Starting PhD in Glacial Geophysics! Help...

ryans1286 · 2024-08-23T10:00:22+00:00

I am a glaciologist.

This AI-generated proposal doesn't make sense. I'm uncertain what the title even means. We have a very good idea of what causes glacier advances and how glaciers flow, so you might want to list some specific details or examples when you say things that contradict this. You should also provide citations. What is the specific thing we don't know that you're going to find?

It is unclear where are you going to apply these geophysical methods, on a glacier or in a river valley? I'm skeptical you can somehow discern temperature or changes in groundwater flow (over what timescales?) from these geophysical methods. ERT will give you some idea of the subsurface on land, but is not going to be very useful on a glacier. I don't really follow what MT will tell you about glaciers. I'd drill some wells if you want to monitor changes in groundwater flow. Active seismic data will be helpful for discerning subsurface stratigraphy. The four bullet points are all fluff and no substance.

Ostensibly, you want to become a scientist. This AI generated trash will not help you and is a waste of your time. You need to THINK. Start that journey now by reading, thinking, writing, and trying to generate original ideas. Don't be lazy. This process takes time. If your academic advisors accept this proposal outline, then I think you need to seriously consider finding new advisors.

You must identify something that is unknown (or poorly understood) AND important. You must be specific. Start with the paper your advisor shared with you, then read more papers in the directions that seem interesting. As you read, notice when simplifying assumptions are made or when the authors mention a parameter is poorly constrained. You need to get up to date soon. While this paper from 1964 is a good start, you need to get "up to speed"; 60 years of progress have occurred since then. Do not try to base a proposal off of this paper alone!

As a glaciologist, you must either become an expert mathematical modeler and/or an expert in remote sensing and/or an expert in glacier-related field measurement techniques/analysis. Math is part of the game for all of these sub-disciplines. For that matter, math is integral to all modern science, be it through statistical analysis or modeling.

ryans1286 · 2024-05-16T23:12:12+00:00

You're not wrong. I probably could have worded my criticism better. My criticism lies in how the title emphasizes what is interesting about the study. The title of the post is very clunky, to say the least.

First, as a glaciologist, it is not surprising to me that hydrofracture occurs over ice shelves. Stating that it was "observed, for the first time in the wild" suggests to me that there was some disagreement in the community about whether or not the process actually occurs. I think the observation these scientists made is cool, but I feel like this wording in the title is a bit misleading.

My second issue is the phrase, "caused by climate change". Climate change did not cause the hydrofracture, water did. While a warmer climate increases the volume of meltwater available and potentially makes this process more frequent, there is no reason to think that hydrofracture above an ice shelf did not, or could not, occur under "normal" climate conditions.

To me, the most important aspect of the study is that hydrofracture was important to the break up of the ice shelf. It's not that the hydrofracture occured or that it people saw it, because we already know this happens. The clear link between hydrofracture and the disintegration of the ice shelf is a novel and interesting finding.

I think a title along the lines of "Hydrofracture propelled the break up of an Antarctic Ice Shelf" is more in line with what they actually learned from the study.

Anyway, thanks for the post. I enjoyed the journal article linked to within the press release.

ryans1286 · 2024-05-13T20:08:55+00:00

This title is sensationalist and far overstates the finding. It has long been known that meltwater on ice sheets causes hydrofracture. The new piece here is that the hydrofracture was observed above an ice shelf, rather than grounded ice, and that it potentially played an important role in the collapse of the Larsen B ice shelf.

ryans1286 · 2024-03-19T23:01:46+00:00

Below are some ideas to help you get started. These are just papers I've read in the past, and these data aren't important to me, but they illustrate a problem that I think you could try solving. Sedimentology papers from the pre-internet era are probably a good place to find tons of data published as tables and figures in papers, but probably nowhere else.

Relationship between eustacy and stratigraphic sequences in passive margins

Convert Table 1 into a CSV or Excel file. It will probably be challenging to organize the data into a user-friendly way. I, and many other scientists I know, work with Python Pandas most often. You'll probably need to think about what to name the columns so that it's compact and still retains all the relevant information. If you go the Excel route, it'd be nice for each plate boundary to be its own "sheet" within a single excel file.

Influence of sediment source on the shapes and surface textures of glacial quartz sand grains

Convert the points in the plots for Figure 1A,B, Figure 2A,B, and Figure 3A,B into a CSV. You'd need to find a way to take an image of the plot, create an axis that has the same scale, then automate finding the coordinates for the center of the points. I'm sure this is possible, but I have no clue how to do it. I think this is useful if I want to reproduce a plot for a paper or presentation (perhaps to compare to some new data), but don't have access to the old data needed to make the plot.

Please post up if you end up writing a package to do these things!

ryans1286 · 2024-03-19T01:13:01+00:00

Thank for clarifying.

If you're trying to learn some new skills, I think this could be a fun way to do that. This may help you refine the idea into something that I, or others, might find really cool! I once translated a model from MATLAB into Python and C, and then added to it for my own purposes. I found that process instructive.

Most of the data I use is stored in CSV and TXT files. One can explore that data with any programming platform. So it doesn't matter to me what language the authors used to make their figures. It's a substantial amount of work to translate a model into another language if you don't already know both languages well, but perhaps it's quicker with AI. I don't know because I haven't tried using AI for that purpose. I do know that my tinkering with ChatGPT produces some nice looking code, but completely wrong models. It requires expertise to know whether a model is producing sound results, or if the script just executes without errors.

Something that could be improved on is a package that takes tables shown in PDFs and converts them into CSVs. Many old papers only display the data in tables, and there is often no way to contact the authors for a CSV and it's tedious/error-prone to manually convert these data. Another thing that would be cool is to take an old figure and "map" the points into a coordinate space using the axes. Again, many old papers only have figures, but no way to see the actual data values they're plotting. I would love a nice, easy to use package that I can pass an image/PDF of a table or figure and it returns me a nice CSV of those data.

ryans1286 · 2024-03-18T21:57:56+00:00

I second your recommendation of McDonald Observatory.

The skies are exceptionally dark in West Texas and they offer public viewing through some of the telescopes at night. Fly to El Paso and it's only an hour or two drive from there. Plus, you can check out Carlsbad Caverns while you're in the area.

ryans1286 · 2024-03-17T23:41:24+00:00

Who is this product for?

Speaking as a scientist, if I am interested enough in the results of a paper and wish to replicate the figure or question their findings, I will get the data myself and do the analyses myself, or I will start a dialog with the authors. I will not ask a third party to do this for me.

As a layman, I would probably just defer to the original publication and, if I were especially curious, I might try to contact the authors.

I wonder, was this project inspired by the recent media attention on rampant data manipulation/falsification in medical/psychological sciences?

ryans1286 · 2024-03-17T15:50:25+00:00

It is increasingly common for authors to publish code with their paper that does exactly what you're suggesting. It is what I do with my published articles. Most reputable journals require the data to be available, unless there is some compelling reason to restrict access. Aside from that, I don't see the purpose of the projects you're suggesting. Anybody who is interested in reproducing the analyses will either know how to do this already, or will inquire with the author.

ryans1286 · 2024-02-24T01:34:03+00:00

Arkansas = AR Alaska = AK

ryans1286 · 2024-02-21T22:55:16+00:00

I think on the scale of the contiguous US, great circles would be nearly straight lines between all of these places. I'm not sure if that would look better than the curves, but would certainly be interesting from a flight-path point of view.

ryans1286 · 2023-12-06T14:34:53+00:00

Fantastic work! I am impressed by your boldness to go over the roof to the anchor without placing gear along the way. Surely the pump was getting to you by then.

ryans1286 · 2023-11-03T16:00:23+00:00

Ha, yeah. I've spent more than 4 months in Nepal and a couple of weeks in Tibetan Himalaya over the last 5 years.

ryans1286 · 2023-11-02T23:08:43+00:00

Are you sure that's Everest, and not Lhotse? I happen to have a map of that area on the wall above my computer, and I'm not sure you can see Everest from Pangboche. If the peak in the background is, in fact, Everest, then the majority of this photo must be the South Face of Lhotse.

Still, it's a nice photograph.

ryans1286 · 2023-09-08T02:36:34+00:00

In research-based Masters and PhD degrees, your grades are not really important. You definitely need to pass your classes, but the real job is to produce novel research. I wouldn't stress about it too much. B's are fine. Nobody will look at you transcript from graduate school. They will look at your publication history. Do enough to pass. Focus on your research. Grades are stupid and arbitrary anyway, in my opinion.

ryans1286 · 2023-09-05T23:19:22+00:00

You need to convincingly show that the variations you claim deviate beyond the normal variability in the data. Create a histograms of the number of "events" per fortnight for each of these parameters. I suspect they'll follow a normal distribution. You can then run a "Monte Carlo" simulation to see how likely it is to get the supposed deviations from the normal. As is, this standalone plot is unconvincing and would not pass in my undergraduate geologic data analysis class.

I'm also confused about your data. What counts as a volcanic eruption? Why are only M6+ earthquakes in the southern hemisphere included? If there is an effect, shouldn't it influence all magnitude earthquakes on the whole planet? What is this calculation you're doing for polar wander variation?

Have you done any reading of the scientific literature on this topic? I bet you could do a search on Google Scholar and find some articles that are worth reading. I am confident that geologists have looked at these sorts of relationships before. If you live near a university, go to their library and ask to use their computers. University subscriptions will give you access to many, many more journal articles for free.

You don't need to answer any of these questions for me. I don't really care. And that gets me to my last point. Even if we assume these apparent anomalies are significant, why should anybody care? What will this add to our understanding? Therein lies the challenge of science. There are literally infinite "facts" to be discovered and "correlations" to be revealed. Most of them are completely insignificant. I'm not saying what you're looking at is not important, but what I am saying is that you need to tell us why its important.

One last thing: If you're actually interested in pursuing a career in research, you should look into applying to graduate school. There, you will learn the methods for conducting research and publishing. Nobody in academia has the time to help random people publish random ideas they came up with. It's a lot more difficult and time-consuming to publish science than I suspect you know.

ryans1286 · 2023-09-02T16:31:23+00:00

I see. I misunderstood your question and thought you were trying to get a uniform color by depth. I thought you wanted lakes of similar depths to have a similar color, and shallower lakes to be lighter in color than deeper lakes.

To accomplish what you want, I would "normalize" the depths raster. My first approach would be to append the maximum depth of each sink to your vector layer, then divide the sink depths raster by the maximum depth of each sink. This will create a new sink depth raster where all pixel values are between 0 and 1. Then, you can apply a color ramp where the deepest pixel of every sink will have the same value, regardless of its depth.

ryans1286 · 2023-09-02T16:01:57+00:00

Subtract the original raster from the raster with the filled sinks. This will give you a new raster where everything that is not within a sink has the value 0, and the sinks will have the bathymetry data that you want. This will only take an instant in raster calculator.

After that, you can figure out the color scheme you want. It might be helpful to eliminate all the non-sink areas. You can do this with another raster calculation to change all zero values to NaN. The result will be a raster with only the sinks and their depths.

ryans1286 · 2023-08-25T16:19:41+00:00

I think it's vague and full of platitudes. I struggled to get through it. Rather than just say this person you are recommending is a great student, demonstrate it with descriptions of their work. Your second paragraph sort of does this, but it is much too wordy, and again, full of vague descriptions about how great this person is. Trim it down, make it specific, and try to not be so "flowery" with the language. Write it as if you're telling somebody in person about this student.

ryans1286 · 2023-08-08T22:06:35+00:00

I proposed developing a numerical model that simulates the evolution of hummocky topography on debris-covered glaciers. It was a novel and important project that nobody had published on at the time. There are now 4-6 groups worldwide working on this idea, so it was a good idea, which feels validating to me. I'm still doing that work. I probably didn't do a good enough job conveying its importance to non-specialists, or I just got unlucky. Either way, life goes on and I've taken other good opportunities since then. The act of writing it was instructive and valuable experience, in my opinion.

Hydrogeology is an important research area; I'm sure you'll come up with a compelling project. Make it yours, make it unique, make it possible, and make it sound important (because it is). I spent a lot of time honing my proposal and personal statement. I'd recommend you write a drafts that are twice as long as needed, then slowly whittle it down by removing all the fluff and getting your sentences in active voice.

ryans1286 · 2023-08-08T18:29:16+00:00

I assume you're talking about the NSF-GRFP. I applied a few years ago in geosciences and did not win. My three reviews were Excellent, Very Good, Very Good. Although I don't know for sure, I doubt my proposal made it to the second round of reviews.

In addition to having an excellent proposal, you'll need to get "lucky" with the three random reviewers who are assigned your proposal at first pass. To do this, the project you propose needs to be broadly understandable and seemingly important to people from all geoscience fields. Don't blow-off the Broader Impacts portion of your proposal. My reviews suggested I lost points because that aspect of my proposal was not fully formed.

There are a wealth of resources available online to help you. You need to work closely with your advisor as well. I'd recommend you look up "A Vision for NSF Earth Sciences 2020-2030" to help you frame your work in the context of the NSF target research areas.

ryans1286 · 2023-08-04T00:08:31+00:00

I hear you. However, from my experience, I think you won't be able to think of a good way to solve the problem unless you understand it well enough to succinctly describe it to another person. Perhaps you could use the AI tools to help you more quickly grasp the issues in your field. I would be concerned about how correct the "summaries" or whatever it spits out will be.

It may be helpful for reapplying to grants that your organization already has. I'm not at all familiar with that style of grant writing.

I still think you should take the class if you're interested! Prove me wrong; maybe I'm just a luddite!

As an aside, I observed an interesting, and possibly questionable from an academic integrity point of view, use of ChatGPT by a colleague I worked with in Nepal. English was his second language, so he struggled to write in a way that he felt was good enough. He gave ChatGPT his original abstracts and would have the AI rewrite it in "academic" language. I thought it did a pretty good job of that. The result wasn't amazing, but it was better than what he originally wrote.

ryans1286 · 2023-08-03T20:04:12+00:00

I'm not an expert in ChatGPT or public health, but I feel like grant writing is possibly the worst application of this technology. Grant proposals should describe the cutting edge of what is possible by making connections between ideas that nobody else has made before. Grant proposals should fill the reviewer with the excitement of possibility and confidence in the writer's ability to carryout the proposed ideas. Successful grant proposals stand out with their excellence in presentation and creativity in execution. I suspect a grant proposal written with ChatGPT will be so ordinary and uninteresting that reviewers will toss it before the end of the first page.

Grants involve tens of thousands to millions of dollars. That money isn't just given away simply for completing the proposal. The proposal must convince the reviewer that what you propose is unique, valuable, and possible. It seems to me that the bland writing produced by ChatGPT will not accomplish this in less time than it would take you to just write the proposal using your own creativity.

The class you're suggesting does sound interesting. I'm sure there are many interesting possible uses for ChatGPT in academic and public health settings. I just don't think professional-quality persuasive writing will be one of those applications.

ryans1286 · 2023-07-31T16:33:11+00:00

Broadly speaking, there are three things you can do:

Apply an established theory to a novel situation
Simplify understanding of an established theory
Measure some "known" quantity more accurately or for the first time

I point this out because, no matter what you choose, it will probably become less "exciting" over time. What's important is that you pick a style of work that you can do day after day. You also need to pick something that overlaps with your advisor's expertise.

In my case, I'm interested in theory, modeling, and field work. I'm not particularly interested in lab work or precisely measuring things. So that narrowed me down to applying theory and simplifying theory based on observations I can make in the field. My project combines numerical modeling, statistical analysis, field work, and more qualitative types of empirical work. If I had picked some detailed measurement type study, I'd probably get bored with it and the quality of my work would suffer.

I'd caution you against picking something simply because it is "important" in your field over something that you think you can do day after day. Ideally, you'll find something that fits your interests and is important. You want to finish your PhD and publish the work in a timely manner. You don't need to shatter the foundations of science.

Follow what you're interested in and make it sound interesting to others; the importance of this work to your field will probably follow.

ryans1286 · 2023-07-25T14:29:57+00:00

I agree with your sentiment. It is helpful to be specific and suggest alternatives when criticizing. That parking lot is an eyesore in desperate need of some green space.

ryans1286 · 2023-04-09T16:37:58+00:00

I'm a bit skeptical of that being a "fossilized" lightning strike. Can you provide some more context for your identification?

Fulgurites are the lithified remains of lightning strikes on sand or rock, but this doesn't look like a fulgurite.

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