, modern to ancient oceanic and terrestrial systems, evolution of the biosphere, etc). The lecturer will be selected jointly by the Geochemical Society and the European Association of Geochemistry. Contributions will go directly to supporting the lecturer's travel to Goldschmidt every year.
Listen to BBC World Service Program from Goldschmidt2016
July 25, 2016
The BBC World Service traveled to Goldschmidt2016 in June to record an episode of the radio program The Forum. The episode, "The Unpredictable Planet: Understanding Volcanoes and Earthquakes," is now available for online listening on the BBC's website. It is also available as a free podcast from the iTunes store.
Five years have passed in Fukushima, but numerous long-term issues still remain
March 09, 2016
Five years ago, the Great East Japan Earthquake hit the Tohoku district causing 19,335 deaths; 2,600 people are still missing. The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Disaster, at level seven on the International Nuclear Event Scale (INES), released ~520 PBq of radionuclides and forced residents to evacuate miles away from the contaminated area. During the past five years, a large number of articles have been published on the earthquake and the subsequent events, including the radioactive Cs contamination on the land in Fukushima prefecture and in the ocean (geochemical NEWSin August 25, 2015).
Radioactive Cs contamination in the surface environment has been a serious issue and will remain so for decades to come given the half-lives of 134Cs and 137Cs are 2.06 and 30.07 years, respectively. Radioactive Cs is rigidly bound in interlayers of clay minerals and is retained in the surface soils (e.g., Kaneko et al., 2015). However, aircraft monitoring revealed that the radiation dose decreased faster than expected based on the Cs half lives (Fig. 1b), indicating that soil particles associated with Cs were transported through surface waters into the ocean (e.g., Yamasaki et al., 2016). In addition to Cs bound to clay minerals, Cs-rich micro-particles (~ a few μm), mainly composed of Si oxide glass associated with wt% level Cs and other metals, were recently reported (Adachi et al., 2013). Despite their low numbers, these Cs-rich micro-particles may be a considerable dose contributor to the ecosystem. In addition, the formation processes of these Cs-rich micro-particles can provide novel information on the reaction that happened inside the reactor pressure vessel (RPV) and the primary containment vessel (PCV) when the fuels melted down in units 1 and 3 at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant (FDNPP). The decommission of units 1~4 is ongoing and the most difficult process will be the removal of fuel debris, which is a solidified form of the melted fuel mixed with cladding, other metals, and possibly concrete. Even the occurrence and properties of the debris are totally unknown at the present, because it is difficult to sample the debris and investigate the occurrence inside the PCV due to the extremely high radiation dose. Since the Cs-rich micro-particles contain some fission products, they provide valuable insights into the chemical reactions that occurred inside the PCV during the explosions. The Fukushima disaster will challenge many geochemists as the long-term issues including debris, contaminated water stored in tanks, and Cs contamination in the soils, are resolved.
Dr. Satoshi Utsunomiya, Department of Chemistry, Kyushu University
744 Motooka, Nishi-ku,¥
Fukuoka-shi, 819-0395 JAPAN
References
1. M. Kaneko, H. Iwata, H. Shiotsu, S. Masaki, Y. Kawamoto, S. Yamasaki, Y. Nakamatsu, J. Imoto, G. Furuki, A. Ochiai, K. Nanba, T. Ohnuki, R. C. Ewing& S. Utsunomiya, Radioactive Cs in the severely contaminated soils near the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Frontiers in Energy Research, (2015) dx.doi.org/10.3389/fenrg.2015.00037
2. S. Yamasaki, J. Imoto, G. Furuki, A. Ochiai, T. Ohnuki, K. Sueki, K. Nanba, R. C. Ewing, & S. Utsunomiya, Radioactive Cs in the estuary sediments near Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. Science of the Total Environment, 551-552 (2016) 155-162.
3. K. Adachi, M. Kajino, Y. Zaizen, & Y. Igarashi, Emission of spherical cesium-bearing particles from an early stage of the Fukushima nuclear accident, Scientific Reports, 3 (2013) 2554/1-5.
Fig. 1. (a) A map of dose rate in Fukushima based on an airplane monitoring survey by MEXT in May 2012. FDNPP represent the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant. (b) The difference in dose rate between November, 2011 and December, 2012. Approximately 40% of the radiation dose has decreased due to the radioactive decay and physical removal of surface soils.
Ian Hutcheon (1948-2015)
September 21, 2015
Ian D. Hutcheon, Deputy Director of the Glenn Seaborg Institute and Group Leader of the Chemical and Isotopic Signatures Group in Nuclear and Chemical Sciences Division in the Physical and Life Sciences (PLS) Directorate of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, passed away March 26, 2015. He was 67 years old.
Hutcheon earned his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley in 1974. His expertise with the ion probe began to develop at the University of Chicago when he worked with Joe Smith and then expanded further when he moved to Cal Tech in 1983 to work with Jerry Wasserburg on the applications of secondary ion mass spectrometry to cosmochemistry. He moved to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in 1993.
Hutcheon made numerous contributions to the study of the isotopic composition of meteorites and what they reveal about the evolution of the early solar system. He was also a key developer of nuclear forensics as both a field of scientific investigation and a scientific discipline with significant applications to national security. He conducted groundbreaking work in the formation mechanisms of planets and meteorites, diffusion transport processes in terrestrial and planetary melts, glasses and minerals; and conducted the first NanoSIMS-enabled studies of biological materials. He authored over 200 papers and book chapters, and co-wrote the textbook, Nuclear Forensics Analysis with colleagues Pat Grant and Ken Moody.
His awards in recent years included being named, in 2013, a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at the Laboratory; receiving the Physical and Life Sciences Outstanding Post-doc Mentor award in 2010; and having a newly discovered mineral in the Allende meteorite named in his honor, Hutcheonite. He was named a Fellow of the Meteoritical Society in 1986.
In his 22 years at LLNL, he built the Chemical and Isotopic Signatures Group from himself and 2 others and one secondary ion mass spectrometer to 38 scientists, post-docs, graduate students and technicians. The breadth of study within the members of his group includes time scale and processes of nucleosynthesis; formation and evolution of meteorites and planets; mineralogy and petrology of unequilibrated meteorites; sub-cellular imaging of biological samples and isotope tracing into cells of all types; environmental microbiology; nuclear forensics and attribution.
In recent years Hutcheon and members of his group were involved in establishing collaborations with colleagues at analytical facilities in South Africa, Canada, the UK, and with the IAEA, to help encourage nuclear forensics efforts.
Ian Hutcheon is survived by his wife of 41 years, Nancy Hutcheon, former Education Coordinator for summer internships in PLS, his children, Douglass Hutcheon and Dana Gordon, and hundreds of colleagues in the US and abroad, that he mentored and inspired to scientific excellence.
Nancy Hutcheon