The Section
Highlights
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Best wishes for 2016
The Department of Earth Sciences was gathering together to close the year. The enjoyable atmosphere was an excellent prelude for 2016. We wish to all members of the Section that the new year will keep bringing satisfaction and success in science and teaching !
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Starting Grant for Professor Luca Caricchi
Congratulations to Prof. Luca Caricchi, who recently obtained a starting grant of the European Research Council, starting in April 2016. The project entitled Forecasting the recurrence rate of volcanic eruptions (FEVER) will target the identification of the physical processes controlling the freq…
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Research in marine biodiversity
The Swiss Network for International Studies (SNIS) has funded the project « Monitoring Marine Biodiversity in the Genomic Era » leaded by professors Jan Pawlowski and Daniel Ariztegui from the Departments of Biology and Earth Sciences (Faculté des Sciences, UNIGE), respectively. Learn more about thi…
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Research Front on Microplastics
The harmful effect of plastics on marine organisms is well-documented and cases of seabirds, turtles or mammals receive intensive media coverage. Less spectacular, but probably more insidious, are the effects caused by microplastics. A Research Front on Microplastics, coordinated and edited by Monts…
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Geneva to return Roman-era sarcophagus to Turkey
Detailed mineralogical and geochemical analyses carried out by the Department of Earth Sciences using a combination of the new QEMSCAN technology, clay-XRD and XRF (Branimir Segvic and Andrea Moscariello 2014) were instrumental to identify the likely origin of the famous roman Sarcophagus held for s…
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New Paper in Environmental Science & Technology
Natural methane bubble release from freshwater sediments was traditionally believed to enhance the mobility of dissolved substances in sediment porewater. However, our work demonstrates that free gas bubbles in the sediment slows down the diffusion of soluble substances. On the contrary, these gas…
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New Paper in Geology
Goren, L., Castelltort, S., Klinger, Y., 2015. Modes and rates of horizontal deformation from rotated river basins: Application to the Dead Sea fault system in Lebanon. Geology. doi:10.1130/G36841.1 Rivers on the western flank of Mt Lebanon do not take the shortest path to the sea An international…
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New paper in Water Research
Loosli et al. (2015) Towards a better understanding on agglomeration mechanisms and thermodynamic properties of TiO2 nanoparticles interacting with natural organic matter. The present work is dealing with a novel and original approach (Isothermal Titration Calorimetry) that has a high potential to …
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Quantifying the impact of volcanic eruptions on climate
Large volcanic eruptions inject considerable amounts of sulphur in the stratosphere which, once converted into aerosols, block sun rays and tend to cool the surface of the Earth down for several years. An international team of researchers has just developed a method, published in Nature Geoscience, …
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New Paper in Geology
Ventra et al. (2015) Supercritical-flow structures on a Late Carboniferous delta front: Sedimentologic and paleoclimatic significance. Anomalously large sedimentary structures in Late Carboniferous deltaic deposits of the Pennine Basin (UK) represent the first outcrop example of fully preserved c…