At last Gareth Bonello, 9 June 2008 At last, I'm able to concentrate for half an hour or so on writing this blog, something that I haven't been able to do for just over six months. The main reason that I have some time now, is that I have stopped working two days a week in our new gallery, Oriel 1, so I can play catch-up with curatorial work such as transcribing oral history recordings and working with partners towards future exhibitions.The exhibitions we've been working towards include ones on archery, a medical display, the Urdd, Pop, and the Italians in Wales.I have also been involved in co-ordinating the St Fagans activities and events that are planned for 2009, when the theme will be 'Music', and towards the exhibiting the next Community Dresser, when Cwm Carn Boxing Club will show people what they've got.Since the last blog, I have attended several conferences in Stockholm, London, Birmingham, Bolton and Llandrindod, have learnt a lot and shared experiences about contemporary collecting issues. The final draft of the museum's Contemporary Collecting Plan has been submitted to my fellow curators, and will be discussed at a meeting at the end of this month.I still haven't accessioned any objects yet though, which is slightly frustrating. In part, we are still awaiting the outcome of the above meeting, but I am now confident that I have a clear-ish picture in my mind of what to collect. I suppose that I'll just have to be patient - after all, contemporary material will still be around in a few months time...or will it?I will try to write this on a more regular basis, but you will know, that if I don't, I'm so busy collecting, that I don't have time to write. See Ya.
When Antarctica went into the deep freeze 19 May 2008 A member of the team looking at the top layer of sediment, deciding where best to sample to get different time intervals. Bringing up a core of mud from 34 million years ago After the core is brought up it is laid out for scientists to describe and take samples. Extreme close up of the 35 million year old foram: Cribrohantkenina inflata. discovered in the cores from Tanzania. More images of these intricate forams can be seen in the 'Up close with Nature' gallery. Scientists from Amgueddfa Cymru – National Museum Wales and Cardiff University have found new evidence of past climate change, which helps solve some of the mystery surrounding the appearance of the vast ice-sheet in Antarctica 34 million years ago. Antarctica hasn't always been covered with ice – the continent lay over the south pole without freezing over for almost 100 million years. Then, about 34 million years ago, a dramatic shift in climate happened at the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene epochs. The warm greenhouse climate, stable since the extinction of the dinosaurs, became dramatically colder, creating an "ice-house" at the poles that has continued to the present day. Global cooling Many climate scientists are involved in trying to figure out what caused this climate shift. This should tell us more about how the climate responds to major controls like changes in the Earth's orbit around the sun, and the concentration of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Past climate changes can be recorded by studying tiny microfossils in layers of deep sea mud. Up until now, scientists found that the oceans appear to have warmed up during this big climatic shift. Their studies suggested that warming seemed to coincide with ice-sheets appearing in both Antarctica and the Arctic. This conflicting evidence, of warming seas while ice-sheets grew, doesn't fit in with computer simulations of the climate at the time; the computer models don't show ice to be present in the Arctic." Tanzania drilling project The solution to this icy puzzle has come from a surprising place – Tanzania in East Africa. The Tanzania Drilling Project team, including scientists from Amgueddfa Cymru and Cardiff University, have been recovering cores of ancient mud deposited on the seafloor millions of years ago (which has since been geologically uplifted into land). The Tanzanian cores are special because large thicknesses of mud were laid down over a relatively short time, meaning that climate changes through time are seen in great detail. Also, beautifully preserved microfossils are found in the cores. The Tanzanian cores provide the first really clear picture of how sea-level fall fits in with the climate shift. Setting the record straight The chemistry of the Tanzanian microfossils has been used to construct records of temperature and ice volume over the interval of the big climate switch. These new records show that the world's oceans did cool as the ice-sheets appeared, and that the volume of ice would have fitted onto Antarctica. So the computer simulations of climate and the past climate data now match up. The focus now is to look for evidence of the ultimate cause of this global cooling. The prime suspect is a gradual reduction of CO2 in the atmosphere, combined with a 'trigger' time when Earth's orbit around the sun made Antarctic summers cold enough for ice to remain frozen all year round. How it works The shell chemistry of pin-head sized animals called forams can tell us how ocean temperatures changed through time. Forams are great tools for studying climates of the past, which helps us learn about the uncertainties of our future greenhouse climate. 1). Forams take chemical elements from the ocean into their shells, using more magnesium at warmer temperatures. 2). Dead forams fall to the sea floor and build up in layers of mud over millions of years. 3). Today, going down through the mud layers is like going back in time. If we can measure the magnesium content of forams going down through the mud, it gives us a record of how ocean temperature changed through time - more magnesium equals warmer temperature. Further Reading Lear, CH, Bailey, TR, Pearson, PN, Coxall, HK, Rosenthal, Y. Cooling and ice growth across the Eocene-Oligocene transition. Geology 36 (3), 251�254. 2008. http://www.gsajournals.org/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1130%2FG24584A.1
Summer sights, Summer sounds Gareth Bonello, 8 May 2008 Firstly, apologies for the larger than usual gap between this posting and my previous blog; I have been very busy! Many aspects of the project are nearing completion and the presence of the woodland project at St Fagans is becoming more and more obvious. So here’s what’s been going on…The path through the woodland has been dug and the panels will be with us in the next few weeks. I’m very excited about the panels as they have a lot of brilliant hands-on learning displays such as a wind-up arm that plays bird song and a load of models of footprints, feeding remains and droppings of woodland mammals! It looks like the path will be ready sometime in June and it promises to be an excellent addition to the museum.The website too is near completion and will be live in a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to watching the birds as they come and go, and am curious as to which species we’ll get visiting our feeders and nest boxes. The pond cam should be a delight too, and I can’t wait to have a go at filming newts!This week has felt like the first week of summer with temperatures reaching 23 degrees Celsius. I took a group of visitors on a bird walk at 5:30am on Saturday to celebrate international dawn chorus day and it was a great success. As well as resident species we also saw migrants such as Blackcap, and the songs of Chiffchaff have been ringing around since late March. The woods are full of birdsong as the birds sing to mark their territories and attract a mate, and birds with beaks full of nesting material have become a common sight. There has also been a riot of colour in the woods over the past month with the blossoming of spring flowers such as primrose, lesser celandine, wood anemones, garlic mustard and bluebell. The trees too have begun to blossom and grow fresh green leaves and the canopy is getting thicker every day.That’s it for now, but keep a look out for the website and the woodland path next month!
Explore the Sea Floor blog Lara Murphy, 17 April 2008 Welcome to the Explore the Sea Floor blog!Marine scientists here at the museum have been studying the sea bed around the UK (and in other parts of the world as well!) and you can now see why and how it is done and what we have found. If you would like to ask a question to a marine scientist why not post a message on the blog and we will try our best to answer them.Have you ever wondered what a marine scientist does?Have a go at the activities on the Explore the Sea Floor web pages or request a free copy of the CD-ROM to become a virtual marine scientist.Here are a few photos of museum scientists at sea and working in the laboratory.
Being Critical Dafydd James, 12 April 2008 Yesterday I shared a lot of my time between the Crit Room and the Usability Labs. In the Crit Room websites are volunteered in advance for analysis by MW2008 delegates, and then ripped apart by a panel of experts! It was interesting to see how the experts saw flaws from different angles - design, usability, and access were the main approaches.In the Usability Labs websites are submitted for testing, with certain scenarios devised so that a randomly selected user (that has never used the website) has to navigate their way to a certain area, or find information. The presenters, users, and the audience then discuss problems. This is very helpful to see where the website is flawed - it's often difficult to see basic issues when you are so close to a project.I also went to a workshop by Gail Durbin from the V&A Museum, who have clearly done a lot of work into developing and researching social networking sites. It was interesting to hear how they were inundated with comments on their Kylie Minogue exhibition website, and had to change the wording to refine the information and feedback they were collecting. But it's important to keep the comments online as long as people contribute within the rules set down by the institution.We also had a challenge to develop two web 2.0 tasks - one verbal and one visual, which was difficult to feed back on due to the number of people in the session! We were also showed the V&A's fantastic World Beach Project, I look forward to doing further research on the website when I have some time.
