The branch Day of Talks and Annual General Meeting took place on the 10th February 2007.  The venue was once again Milton Country Park. This may be the last time we can meet here because it is sadly under a very real threat of closure.  This would be a great shame and a loss to the local community not to mention the tourist industry in the area.

We had three excellent speakers at the Day of Talks:

• Dr Jan Alexander - Turbidity Currents and Turbidites
• Professor Jim Rose - The Geology Behind the Earliest Humans in Northern Europe
• Dr Joe Jennings - The Athabasca Oil Sands

A write up of Dr Alexander's talk can be found in the March news letter. The other two talks will hopefully be published in the next edition.

If you wish to find out more about turbidity currents, or refresh your memory then check out the University of Southern California's Sequence Stratigraphy website (you might remember it from S369 The Geological Record of Environmental Change.  It is the website with the animations of the stratigraphic sequences). Jan is referenced extensively by them.

Professor Jim Rose and colleagues had an article published in Nature, in fact it made the front cover! The article, The Earliest Record of Human Activity in Northern Europe, is available for purchase ($30) here.  If you are currently (or have recently been) studying with the OU you'll be able to access and download it for FREE!  Just follow these steps:

1. Login to your page then go to the library database section.
2. Select the "SwetsWise" database.
3. Enter the name of the article into the search box (you can speed the search up by selecting the year 2005)
4. When it finds the article just click "full text".  You will be taken to a Nature page.
5. Select "Full text" in the right column or "Download PDF" depending on your preference
6. Enjoy article
   
   For those who prefer paper, the reference is: Parfit et al* (2005),  The Earliest Record of Human Activity in Northern Europe,  Nature 438, p1008-1012

*Yes, I know I shouldn't use "et al" in a reference but you should see the number of authors!

You might also want to check out the book Homo Britannicus (hardcover & paperback), by Christopher Stringer who is one of Professor Rose's colleagues.

Professor Rose kindly left his PowerPoint presentation with us.  As soon as we get the members only section up and running we'll post it on the site, though at present it is 40 Mb in size!

Dr Joe Jennings spoke about the Athabasca oil sands in Alberta, Canada.

So that we could all experience the oil for our selves Dr Jennings passed round a rather pongy jar of genuine Athabascan oil!  If only web browsers could transmit smells! The write up of his talk should appear in our next news letter.

If you are ever in Alberta you might want to visit the Oil Sands Discovery Centre.