kareina

Long time readers of my journal may recall that I spent 1.5 years in Italy, doing experimental petrology, which is the process of making very tiny rocks by putting powder of a known composition into a 2 mm diameter gold tube (7 mm long), welding the tube shut, and subjecting it to really high pressures and temperatures for two weeks to a month, before opening them up and looking at which minerals grew, and what specific composition those minerals had. I did this a number of times, at a variety of temperatures and pressures, and, as expected, there was a definite pattern to which minerals formed at what temperature/pressure combination.

In an ideal world I would have written up the results from that post doc position while I was still in Italy, but I was still doing experiments up till a week or two before the job ended and I moved to Sweden (for love of lord_kjar, and it didn't happen. Then I was having so much fun spending time with a delightful man I didn't make much progress on the paper, and then I got hired at LTU for a project that was demanding enough I totally abandoned all attempts to do anything with that paper. I did, briefly, consider dusting off my notes and returning to it last year around this time, when I went to 25% time at work, but then I enrolled in that Swedish for Immigrants course, which took up the energy which might otherwise have gone for that.

However, now that I am working 50%, I have been thinking I really ought to get back to that paper--after all, I did finally finish the paper from my PhD research, it would be nice to make a clean sweep of all of my research UFOs. Besides, that was a fun and interesting project, and the data will be useful to other people (and therefore I would get cited, too).

The straw that finally tipped the balance and prompted me to write to my old boss from Italy was seeing an email to one of my geology lists that said:

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DEADLINE EXTENDED TO JUNE 30, 2015

CALL FOR PAPERS: Special Section on Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism for the centennial celebration of American Mineralogist

Special Section Associate Editors Jane A. Gilotti, Daniela Rubatto and Hans-Peter Schertl are soliciting papers on the broad spectrum of mineralogical, petrological, and geochemical aspects of ultrahigh-pressure metamorphism in crustal rocks. Topics of interest include aspects of UHP mineral nano- and microstructure, crystallography, fluid and melt inclusions, petrology and geochemistry related to UHP topics, and geochronological studies. Papers that present theoretical, analytical or conceptual advances toward the understanding of UHP metamorphism are particularly encouraged. The window for submission of papers is has been extended to June 30, 2015. Please contact the guest editors with the title of your intended submission, and any questions, if you have not done so already. Follow the instructions for online submittal on the American Mineralogist website. The papers will be reviewed on an as received basis, and they will be published in American Mineralogist as soon as they complete the review process under the special heading of Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism. Papers will be collected in a dedicated hard copy version after all the papers are published.
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So I forwarded the announcement to Stefano, and asked him if he thought it might be worth re-working my paper in progress to better fit that series. He replied in the affirmative, so I spent quite a while today composing a letter to the Special Section Associate Editors to ask if they would be interested in my submitting my research, which actually focuses on the changes in which minerals are present above and below the transition between high and ultra high pressure metamorphism.

Now, I must confess that, before I saw the call for papers I hadn't actually though in those terms about my work--when I started the position he told me that I would be working on "elucidating the talc-garnet tie line", which, now that I look at my results, corresponds pretty much exactly with the above mentioned transition between "UHP and HP". Having this new way to look at it will make it *much* easier to write the introduction and discussion sections of this paper. My first draft of the paper, which never got done, was actually being written more like a thesis, describing what I did and what the results were, with pretty much no "so what" at all, because, honestly, at the time I did the experiments, I didn't really know "so what". Perhaps if I had remained in Italy until I finished the paper I would have worked out that part in conversations with my boss, but I had other things to do, and left the day my contract ended.

I am actually looking forward to doing this paper, and doing it right this time.
( though there is a minor hitch )

However, before I got very far with the new outline I saw that I had a bounced message notice--the address in the ad for one of the editors was incorrect, so I looked her up on line and re-sent to her real address, noting in passing that she is doing REALLY interesting work on Greenland UHP rocks!. She replied almost immediately to say that they are interested, please submit. She also included an article from her Greenland research for me to read. It is, in fact, as interesting as I had expected from the blurb on her web page.

So now I have a new goal: write up the research I did whist in Italy and get it published in the Special Section on Advances in Ultrahigh-Pressure Metamorphism for the centennial celebration of American Mineralogist, before the 30 June deadline. Wish me luck.