Our first Special Issue of the Newsletter, with the abstracts from the 2021 annual meeting is now available to download.
More than 500 delegates did attend this very successful meeting and a total of about 800 contributions were presented either as oral or poster presentations. Despite the large number of participants, only four sessions were held simultaneously. This arrangement turned out to be very useful, and in this way clashing of interesting talks was reduced to a minimum.
A bit unusual for the participants coming from more northerly countries, the meeting officially started in the evening of Sunday the 4th at 19:00h with the Welcoming Speeches and a first Plenary Session. The advantages of adopting the Andalucian daily rhythm became immediately obvious when we left the air-conditioned interior of the conference centre at 21:30h for the Cocktail Reception on the roof terrace of the Conference centre. With still nearly 30°C (85° Fahrenheit for the British and US colleagues) we enjoyed the breathtaking views over Granada to one side and the Sierra Nevada to the other, while chatting to colleagues and friends and degusting the first Spanish wines and gastronomic delights.
Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre, London, 6th – 9th October 2003
Previously this conference has been held at the Barbican Centre, leading to the conference being widely known as the Barbican Conference. This year the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre was used as the new venue, enabling both a core workshop and a 3D visions session to run alongside poster presentations and up to 4 parallel talk sessions. I think everyone would agree that the setting for the conference was unsurpassable, even for those working in London, with Big Ben, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament on the doorstep.
The conference, though still mainly concentrating on exploration and development in north-western Europe, did this time include presentations of global interest. And although initial registration numbers showed a slight decrease in numbers since the last time the conference was held, by the time the late entrants had registered, the number of delegates was on par with previous years.
Extant coccolithophores have attracted a wide range of research over the past decade including much research on topics such as dimethyl sulphide and alkenone production, physiological ecology, carbon uptake mechanisms, remote sensing and modelling of blooms, but also taxonomy-based research on biodiversity, molecular genetics, ecology, biogeography and flux estimation. As a result of the latter strand of research there is now a significant number of specialists world-wide who are identifying and studying extant coccolithophores.
Reston, Virginia, U.S.A. 21st.-23rd. September 2003
In late September, and immediately after the landfall of Hurricane Isobel, the U.S. Geological Survey hosted an ICDP (International Continental Drilling Program) workshop at Reston, Virginia to define the scientific criteria which will decide the location for a deep well to be drilled in the centre of the Chesapeake Bay Impact Crater (CBIC).
The CBIC impact occurred approximately 35 million years ago (Late Eocene) when a meteorite or comet came to earth on the U.S. Atlantic continental shelf at a location that is currently occupied by the southern part of the Chesapeake Bay and neighbouring land, within the Virginia Coastal Plain. The crater as currently defined is approximately 84 km (53 miles) circular structure. This lies under several hundred feet of younger Tertiary marine sediments. Read more
Present your IODP-related research and find out more about up-coming expeditions as well as the development of the new 2050 Science Framework
Professor Tina van De Flierdt (Imperial College)
Dr Ake Fagereng (Cardiff University)
Dr Roz Coggon (University of Southampton)
The digital meeting will be spread over three sessions:
Talks and posters about ICDP and joint IODP-ICDP science are very welcome. PhD Students and Early Career Researchers are particularly encouraged to submit abstracts. Prizes will be available for students hosted at UK research institutions
Details of this event can be found here.
The International Nannoplankton Association (INA) is happy to announce NannoTalks Volume 2, starting Monday 19th April at 15:00 UTC. Tune in to our transmission on YouTube at
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSj27AawGmQ
Our first talk will be the Role of silicon in the development of complex crystal shapes in coccolithophores by Gerald Langer. The development of calcification by the coccolithophores had a profound impact on ocean carbon cycling, but the evolutionary steps leading to the formation of these complex biomineralized structures are not clear. Advanced microscopic studies help to understand how these tiny microorganisms calcify and how some coccolithophore species recruit silicon for crystal morphogenesis.
Dates: 29th Aug – 2 Sep 2021
Location: Avignon, France
Hosts: Luc Beaufort, Clara Bolton, Baptiste Suchras-Marx
More information to follow closer to the time!
More details on how to register can be found here: https://www.tmsoc.org/6th-silicofossil-and-palynology-joint-meeting-2022/
