Geosciences Professor Lianxing Wen Identifies Location of North Korean Nuclear Test

Posted Nov. 2009
Since May 25, 2009, when the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) announced that it conducted a second nuclear test, the exact location of the test has remained elusive to international o rganizations, federal agencies, the military and the scientific community... until now. A new study by Geosciences Professor Lianxing Wen and graduate student Hui Long has determined the location of North Korea's 2009 test site with a geographic precision of 140 meters (153 yards). The remarkable precision attained in this study was made possible using a novel strategy utilizing the scientific forensic evidence registered by North Korea's 2006 nuclear test.
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Undergraduate Geoscience Majors Honored at Academic Achievement Banquet

On October 23rd, undergraduate Geoscience majors Niya Grozeva, Kei Shimizu, and Lily Wu were honored at Stony Brook's Academic Achievement Banquet. This event recognizes undergraduate resident students who achieved a 4.0 GPA in Spring 2009 and carry a cumulative GPA of 3.85 or higher. Fewer than 150 of the more than 7000 eligible undergraduate students carried a 4.0 GPA with a cumulative of 3.85 or higher last spring. This was Kei's third time being honored and the first time for Niya and Lily. Congratulations!! Left to right: Kei, Niya, Lily

Increasing Diversity in Geosciences
Gilbert Hanson, Distinguished Service Professor

Sept. 2009
A proposal headed up by Gil Hanson, Distinguished Service Professor in the Department of Geosciences, has been funded by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Directorate for Geosciences in the amount of $1.5 million for five years. “GeoPREP Track 2: Expanding the Geoscience Pathway” aims to increase diversity in the Geosciences. This effort was spearheaded by Principal Investigator Hanson and co-PIs Brian Colle, Associate Professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences; David Ferguson, Distinguished Service Professor and Chair, Department of Technology and Society; Kamazima Lwiza, Associate Professor, School of Marine and Atmospheric Sciences; David Bynum, Director, Center for Science and Mathematics Education; and Paul Siegel, of Technology and Society and the Director of GeoPREP. Siegel was instrumental in bringing the co-PIs together, and he has played a significant role in the design and creation of the GeoPREP program.
See full story published in SBU's Happenings.

Timothy Glotch, Geosciences Assistant Professor-
science team member for the
Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment
on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter
Geosciences Assistant Professor Timothy Glotch is a science team member for the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which successfully entered lunar orbit on June 23. LRO is the first U.S. mission to the Moon in more than a decade.

Diviner will make high resolution temperature maps of the lunar surface that will help pave the way for the return of humans in 2020. Diviner temperature measurements will help science team members to search for water ice at the lunar poles and map rock abundances on the lunar surface. Prof. Glotch will focus on using Diviner’s temperature measurements to map the silicate composition of the lunar crust. "The Diviner experiment represents the first opportunity to globally map the composition of the Moon at thermal IR wavelengths. By mapping the silicate composition of the Moon, we will be able to test models for how the Moon formed and evolved over time," said Glotch.

John Parise to receive Fulbright Distinguished Scholar Award
Geosciences faculty member John Parise has been selected to receive a Fulbright US Distinguished Scholar Award for 2009-2010. John's work involving research and development in X-ray and neutron scattering has provided leadership across the crystallography, mineral physics, geosciences, and solid-state chemistry research communities.

John Parise is Professor in the Department of Geosciences as well as the Department of Chemistry at Stony Brook. He is also Chair of the NSLS Users Executive Committee, a member of Powder Instrument Next Generation Beamline Advisory Team at NSLS II, co-Director of the Joint Photon Sciences Institute, and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee for the Spallation Neutron Source.

More about Prof. John Parise: http://www.geosciences.stonybrook.edu/people/faculty/parise/parise.html

John Parise selected to Co-Direct the Joint Photon Sciences Institute
Geosciences Professor John Parise has been named Co-Director of the newly established Joint Photon Sciences Institute (JPSI). This new Institute represents a partnership between the US Department of Energy and New York State. Construction of a building for JPSI at BNL has been approved, but JPSI will also be a center at Stony Brook. With a mandate of facilitating interactions among academia, industry, and BNL, the main focal point of JPSI will be NSLS II, the new synchrotron that is slated for completion in 2014. Prof. Parise, along with JPSI Director Chi-Chang Kao (who is the current NSLS Director), will promote interdisciplinary research that will take advantage of the world-leading capabilities to be available at NSLS II.

Geosciences researchers discover form of sodium that becomes transparent at high pressure.
New Geosciences faculty member Artem Oganov and research fellow Andriy Lyakhov have discovered an exotic phase of the element sodium that becomes transparent at high pressure. The research, lead by Yanming Ma of Jilin University (China), Artem Oganov and Mikhail Eremets from Max Planck Institute (Germany), has been published in Nature on March 12, 2009. Using a combination of computational and experimental methods, they showed that sodium, an archetypal metal, transforms into a non-metallic transparent phase at pressures around 2 Mbar. The crystal structure of the new phase is unique among the elements and can be described as an electride, i.e. a compound made of ionic cores and interstitial electron pairs. This represents a significant step in the understanding of strongly compressed matter. "This fundamental result is important for understanding properties of highly compressed matter, particularly within stars and giant planets," said Oganov.

Artem, Associate Professor in Geosciences and a member of the New York Center for Computational Science, develops and applies novel computational methods to understand structure, especially at high pressure and temperature. Artem has developed an evolutionary algorithm for predicting crystal structures, which finds applications in mineral physics, condensed matter physics, and drug design, to mention a few.

Pictured above: Prof. Artem Oganov (left) and Research Fellow Dr. Andriy Lyakhov with a projection of the sodium structure they discovered.

New faculty member Artem Oganov reveals ionic form of boron in Nature article
New Geosciences faculty member Artem Oganov made a splash with the discovery of a high-pressure ionic form of boron. The research, which also involved former Stony Brook Research Professor Jiuhua Chen, has been published in Nature on January 28, 2009. Using a combination of computational and experimental methods, they showed the existence of charge transfer between different boron atoms, which then play the roles of cations and anions within the same structure. This represents the first discovery of charge transfer in a pure elemental crystal.

Artem, Associate Professor in Geosciences and a member of the NY Center for Computational Science, develops and applies novel computational methods to understand structure, especially at high pressure and temperature. Artem has developed an evolutionary algorithm for predicting crystal structures, which finds applications in mineral physics, condensed matter physics, and drug design, to mention a few.
See the full press release in video form at:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=946339166564646074&ei=XmKDSemuBISQqALipbXhCg&q=boron

Geosciences Faculty Member Troy Rasbury Mentors Intel Finalist
Our own Troy Rasbury, Associate Professor in Geosciences, served as the faculty mentor for Intel Science Talent Search finalist Patrick Abejar from Smithtown High School West. As one of only 40 high school students nationwide to be selected as a finalist for the well known science competition, Patrick worked on the project titled: "Utilizing Boron Isotopic Secular Variation as a Proxy to Assess Climate Change." Troy's expertise in isotope geochemistry and growing interest in climate change was the perfect match for Patrick, who worked in her lab at Stony Brook during the summer of 2008 as a Simon’s Fellow. Among the findings of this research, Patrick obtained some of the first reliable boron isotope values from Pennsylvanian-Permian (ca. 310-290 Ma) brachiopods, showing a rapid rise of more than 10 per mil from periods of high _pCO₂ to periods of low _pCO₂. Patrick helped in selection of samples with the assistance of Dr. Susan Butts, Curator of Invertebrate Collections at the Yale Peabody Museum, and did much of the preparation work and screening with the help of Troy's lab assistant Jessica Conrad, before tackling the isotope analyses. Boron isotopes are one of the most challenging isotope systems to work with, and the negative ion technique developed at Stony Brook is one of the best established high-resolution methods. Dr. Gary Hemming of Queens College CUNY (Stony Brook PhD. 1992), who established the technique and is a leading expert in boron isotope systematics, helped Patrick get started with analyses. Patrick kept working into the Fall semester, collecting an extensive dataset while taking Calculus III in the evening at Stony Brook. Winners of the Science Talent Search will be announced on March 10th.

We're also proud that Bill Holt, Professor in Geosciences, served as the faculty mentor for Robert Kaminski of Kings Park High School, who was selected as a semi-finalist in the Intel Science Talent Search.

Congratulations to Patrick, Robert, Troy, and Bill!