Mrs. Sippi’s Blog

About the Mariana Trench, the Black Sea and similar cool stuff

Monday
06/28/2010

3:53 pm

For aunts, uncles, and grandparents

Do you have a niece or nephew or maybe a grandchild who is working on a graduate degree in science, and you’ve love to help beyond financial support, but you can’t figure out what it is that they do?

Here is a tip: Ask them who their advisor is and how they are getting along. This is hugely important to any graduate student, whether working on M.Sc. or Ph.D. Get them to talk about that.

smart cookie

Want to take it one step further? See if you can find that advisor’s web page. It will usually have a photograph and may also list hobbies or, for example, show that advisor on horseback in a competition.

This will slowly make that advisor come alive to you and you’ll be able to connect much better with that favorite nephew or granddaughter. You may still have no clue about what their research is about, but that does not matter. People always matter, and the advisor is the most important person in any graduate student’s life. After you, of course.

If you want to go beyond that, I’d suggest you contact my boss and purchase a gift voucher. My boss can make the life of that graduate student so much easier. She can help them with manuscripts for scientific journals or conference proceedings, and she can also carry out literature reviews for them and save them a lot of time. She has already done that for many others.

Be sure to let my boss know whether there is a special occasion, such as a birthday. She will send you the voucher nicely gift-wrapped. You can then hand it to your favorite grad student and leave it up to them how to spend it. My boss, of course, will know that your favorite grad student is about to contact her and she’ll take it from there.

Thursday
06/17/2010

6:10 pm

The Guardian about the Mediterranean monk seal

The Mediterranean monk seal - mentioned on my Black Sea pages - is the world’s rarest and most endangered marine mammal.

The Guardian published an article on it on Friday 30 October 2009. You can read it here. It is an interview with Dr Anastasia Miliou, manager and head scientist from Archipelagos Institute of Marine and Environmental Research of the Aegean Sea.

Friday
05/28/2010

8:00 am

Web site of Dutch daily NRC mentions this web site!

Here, in a Dutch blog post about the Mariana Trench:

http://www.nrcnext.nl/blog/2010/02/26/zo-diep-is-het-diepste-punt-onder-zee/

As you can see, my boss left a comment.

Friday
05/21/2010

2:13 pm

Did you feel it?

“Did You Feel It? (DYFI)” is the citizen science tool at the USGS: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/dyfi/

Sunday
05/16/2010

10:01 pm

New site design!!!

If you happen to be looking here, while I am uploading the new files, gimme a sec, willya? Thanks.

Sunday
05/02/2010

8:06 am

Please donate to help clean up oiled wildlife in the Gulf of Mexico

My boss is appealing to you, in this blog post: http://www.smarterscience.com/earthblog/?p=1449

Help out any way you can. Go to this Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/Save-Our-Seabirds/168444475341 or to http://www.saveourseabirds.org/

Saturday
02/27/2010

12:30 pm

Richard Branson wants to dive into the Mariana Trench too

He’s having deep-sea diving jet planes designed and built. See this article in the Telegraph and this one in The Sun.

Saturday
02/27/2010

11:12 am

Garbage islands in the oceans?

You may have heard about islands made up entirely of plastic trash. It’s not quite like that, in reality. If you’re interested, you may want to watch a long video my boss posted about on her blog, of an expedition to the Pacific garbage patch.

Friday
02/26/2010

12:40 pm

What does the Mariana Trench have to do with tectonic plates?

The Mariana Trench consists of two tectonic plates. It

Sunday
07/26/2009

11:03 am

New page coming up

My boss says that the recent earthquake off New Zealand gave her a great idea for a new page. I heard her and I agree! I want to have it online within a week. Stay tuned!