So excited to see that geogarage now has chart coverage for lots of international locations including Brazil, UK, Canada, Australia, and NZ. It's as if they knew where we are working
http://marine.geogarage.com/Thursday, June 30, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Monday, June 27, 2011
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Infographic: Tallest Mountain to Deepest Ocean Trench | Our Amazing Planet
This is a great graphic definitely useful for teaching.
http://www.ouramazingplanet.com/infographic-tallest-mountain-to-deepest-ocean-trench-0249/
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Wednesday, June 22, 2011
Engineer Guy on Fiber Optics
June 21, 2011 5:35 PM
by Sean Michael Ragan
Engineer Guy on Fiber Optics
In this, the last installment of the third series of Bill Hammack's wildly popular Engineer Guy videos, Bill exposes the wonders of fiber optics. He starts by demonstrating transmission of laser light through a fiber optic stereo cable, then explains total internal reflection with a really cool visual aid made from a bucket of antifreeze. There are details on the manufacture of the fibers themselves, the design of the first transatlantic fiber optic cable, and the signal processing used to encode data for transmission via fiber. All that, and more, in just five minutes and thirty seconds, and with Bill's usual class. Nice way to wound out series #3!
Series #4 is scheduled for Fall of this year, and Bill is preparing a companion book that will be available as a $0.99 download. Sign up here to be notified when it becomes available.
Education Science Video Making engineer guy engineering
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Arctic Symposium address by Dr. Jane Lubchenco
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110620_arcticice.html
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Monday, June 20, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
Underwater Robot Helps NASA Astronauts Prepare for Simulated Mission
http://www.azorobotics.com/news.aspx?newsID=1573
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Thursday, June 16, 2011
Google Earth shows marine “landscape of fear” visible from space
June 15, 2011 3:20 PM
by Stefan Geens
Google Earth shows marine "landscape of fear" visible from space
In a major step for open access to scientific research, Nature Publishing Group's free, peer-reviewed Creative-Commons-licensed online journal Scientific Reports has just launched, and its inaugural "edition" contains an article on marine predator-prey behaviour, Landscape of fear visible from space, that uses Google Earth imagery as a primary source of evidence:
A Google Earth image survey of the lagoon habitat at Heron Island within Australia's Great Barrier Reef revealed distinct halo patterns within algal beds surrounding patch reefs. Ground truth surveys confirmed that, as predicted, algal canopy height increases with distance from reef edges. A grazing assay subsequently demonstrated that herbivore grazing was responsible for this pattern. In conjunction with recent behavioural ecology studies, these findings demonstrate that herbivores' collective antipredator behavioural patterns can shape vegetation distributions on a scale clearly visible from space.
The accompanied imagery is a screen grab from this location is Google Earth/Maps:
Animal-created habitat transformations visible from space! That is always cool. (For another recent example, see the world's largest beaver dam in Canada.)
If you want an easy-to-read version of the results, both Monga Bay and Tree Hugger write up the article. Disappointingly, neither of these news sites manages a link to the original research report on which their story is based — thus missing the entire point of open-access scientific research.
Uncategorized
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Monday, June 13, 2011
Calculating the Area Under a Surface
June 13, 2011 9:25 AM
by Loren
Calculating the Area Under a Surface
Recently there was an email making the rounds at MathWorks about how to calculate the area under a surface. Not surprisingly, there were several methods chosen, based on each sender's proclivities. Here are some of the ways.
Contents
Data Already on a Regular Grid
If you have data already on a regular grid, you can simply call trapz twice, once along the X dimension, and once along Y. Here's an example. Let's first make some random x and y points.
xdata = [0; rand(100,1); 1]; ydata = [0; rand(100,1); 1]; x = sort(xdata); y = sort(ydata);
For now, let's calculate our gridded sampled function. Then use trapz twice.
[X,Y] = meshgrid(x,y); Z = X.^2.*sin(3*(X-Y)); trapz(y,trapz(x,Z,2),1)
ans = 0.13173
Let's compare the result to one using dblquad.
F = @(x,y)(x.^2).*sin(3*(x-y)); dblquad(F,0,1,0,1)
ans = 0.13173
Scattered Data : Finding the Convex Hull
MATLAB has the ability to deal with scattered data in a variety of ways. I've just shown, using meshgrid a technique for integrating a function that you know by sampling, and comparing this result to numerically integrating the same function that generated the samples. I'll take advantage of some of the newer computational geometry functionality in MATLAB in this next attempt.
load seamount minz = min(z); zadj = z-min(z);Note that I "normalized" the depth data (z), since it is negative, and changed it into the array zadj that is all non-negative. Next I create an interpolant from the scattered data. Then integrate this function using quad2d, but not before trimming the minimum and maximum values for x and y so I won't run into extrapolated values (which are NaN).
F2 = TriScatteredInterp(x,y,zadj); q1 = quad2d(@(x,y) F2(x,y),211.1,211.4,-48.35,-48,'AbsTol',0.01)q1 = 136.04
Scattered Data : Finding the Area
If you have access to Curve Fitting Toolbox, you can take advantage of the relatively new capability for fitting surfaces. I'll use the same seamount data as before, created a fit to the data, and, from the function that comes from the fit, use quad2d again to compute the area.
f = fit([x, y], zadj, 'linearinterp'); q2 = quad2d(f,211.1,211.4,-48.35,-48,'AbsTol',0.01)
q2 = 136.04
How Do You Work with Scattered Data?
If you have scattered data representing a surface, how do you think about it and work with it - numerically or by fitting a function of some sort? Do you have other techniques? Let me know here.
Get the MATLAB code (requires JavaScript)
Published with MATLAB® 7.12
Computational Geometry How To Interpolation & Fitting
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Sunday, June 12, 2011
NASA's Aquarius Launched To Help Map the Oceans' Salt
June 12, 2011 6:39 AM
by timothy
NASA's Aquarius Launched To Help Map the Oceans' Salt
oxide7 writes "NASA launched a satellite featuring an brand-new instrument which will be able to measure the saltiness of Earth's oceans. Data from the Aquarius/SAC-D spacecraft will help scientists understand better the processes that drive ocean circulation and the movement of freshwater around the planet."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
earth
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Saturday, June 11, 2011
The Renaissance man: how to become a scientist over and over again | Not Exactly Rocket Science | Discover Magazine
http://mblogs.discovermagazine.com/notrocketscience/2011/06/08/the-renaissance-man-how-to-become-a-scientist-over-and-over-again/
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Harvard’s $14 Swarm-bot Design
Wow these are cool... Gotta get some swarm bots!
June 10, 2011 12:10 PM
by Sean Michael Ragan
Harvard's $14 Swarm-bot Design
If you're interested in studying real-world robot swarms, the unit cost is everything. Reportedly, most commercial swarm bots cost $100 or more, so this innovative design from Michael Rubenstein, Nicholas Hoff, and Radhika Nagpal of the Harvard's Self Organizing Systems Research Group represents an order-of-magnitude savings over existing platforms. They call it "Kilobot," and besides low cost, it is designed for rapid assembly (<5 min/unit) and group charging using plates that engage the top and bottom of the entire swarm at once. From their technical report (PDF):
While these robots are low-cost, they still have abilities similar to other collective robots. These abilities include: differential drive locomotion, on-board computation power, neighbor-to-neighbor communication, and neighbor-toneighbor distance sensing. These abilities are achieved at low cost mainly through the use of vibration based locomotion and a simple range only sensor.
The embedded video shows swarms of up to 29 Kilobots (about $410 dollars altogether) engaged in "foraging" and "follow-the-leader" behaviors. The group plans to produce a 1024-bot swarm in the near future. [via Hack a Day]
Electronics Robotics Science swarm
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
iPod Magic
A very cool illusion filled with some good life messages too...
June 11, 2011 10:32 AM
by John Baichtal
iPod Magic
I love Marco Tempest's iPod illusions… and if I might say so, excellent T-shirt choice, sir. [Via one of my favorite illusionists, Bruce Sterling.]
More:
iPod Toys and Games
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Thursday, June 9, 2011
Explore the Deep Seas With Google Oceans Update | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/google-oceans/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
View new high-resolution underwater terrain to celebrate World Oceans Day
Happy World Ocean Day.
June 8, 2011 3:55 PM
by Google Earth Blog
View new high-resolution underwater terrain to celebrate World Oceans Day
In celebration of World Oceans Day, Google has released a significant amount of brand new high-resolution ocean floor imagery, amounting to an area larger than North America!
Captured from nearly 500 ship cruises and 12 different institutions, the data was curated by the Lamont-Dohery Earth Observatory. The image below shows the areas that have been udpated:
To explore more of the new features, Google has created a "Seafloor Updates layer" to show off the highlights, seen here:
The deepest volcanic eruption ever recorded was at the West Mata volcano near Fiji, photos of which can be seen in the Deep Sea Vents Ridge 2000 tour. Coincidentally, Frank is celebrating World Oceans Day by spending a full day diving in the ocean in Fiji. You can read about that experience on the Tahina Expedition blog.
All of this data is fun to look at, but there are some important scientific benefits as well. In particular, a more detailed ocean map can help us understand how tsunamis will spread around the globe. At this point, we know more about the surface of Mars and the Moon than we do about the ocean floor, so advances like these are becoming more critical.
For more about this, you can read the World Oceans Day blog post on the Google Lat Long blog, or visit WorldOceansDay.org.
Environment
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Monday, June 6, 2011
Waste Slime Turns Jellyfish Into Ecological Vampires | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/jellyfish-shunt/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Flight Planning
June 6, 2011 12:28 PM
by admin
Flight Planning
The 2011 field season will be our fourth year using the DeepWorkers and I'd like to think that over the years we've learned a few things and have gotten pretty good at flight planning. In the last two field seasons at Pavilion Lake, we've been focused on collecting images from regions of the lake where we haven't been before (filling in the gaps!) or on getting more detailed imaging based on cool features we've seen in video footage from previous years. This year the team is at Kelly Lake and we're in a situation similar to the one we faced in 2008 when we first brought the DeepWorkers to Pavilion for the first time and were new at flight planning, where do we send them?
Unlike our previous two years at Pavilion Lake, at Kelly Lake we don't have previous flights or underwater images to help guide us in our flight planning. This is exciting as it means everything is new and we don't know what surprises might be in store for us when we first view the video, but it also means that we need to find some way to decide how to design our flight paths. While we don't have prior flights what we do have is some really great sonar images that were acquired in 2010 using the AUV from the University of Delaware team. Using these images we can get some sense of where interesting features are in the lake (e.g. big field of microbialites, neat ripples in the sediment) and plan our flights to have the DeepWorkers pass them by.
Courtesy Art Trembanis Univ Delaware
Every year we try to improve on how we create the actual flight paths as we're constantly learning about ways to make it easier and more efficient. Thanks to the wonderful IRG folks, we have some incredible online flight planning tools this year that we've been able to put to good use (including many attempts to break /fix/improve them along the way!). With them we're able to draw our flight paths directly onto an image of the lake.With these new tools and the sonar images, we've already managed to plan all 14 of our DW flights putting us in great shape for final reviews and edits leading up to the field season which is only a little over a month away. We look forward to applying the lessons we've learned from flight planning at Pavilion to the exploration of Kelly Lake and can't wait to see what interesting finds await us!
Your 2011 flight planners,
Allyson, Mars and Stan
Deepworker
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Sunday, June 5, 2011
SonarWiz Contact Report Kelly Lake
For archive reference this is the link to the target report for the Kelly Lake AUV side-scan data.
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Saturday, June 4, 2011
Mars Rover Opportunity Surpasses 30km Driving
Go Opportunity go!
June 4, 2011 10:33 AM
by Soulskill
Mars Rover Opportunity Surpasses 30km Driving
Phoghat sends this quote from Universe Today: "With her most recent drive of 482 feet on June 1, 2011 (Sol 2614), NASA's Opportunity Mars Rover has zoomed past the unimaginable 30 kilometer mark in total odometry since safely landing on Mars nearly seven and one half years ago on Jan 24, 2004. That's 50 times beyond the roughly quarter-mile of roving distance initially foreseen. And Opportunity is still going strong, in good health and has abundant solar power as she continues driving on her ambitious overland trek across the martian plains of Meridiani Planum. She is heading to the giant Endeavour crater, some 22 km in diameter."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
mars
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Friday, June 3, 2011
Cartas BSB raster charts for Brazil
https://www.mar.mil.br/dhn/chm/cartas/download/cartasbsb/cartas_eletronicas_Internet.htm
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
National Ocean Council and NOAA celebrate National Ocean Month
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110602_nationaloceancouncil.html
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
NOAA, partners to search for ships lost in World War II off North Carolina
http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2011/20110603_battleofatlantic.html
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Hot Bodies Sink Faster | Wired Science | Wired.com
http://m.wired.com/wiredscience/2011/06/hot-bodies-sink-faster/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+wired%2Findex+%28Wired%3A+Index+3+%28Top+Stories+2%29%29&utm_content=Google+Feedfetcher
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
http://cshel.geology.udel.edu
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
Too Much Data? Then 'Good Enough' Is Good Enough
June 2, 2011 7:06 PM
by timothy
Too Much Data? Then 'Good Enough' Is Good Enough
ChelleChelle writes "While classic systems could offer crisp answers due to the relatively small amount of data they contained, today's systems hold humongous amounts of data content — thus, the data quality and meaning is often fuzzy. In this article, Microsoft's Pat Helland examines the ways in which today's answers differ from what we used to expect, before moving on to state the criteria for a new theory and taxonomy of data."
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
storage
Dr. Art Trembanis
CSHEL
109 Penny Hall
Department of Geological Sciences
The College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment
University of Delaware
Newark DE 19716
302-831-2498
"Education is not the filling of a pot, but the lighting of a fire." -W. B. Yeats
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