AGU 2012: Exploration Station

Today I hosted a booth at the Exploration Station, a free public event for people to discover cool Earth and Space science. It is affiliated with the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in San Francisco. Normally on the Sunday preceding the meeting I attend the Geospace Environment Modeling workshop, but this year I wanted to bring my Sun and Space Weather activities to Exploration Station. I co-hosted the booth with Troy Cline, the Education/Public Outreach Lead for the NASA Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) Mission. Two of the teachers that took my summer course on the Sun and Space Weather, Carol and Jaime, came to assist with the activities.

Troy brought all of his awesome MMS displays, the paper models of the satellites, and the smaller version of the Lego model designed and built by MARS Robotics. I brought my set of iPads to view data from solar missions to learn about the Sun and geomagnetic storms. I also brought supplies to build the edible MMS models. It was a lot of fun! Check out all of the awesome budding scientists.

AGU 2012: Travel day

As a professional scientist, I receive a number of publications from the professional societies that I belong to. There’s APS News from the American Physical Society, EOS from the American Geophysical Union, Physics Today from both, AWIS Magazine from the Association for Women in Science, Radiations from Sigma Pi Sigma (the Physics Honorary Society), The Gazette from the APS Committees on the Status of Women in Physics and Minorities. When do I have time to read these? Usually never, so they stack up on my desk, in my backpack, wherever I put stuff that I might get a chance to read them. Occasionally I go through them, but find an article I want to read thoroughly, so the entire thing still has to be saved for later.

Well, it turns out that a >5 hour flight from Dulles to San Francisco (to attend the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting), plus the preceding hour and a half flight delay spent at Dulles is a great time to catch up on these publications. Oh, and I also threw in my absolutely favorite (non-scientific) magazine, Brain, Child, which almost succumbed to the current struggles of the print industry but was thankfully resurrected by one of its loyal readers. I got through all of it, with almost two hours to spare. So I broke open my laptop to write this blog post about it.

My backlog went to the August issue of Physics Today. Wow, 4 months behind. Well, what I brought along wasn’t all-inclusive. For instance, I usually get through the EOSs, so I only had 1 to fully read and 2 with articles that I was saving to read. Physics Today is usually the last one I get to, so it has the worst backlog.

I learned two very useful items in all that reading (along with several tidbits). 

First, I teach workshops on the Sun and Space Weather. Coronal mass ejections and other stuff from the Sun interact with Earth’s magnetic field to cause geomagnetic storms. During these storms, charged particles in the bubble of space created by Earth’s magnetic field get energized and flow around this bubble. These energetic particles can damage satellites and overload power grids on Earth. I point out that Earth would be hit directly by loads of energetic particles if we didn’t have the magnetic field to slow things down. I often get asked if we’d be in trouble if the Earth’s magnetic field reverses direction, as it does on an irregular basis of approximately 10,000 year intervals. Until now, I didn’t know the answer to this question. But a “Backscatter Image” in one of the Physics Today issues answered the question. (The Backscatter Image is a 1-page image with a brief discussion of the physics that image portrays, appearing on the last page of each issue.) Earth’s magnetic field is usually a dipole, it has two poles (North and South), like a bar magnet. But it also has a quadrupole (4 poles) mode. The image was created by a computer simulation of Earth’s magnetic field that demonstrated two dipole modes, one for each direction, with the quadrupole  mode occurring between the two. Thus, the magnetic field will never go to zero during a reversal, it will just have a more complicated quadrupole geometry.

The second useful thing that I learned was in the Radiations magazine about a project called Career Pathways that is studying and compiling best practices in preparing physics majors for a variety of careers. I am currently leading an effort to implement such practices on an interdisciplinary level at my institution. Now I have another source of information to look into as we develop our program.

And when I get to San Francisco, I can dump a bunch of weight into the recycling bin, except for those two articles that I want to save. Now what am I going to do on the return flight?

Going to the American Geophysical Union (AGU) Fall Meeting provides a unique experience. When you are one of over 20,000 scientists heading to the same place, you easily run into a bunch of them during your travels. As I boarded the plane, I heard a couple of people discussing how they were getting to the meeting from their hotel. As I got to my seat, the person next to me asked if I was heading to AGU. My poster tube was a dead giveaway. He is a freelance science writer heading to the meeting to write stories on exciting science. As we discussed AGU, the couple in front of us said they were headed there too, the husband a hydrologist. It can be an overwhelming meeting with that many people, but the variety of science that is covered is amazing. From earthquakes to oceans to volcanoes to climate to the Sun and the planets!

Weekend of gluttony

Most days, cooking dinner isn't very fun because it's an attempt to get something on the table quickly after getting home from work at 6 that is reasonably healthy (most days) and that the kids will eat. There are a few meals that we enjoy that fit this bill, but day in and day out, it can get old to try to come up with options for every single day. Also, when my husband, Sean, works the late shift, I really have no motivation to make a nice dinner.

But when there is a free day and Sean is going to be home, I enjoy cooking, especially when we can do it together. Since Sean was scheduled to work for half of Thanksgiving weekend this year, I invited my family to come celebrate at our house. This gave me a chance to cook several meals for a group of people, so I could make (and eat) some tasty meals. The challenge was that my mom and two brothers are now semi-vegetarian: they generally try to avoid meat, but will eat it in certain situations. They all said they were eating turkey, so I didn't have to worry about that meal (no tofurkey!). But for the other meals, I had to come up with something that could include meat or no-meat.

We're also a big pie family. I sent out a "pie poll" asking them to rank apple, pumpkin, and pecan pies. I was originally planning to make two. Well, everybody ranked them differently, with different top choices, so I decided to make all three.

Sean had to work through Friday, then had 4 days off starting Saturday, so I decided to do the turkey meal on Saturday. So that meant we couldn't count on turkey leftovers for the other meals. However, I also realized that I could make a pie each day and could easily eat all three pies.

My parents and younger brother arrived on Wednesday, which was also Mitchell's sixth birthday. For that meal I wanted something that he liked, so I made salmon, broccoli, and rice. I got a big salmon filet, seasoned it with salt, pepper, dill weed, and paprika. Then I placed lemon slices on top and baked it. I make frozen broccoli spears in chicken broth, and the kids like to put Molly McButter cheese sprinkles on it (they didn't eat broccoli until I introduced them to it). We still had some of the Lego cake left from his birthday party the previous Saturday, so we just used that to sing and do candles again.

To make the Lego cakes, I used two cake mixes and poured it into two bread pans and 12 cupcakes. I cut the tops off of the cupcakes and used the bottoms for the circles on each Lego. I just started making theme cakes this year. In the past I went low-key and just let the kids decorate their own cakes, which they enjoyed doing. But we always ended up with sections of cake overloaded with sprinkles and other decorations! My first theme cake was in July for Jason's third birthday that had monster trucks on it.

On Thursday, my older brother arrived to complete the family. Mom and I made an apple pie (we made three crusts, and refrigerated two). Ever since we got an apple machine, making apple pie is incredibly easy because I can outsource the manual labor to the kids. They love to do the apple machine, and fight over who gets to do it. The apple machine produces long strands of apple peels. My brother and the kids ate them like Lady and the Tramp ate spaghetti:

We always make apple pie with a crumble topping (instead of a crust or lattice top) that makes it extra yummy! And it keeps me from having to do the difficult task of getting a crust on top of a pie.

For dinner on Thursday, I made lasagna. I used Barilla no-boil, home-style (no squigglies at the edges) noodles. I consulted two recipes (the one on the lasagna box and a Johnsonville sausage recipe on Allrecipes.com that included spinach) and augmented with extra ricotta, mozzarella, and sauce than either called for. I used (2 1/2 jars of) locally-produced Oliverio's spaghetti sauce and sweet Italian sausage and fresh spinach. To accommodate the semi-vegitarians and my kids who won't eat spinach, I made the left 3/4 with spinach mixed in the ricotta/egg/mozzarella mixture and the right half with the sausage. That way the semi-vegetarians could eat just spinach, my kids could eat just meat, and the rest of us could have both. It was delicious! We also had a tasty salad to go with it.

On Friday, Mom and I made the pumpkin and pecan pies. The recipe on the can of pumpkin didn't call for ginger, but Mom made sure we added it-a flavor that makes a pumpkin pie. The pecan pie was made from pecans ordered directly from a pecan farm (Delta Pecan Orchard) so they would be peanut-free. Most nuts are processed (shelled) on equipment that also processes peanuts, so there's no guarantee that there won't be some pieces of peanuts mixed in which can ruin your day if you or your kid has a peanut allergy. The pecans were nice, large, whole nuts-yummy!  My mom is very particular about the pecans and turns them all so the convex side is pointing up (she says it looks nicer that way).

For dinner, I had a big pork roast that I put in the slow cooker with some sliced onion and two Old El Paso reduced sodium taco packets. When it was done cooking, we pulled it and stuck it on the stove with its cooking juices and some vinegar (I left some out for the kids so it didn't get too spicy). I also heated a can of Bush's Seasoned black beans and a can of Cocina Latina refried black beans (with some other tasty stuff in it). We had tacos, and I figured the beans would make some non-meat options. I had Old El Paso Stand and Stuff taco shells and flour tortillas. For toppings we had shredded cheddar and quesadilla cheeses, chopped tomatoes, lettuce, avocado, black olives, and two types of salsa. There was corn on the side too. My older brother said tacos were his favorite food, so I chose well!

On Saturday, we had the turkey dinner and went totally traditional. I stuffed the bird with corn bread stuffing, and we also made  some out-of-the bird "stuffing" because that's the way my brother likes it. We had mashed potatoes, and Sean made the tastiest gravy. We had green beans, and cranberry sauce the way it should be: shaped like the can that it came in!

I am thankful for a great weekend with my family!!!

Publishing in a scientific journal, part 1

On Friday, I submitted a paper to the Journal of Geophysical Research-Space Physics. This gives me the opportunity to blog about the process of getting a paper published in a scientific journal. When you do scientific research, you have to share your results with other scientists, which is done through presentations (talks and posters) at conferences and through peer-reviewed publications. Publications are especially important because of the peer-review process during which other scientists read your paper and provide critical feedback on the merits of the paper, methods of research, and conclusions made based on the results.

A paper generally consists of an introduction that provides a background to the topic(s) discussed in the paper with references to other research relating to the topic, a description of the data used and methods with which they were obtained as well as analysis methods, a presentation of the results, a discussion of the results and what they mean for the topic being discussed, and final conclusions of the paper. Most papers include multiple authors, each of which has contributed in some way to the data collection, analysis, and or writing. All authors must agree with what is included in the paper.

Most journals have an online submission process. The author uploads an article file and enters information about the authors and details about the paper, including keywords that describe the paper topics and suggested reviewers. After submission, the journal editors get a basic idea of the paper to make sure it meets basic standards, then requests that other scientists in the field review the paper. Most journals have 2 reviewers for a paper. The reviewers have several weeks to read the paper, then provide a decision about the paper from the following options (there is some variation among journals):  publish without changes, publish with minor revisions, may be suitable for publication after major revisions, reject. The reviewer also provides comments to support that decision, including suggestions for revisions and questions about information that needs to be explained or clarified.

So now we wait to get the reviewer comments back from the editor. The identities of the reviewers remain anonymous, except in some journals when a reviewer agrees to be acknowledged in the final publication.

Blog about Research

This article:
http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/information-culture/2012/07/28/self-citing-bloggers-my-research-is-the-coolest-thing-ever-let-me-tell-you-all-about-it/
talks about blogs that promote the author's research, and that women are less likely to blog about their research, and cite their own work in blogs at an even lower rate. And since my brother wanted me to start this blog to talk about what I do, I figured I should talk a bit about my research this week.

One of the projects I'm currently working on is to compare how hot ions get during two different types of geomagnetic storms. The news has started to talk about solar flares and coronal mass ejections, so hopefully you have heard at least a little about them. Solar flares are blasts of high energy radiation from the Sun, and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) are big chunks of energetic particles (ions and electrons) that are blasted off the Sun. The Earth's magnetic field creates a protective shield that keeps the CME from hitting Earth directly. Instead, the energetic particles enter the region around Earth, called the magnetosphere, only in places where the magnetic field breaks. Once inside the magnetosphere, these energetic particles flow around, creating currents and causing the aurora. This is called a geomagnetic storm.

But CMEs are not the only driver of geomagnetic storms. Another driver is called a high speed stream (HSS). The Sun is constantly expelling particles, called the solar wind. The speed of these particles varies, but ranges from about 300 to 1000 km/s. If a region of slow solar wind is heading toward Earth, followed by a region of high speed solar wind, the fast solar wind will catch up to the slow solar wind. The interaction between the two regions can also drive geomagnetic storms. I wrote a paper describing how hot the ions get during one of these high speed stream-driven storms [Keesee et al., 2012].

Now I'm trying to do an analysis of the average ion temperature over all of the storms during late 2008-early 2012 and compare them during the two types of storms. So one of the things that I have to do is figure out when storms happened and which type of driver, CME or HSS, the storm had. Papers often get published that identify this for a set of storms, but it usually occurs for a previous chunk of time, so nothing has come out for this interval yet. First, I tried to look at criteria that other people have described to decide for myself what the driver was. But that was incredibly difficult! Using different resources led to conflicting designations, and some were just totally ambiguous. I had a lot of question marks in my notes!

Then this week while I was looking through more references, I found the most awesome resource ever! NOAA-the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (they bring you the weather)-has a Space Weather Prediction Center that publishes a weekly report on all of the solar and geophysical activity for the previous week plus a prediction for the upcoming week. The report gives a play-by-play of the geomagnetic storms and what caused them. Super Awesome!!! So now that problem is solved. Yay!

This week I also finished a draft of a paper that has been in the works for awhile and really needs to be finalized and submitted. I sent it to a co-author for comments.

And tonight we had a panel that I organized as a part of the Association for Women in Science. It was called What Can I Do With a Science Degree? and consisted of 3 women scientists in a variety of careers: a Congressional Science Policy Fellow, a Research Scientist for the US Forest Service, and an Independent Consultant that does project management and software/equipment validation. It went really well: we had a good audience and some great conversation!

Liebster Award!

Thanks to Susie at CastleBlake blog for giving my blog the Liebster Award!





The Rules of the Award: The Liebster Award is given to bloggers, by bloggers. It is a way to acknowledge each other and say, "You are doing a great job." It is for blogs with 200 or less followers, so it is also a great way to spread the word about smaller blogs and get them more readers and followers! When you receive the award you post eleven random facts about yourself, and answer eleven questions from the person who nominated you. You pass the award onto eleven other blogs, (make sure you let them know they were nominated,) and ask them eleven questions. You are not allowed to nominate the blog that nominated you.

So let's see, 11 random facts about me...
1. I'm a military brat, born in England and lived in Germany, but moved back to the States just before I turned 2. There's a little Brit left in me-I like to drink hot tea with milk in it!

2. I have a big, black furry dog-a Newfoundland. Her name is Nanny's Bella Notte, named after the song in Lady and the Tramp. ("beautiful night" in Italian)

3. I'm allergic to melon. I developed the allergy while I was in grad school, so I know how incredibly tasty melon can be :-(

4. My oldest kid has a peanut allergy. He doesn't know the taste of peanuts, but he has told me that he's excited to go to heaven so he can eat M&Ms :_-(

Enough with the downer facts!

5.  I play the cello. Well, "play" is an overstatement at this point as my poor cello hasn't seen the light of day since before by second child was born. Someday...

6. I love tangrams!

7. My favorite magazine is Brain, Child. It almost died due to the financial woes that plague most print media these days. But some awesome person swooped in and saved it. I'm so excited for my next issue. I call it my mommy porn! (Note: my husband and I use the term "porn" for anything you spend way to much time looking at, and has been upgraded since we became parents to also mean anything that causes you to ignore your children as they run around you like wild banchees.)

8. I have a 45 minute commute each way to work. It's not a stuck-in-traffic commute, so it's not terrible, but takes some time. I usually listen to NPR so I know what's going on. I drive a Honda Insight (hybrid) that gets >40 mph on average!

9. I have an awesome nanny whom the kids love. I couldn't survive in this career without her!

10. If you watch 30 Rock, I am so like Liz Lemon. (I want to go to there!)

11. It's a dry heat! I spent a big chunk of my childhood in Tucson.

 The 11 questions asked by Susie:
1. What is the best vacation you've ever taken? While I was in Australia doing research, I took some time to do some sightseeing: Sydney, surfing Bondi Beach, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef. It was awesome.

2. What is the most daring thing you've ever done? Took a nine month old on an airplane by myself, complete with carseat.

3. What is something you wish you could do better? Play the piano.

4. What are your favorite food flavors? Oh man, so many good flavors, I don't know if I have a favorite, but recently I've discovered the power of vinegar in making things pop!

5. What is your favorite dessert? Pie! (rhubarb is my favorite pie)

6. What is your favorite thing to actually cook? Pie! (especially after I got an apple machine and a pie crust bag)

7. What do you long for? I wish people of faith would accept each others' beliefs as legitimate. 

8. How do you celebrate your favorite holiday? Christmas is my favorite, and there are so many things I love-decorating, singing carols, being with family. My husband calls me "Christmas Crazy."

9. When/how/why did you know your spouse was "the one"? Cuddling on the couch at Davidson, watching TV, discussing math (my major) and biology (his major). Nerds in love :-)

10. What is your favorite beverage? normal: Coke; legal: pina colada

11. What is one tradition your family had when you were growing up that you'd like to continue with your family? Playing games. It all starts with kiddy board games and Uno, and eventually leads to Euchre! The spark has already been lit in Mitchell.

And now I get to bestow the award on 11 blogs! Well, I don't actually follow 11 blogs, so congratulations to
my little brother, Todd, at Daily Climb 
Ann at Reflections, Recipes, and Rants 

Update: I realized that I forgot to come up with 11 questions for the awardees to answer!
1. What is your favorite childhood memory?
2. If you could visit anywhere in the world (that you haven't been yet), where would it be?
3. What is your favorite place that you have visited?
4. What is your favorite food (non-dessert)?
5. What is your favorite dessert?
6. Who has inspired you?
7. Who is your favorite scientist? (I don't count :-P)
8. What is your least favorite chore?
9. What teacher changed your life?
10. What's the best book you've read recently?
11. What is the airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow?

Happy blogging to all those that have received this award! 

Race Day!

Today was my triathlon! It's a sprint distance-there are sprint, Olympic, Half-Ironman, and Ironman distances-although it definitely doesn't feel like a sprint to me! Lengths of sprint triathlons can be variable (especially the swim), but this one is 330 yard swim (in a pool that's strangely 33 yards), 11 mile bike, and 5K (3.1 miles) run. The bike and run are along a rail trade with very little grade. I've been doing this triathlon since its beginning, minus a few breaks for a trip to Australia, two babies, and last year when the trail was closed by a landslide. Today I had my best time ~1:18. Unfortunately they didn't have timing chips this year, I don't know why. But we didn't get splits (times for each leg of the race plus transitions), which was really annoying. Hopefully they'll post final times online so I know my exact total time. I only know from looking at the clock.

First is the swim. Since it's in a pool, 10 swimmers go in each heat, separated by 10 minutes. If you can't finish the swim in that time, they give you a time penalty. The water was a bit chilly when I got in. Sometimes I have psychological issues with breathing in really cold water, but I was able to calm myself down before starting and keep from freaking myself out during the swim. I shared a lane with a 19 year old that was way faster than me, but I had a pretty good swim. My time when I crossed the step where the timing pad usually is was 5:25.

In the first transition I put down my cap and goggles, put on my bike helmet, quickly dried my feet, and put on my socks and shoes. I don't use clip pedals on my bike, so this is the only shoe change I have to do. Pulling a bike off the rack is hard when it is squeezed with all of the other bikes and your arms are tired from swimming!

Next is the bike leg. This is where I wanted to try to improve my time. In the past I had never done much bike training. This year I went on several family rides, not really great training because it's pretty slow going to allow Mitchell and Sean pulling Jason in the trailer to keep up, but it's somewhat helpful for the muscles. Then I also did several morning rides around my neighborhood. These involved long, uphill climbs (followed by lots of downhill coasting) that really built my bike legs. I pushed pretty hard on the bike when I could. There were a few places that you couldn't push too hard-some bumpy places in the trail, some tight curves, and especially my encounter with a deer! A deer was standing to the right side of the trail, looking like it wanted to cross. I yelled at the deer to try to scare it away. It worked, but it couldn't find a place to turn back into the woods, so it ran along the side of the trail for several yards. We were coming to a bridge and I was so worried it was going to jump onto the trail, get trapped on the bridge, and totally freak out, but luckily it turned away from the trail just before the bridge. During the bike you can really get an idea of where you are in relation to other people in the race. Everybody has a number, so all the people in your heat have numbers in your decade. The person that had been in my swimming lane was the only person in my heat that was in front of me. I passed 2-3 people during the bike (one I wasn't sure if she was actually in the race) and was passed by none. When I got to the end of the bike leg, I checked the clock and saw that it was 46 minutes past my start time, so if my transition took about 5 minutes or less, then my bike split was 36 minutes-almost 10 minutes faster than my previous bike split!

The second transition is much faster without a shoe change. I just hung up my bike, a little easier since most of the bikers in my heat were still on the bike leg, except the person across from me who had annoyingly set their bike on a kickstand and the front tire was turned sideways, taking up a lot of space right in the way, then took off my helmet and put on my shirt with my race number attached. The shirt I could put on as I started to run out of the transition area, so that saved even more time.

Then the run. Let's just say that running hurts a lot after a long bike ride. The entire first half of the run was pretty miserable. The first half is on blacktop trail between buildings, and with the sun out, it was pretty hot. After a bit it crosses a street and then is next to a creek, which is a bit nicer, and then turns to crushed limestone through the woods, which is even nicer. But this direction has a bit of an uphill grade, so it hurts the whole way. After the turnaround, it feels awesome to have a bit of a downhill. It still was miserable on the sunny blacktop section, but so close to the end. As I came to the finish, my husband and two boys were there to cheer me on! I picked up the pace a bit to the finish. My run was about 32 minutes, which is a reasonable time for me (I usually try to run 10 minute miles during training). I was passed by a few people on the run, one was one of the bikers that I had passed that was from the heat before me, so I still may have beat her time.

Here's a picture from a previous triathlon (they didn't have a photographer this year either). This was on my old bike that I bought at a yard sale for $25. The first year I did the triathlon (while I was a grad student), I had used my old teenage-years bike that was terrible for a triathlon (big tires). On the way home from the triathlon, there was a big neighborhood yard sale. I saw this and bought it! A few years ago I got a new road bike for my birthday.

The fun thing about this race is that people are very nice-everybody says "good job" or other words of encouragement as they pass each other. Friends and co-workers have good competitions among each other. It's lots of fun (at least during parts of it, and definitely when you finish), motivates you to get exercise, and generally supports a good cause. This one supports Habitat for Humanity. I highly recommend checking out sprint triathlons in your area. If you're not up to all three sports, you can find two friends and do a relay.