Science - Sealed, Delivered.

Dance for Science

Fri Nov 28 2008

Six weeks ago, the Gonzo Scientist challenged researchers around the world to interpret their Ph.D. research in dance form, film the dance, and share it with the world on YouTube

Two of my favourites:

Tropospheric N2O isotopic composition
by Kat Potter at MIT (read more)

Hydrodynamic trail detection in marine organisms
by Christin Murphy at University of South Florida (read more)

An interesting exercise, in more than one sense. I’ve often found that presenting my ideas and work in varied ways and to varied audiences, while certainly adding new challenges, does tend to improve my ability to get such notions across most efficiently.

Wise words

Wed Oct 8 2008

After last nights debate on the economy by the presidential candidates, and with the Dow gaining 100pts this afternoon, following five consecutive days of enormous losses and a morning where it flirted with 9000, I thought it might be appropriate to post some insightful reflection on the economic situation:

I want to talk for a few minutes with the people of the United States about banking—with the comparatively few who understand the mechanics of banking but more particularly with the overwhelming majority who use banks for the making of deposits and the drawing of checks. I want to tell you what has been done in the last few days, why it was done, and what the next steps are going to be. I recognize that the many proclamations from State Capitols and from Washington, the legislation, the Treasury regulations, etc., couched for the most part in banking and legal terms should be explained for the benefit of the average citizen. I owe this in particular because of the fortitude and good temper with which everybody has accepted the inconvenience and hardships […]

First of all let me state the simple fact that when you deposit money in a bank the bank does not put the money into a safe deposit vault. It invests your money in many different forms of credit-bonds, commercial paper, mortgages and many other kinds of loans. In other words, the bank puts your money to work to keep the wheels of industry and of agriculture turning around. A comparatively small part of the money you put into the bank is kept in currency—an amount which in normal times is wholly sufficient to cover the cash needs of the average citizen. In other words the total amount of all the currency in the country is only a small fraction of the total deposits in all of the banks.[…]

We had a bad banking situation. Some of our bankers had shown themselves either incompetent or dishonest in their handling of the people’s funds. They had used the money entrusted to them in speculations and unwise loans. This was of course not true in the vast majority of our banks but it was true in enough of them to shock the people for a time into a sense of insecurity and to put them into a frame of mind where they did not differentiate, but seemed to assume that the acts of a comparative few had tainted them all. It was the Government’s job to straighten out this situation and do it as quickly as possible — and the job is being performed. […]

I do not promise you that every bank will be reopened or that individual losses will not be suffered, but there will be no losses that possibly could be avoided; and there would have been more and greater losses had we continued to drift.[…]

After all there is an element in the readjustment of our financial system more important than currency, more important than gold, and that is the confidence of the people. Confidence and courage are the essentials of success in carrying out our plan. You people must have faith; you must not be stampeded by rumors or guesses. Let us unite in banishing fear. We have provided the machinery to restore our financial system; it is up to you to support and make it work.

It is your problem no less than it is mine. Together we cannot fail.

(Excerpted from Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Fireside Speech of March 12, 1933)

Upcoming speaking engagement

Tue Oct 7 2008

Geoff Parker
October 19-22, Chicago: WEFTEC.08
Topic: Stochastic Calibration of Riverine Water Quality Models.

Presentation: An Objective Test of Stochastic Behavior in Riverine Water Quality Models

Fri Sep 19 2008

[Transcript here]

Transcript: An Objective Test of Riverine Water Quality Models

Fri Sep 19 2008

[Ed: A video version of this presentation is on the way, complete with slides and narration. The transcript here is provided as an alternative.]

Hi, my name is Geoff Parker and this is an [online transcript] of the talk entitled ‘An Objective Test of Riverine Water Quality Models’, given on September 9th at the 2008 IWA World Water Congress in Vienna, Austria.

So, why are we interested in water quality models enough to bother with this? Well, here are two sources that describe the types of cases in which they might be useful, and particularly the problem is one of spatial and temporal changes of constituents in river systems. So what are constituents of concern? DO, Nutrients like N and P, toxics like Atrazine and other pesticides – these are the types of things we’re generally taking about. And the processes we’re interested in are those ones that drive the spatial and temporal changes – and they range from physical processes like sedimentation to chemical processes like redox reactions to biological processes like nutrient uptake. Where are we interested in such things? Well, in a cartoon view of a watershed, we’re talking mostly about what’s going on in the riverine system itself, which we’ll generally model as a 1-D system.

Having covered the why, the what, and the where – now we move on to the crux of the problem, the how – which is also really the when, as we’ll see. So the way we usually see these problems approached is through what we call ‘deterministic’ paradigms. Many different and flavours of coded models exist for these types of problems, but fundamentally they rely on variations of a handful of conceptual models. So we can pose a general formulation of these models, based on 3 major terms, an advection term, a dispersion term, and a conversion-kinetics term. In IOGA terms, the first two are the input and output drivers while the last is the generation component. And for the most part, this is the formulation of models as they have been used since Streeter-Phelps.

The problem, however is that stochastic issues – those dealing with model uncertainty — are really the issue of the day in modeling, either expressly or, at probably even more often, in an implied manner seen in the use, misuse and/or mistrust of model results. So let me give you an example now of what I mean when I talk about deterministic approaches. Here we have a schematic of the major parts of the model construction process.

[Read More…]