Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️
LightNews LightNews
banner
obialik.bsky.social
Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️
@obialik.bsky.social
5.2K followers 160 following 4.9K posts
Sediment, climate change, and impostor syndrome | Science and SFF for the win | Writing for a living and fun | Opinions are my own (or the characters' in my head).
Academic stuff: https://obialik.weebly.com
Non-academic writing: https://ombialik.weebly.com
Posts Replies Media Videos
Pinned
obialik.bsky.social
Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️ @obialik.bsky.social · Jun 19
BECAUSE MY MOM SAID SO

Meet Ismat and follow them as they try to navigate their identity, workplace romance, their mom, and somehow also thwart a conservative conspiracy.

itch.io: obialik.itch.io/because-my-m...
Amazon: www.amazon.com/dp/B0DSG7WBLY
B2R: books2read.com/u/31oj9W

🌈📚🪐 | 📚💙 | 🌈🚀💫
Ad for the book BECAUSE MY MOM SAID SO, featuring the book cover (by the amazing Carla Negrini https://www.carlanegrini.com/) with some important bits of information on the book like: LBGTQ+ cast, Spy thriller, Nothing goes according to plan, Figuring out romance and Stopping a conservative coup.
obialik.bsky.social
There is surprisingly more work on what bioturbation does to organic matter in the sediment than the other way around. I'd think we'd be a least a bit more interested in why animals bother putting energy into going into the muck.
Prob. missing a good number of biological studies because of terms. ⚒️
Example from one of the exceptions, visual synthesis of the pictures resulting from the picture analysis processing for each treatment, N (Natural), A (Average), and R (Rich) tanks. They do seem to burrow more if there is more food in the sediment. Source: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0272771410002799
December 7, 2025 at 9:26 AM
obialik.bsky.social
I just love how that visualizes the SEC. 🌊
December 7, 2025 at 7:49 AM
obialik.bsky.social
Drinking water can be, naturally, radioactive. The issue is mostly with groundwater, which may be exposed to geologically sources uranium, thorium, and radon. Thankfully, in many advanced nations, these are monitored to ensure the waters are safe. 🧪⚒️

link: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
Evaluation workflow for radiation threshold in water in the EU and UK.
December 7, 2025 at 6:08 AM
obialik.bsky.social
I'm revisiting some of my earliest attempts with 3D design. They are surprisingly... not bad (except that I was printing on FDM then, then they have SLA level details). Seriously thinking about revamping them a bit and releasing them.
#Miniature
A box with legs and big guns
December 6, 2025 at 5:35 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Turns out, that when you cancel out the queerphobia, the things that affect audience enjoyment of fiction involving queer (in this case, lesbian👩‍❤️‍💋‍👩) relationships are normal things such as identification, familiarity, accuracy, and minimal exaggeration. 🧪 🌈📚

Link: link.springer.com/article/10.1...
Mediation model of enjoyment
December 6, 2025 at 3:49 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Another nice example of the long-term "it's all connected!" of the ocean-atmosphere system. When the Benguela Upwelling System shifted gears in the late Miocene, it made southern Africa more arid. 🧪⚒️

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s43...
a ~11.7-10 Ma, (b) ~10-4.8 Ma, (c) ~4.8-3.7 Ma, (d) ~3.7-2 Ma, and (e) ~2 Ma to the Holocene. Yellow star represents our study site ODP 1087, fire symbols indicate fire activities51 and large mountain symbols in (a−e) indicate high elevation of Drakensberg Escarpment54. The boldness of the black arrows indicates the strength of the trade winds, whereas the boldness of the blue arrows illustrates the strength of the Benguela Current (BC). AgC Agulhas Current, AgR Agulhas Retroflection, AgL Agulhas Leakage, BC Benguela Current, AC Angola Current, SAF Subantarctic Front.
December 6, 2025 at 8:17 AM
Reposted by Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️
drkatemarvel.bsky.social
i know science is currently getting its ass kicked by lies but it also really bothers me that the bullshit is so much more boring than the truth
December 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Got my share of things I complain about moving back to the low latitudes. Being able to go out in a thin sherwal and T-shirt on a December night isn't one of them.
December 5, 2025 at 5:35 PM
obialik.bsky.social
How long does it take for a climate signal to make it to the sediment at the bottom of the ocean? That is far from an easy question to answer. This team tried to match basinal weathering proxies with data from the margins and got ~3-5 Kyr. 🧪⚒️

Link: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
Holocene weathering proxy records (a, b) compared with hydroclimate data from the southern and northern Mediterranean borderlands (c, d), with a schematic diagram of weathering signals propagation (e). (a, b) Chemical Index of Alteration (CIA) and αAlNa profiles, color-coded by sediment provenance: Northern borderlands, Deep central basin, Libyan margin, and Nile related. Samples were selected for 6 key time slices (in conventional 14C ages): pre-S1, S1a, S1b, S1-end, post-S1, and core-top. The African Humid Period (AHP; deMenocal et al., 2000) is indicated. Data variation ranges (1 SD) are shown for both vertical and horizontal axes. (c) Mean July (summer) insolation at 25°N (Laskar et al., 2004) and hydroclimate evolutions of North Africa based on the numbers of lake sites over 10°N–28°N and 20°N–28°N, and of humid sites (i.e., lacustrine, fluviatile, palustrine) over 20°N–28°N (Lézine et al., 2011). (d) Mean January (winter) insolation at 45°N (Laskar et al., 2004) and simulated annual mean surface air temperature and precipitation on Lake Ohrid (41°N, Wagner et al., 2019), representing the northern borderlands. (e) The propagation of weathering signals is illustrated, showing lagging, mixing, and buffering processes from nearshore to deep sea. The components of total source-to-sink sediment residence time are depicted (Chen et al., 2024; Dosseto et al., 2010): soil and regolith formation (T1), catchment erosion and transport (T2 = ∼3,000 years), temporary storage in paleo-channels and floodplains (T3), and marine deposition (T4 = ∼2,000 years).
December 5, 2025 at 3:08 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Living in many countries and traveling a lot messes with your brain in weird ways. Like, sometimes you'll spot something in language X and think "it's cool to see that from time to time", only to realize 5 minutes later everyone around speaks language X.
December 5, 2025 at 11:00 AM
obialik.bsky.social
#WeekendReading: Salles et al. on how carbon burial shifts between shallow and deep water carbonates over the last ~250 million years and how those interact with the silicate weathering feedback. 🧪⚒️

Link: www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/...
Habitability- and alkalinity-limited regimes and implications on the carbonate compensation depth and Meso-Cenozoic climate regulation. (A) Habitability-limited regime. When neritic habitats are restricted, calcium ions saturate the water column, the carbonate compensation depth (CCD) deepens, and carbonate precipitation increases in deep waters. This regime is associated with enhanced deep-sea carbonate burial and relative atmospheric CO2 drawdown. (B) Alkalinity-limited regime. When weathering and hydrothermal alkalinity inputs are low, carbonate ion availability becomes the limiting factor. Neritic precipitation depletes alkalinity, the CCD shoals, and deep-sea carbonates dissolve, weakening ocean buffering and allowing transient atmospheric CO2 buildup. (C) Habitability-limited and alkalinity-limited regimes (green and orange, respectively) identified by the habitability excess, i.e., the difference between the maximum productivity potential of shallow-water carbonates and the Ca2+ and HCO− 3 influx. Habitability-limited and alkalinity-limited regimes match cooler-than-average and warmer-than-average periods of time, and habitability excess correlates to global average atmospheric (64) and low latitude sea surface (65) temperatures (Pearson (r) and Spearman (rs) correlation coefficients of 0.6 to 0.7). Compiled nannofossil accumulation rates and associated LOESS curve [smoothing factor of 0.1, (74)] highlight several phases of calcifying pelagic algae evolutionary dynamic matching habitability-limited and alkalinity-limited regimes. Deep-sea sedimentary carbonate carbon storage since the Early Cretaceous (120 Ma to present) (5) and modeled global CCD (61). Triassic (Tr), Jurassic (J), Cretaceous (K), Paleogene (Pg), and Neogene (Ng).
December 5, 2025 at 7:47 AM
obialik.bsky.social
Full credit to this team. Not only did they make an ultrablack fabric inspired by the Magnificent riflebird (Ptiloris magnificus), they went ahead and made an awesome dress 👗 with it. 🧪

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
A black dress, created with the new ultrablack fabric (seen around the blue patch). Yes, if I had the right body for it, I would definitely wear that. a Scanning electron microscope (SEM) image of barbs/barbules from a feather of the magnificent riflebird (Ptiloris Magnificus), a species of bird-of-paradise family. Inset image of bird, photo credit: Eric Gropp, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=63294234. b Black dress inspired by bird-of-paradise, fashioned with black polyester blend (BPETB) and a centerpiece consisting of the ultrablack wool (UBW). c Schematic of two-step method to create UBW. d UBW and the control fabric, PDA-dyed merino wool (PDAMW), under two different standard lighting systems. e Photographic image of (1) white merino wool (WMW), (2) plasma treated WMW (40 W 80 min), (3) PDAMW, and (4–8) plasma treated PDAMW (40 W 5, 30, 50, 80, and 110 min, respectively) (Diameter of samples: 38 mm) under standard lighting system with corresponding SEM images (e1-e8). Scale bars = 1 μm; Inset scale bars = 5 μm. f Schematic for two directions of tactical flashlight in dark room. g Flashlight illuminating from directly ~30 cm above the fabrics (i: WMW, ii: BMW, iii: PDAMW, iv: flock, and v: UBW). h Flashlight illuminating from ~60° slanted angle to ~30 cm away from the fabrics. (Diameter of samples: 38 mm).
December 4, 2025 at 5:41 PM
obialik.bsky.social
So less then a week after Spacedock put out this video I ran into this story about a start-up developing an electomagnetic accelerator for hypersonic testing with the aim of sclaing up to an orbial lunch system.
Reality is trying to catch up.
#SciFiScience

www.jpost.com/defense-and-...
December 4, 2025 at 6:46 AM
obialik.bsky.social
One of the greatest challenges in paleoenvironmental research is figuring out "how much of what we know on the modern is actually applicable to this?"
But there are finds, like this Silurian reef, we can say "ho, this is like a modern turbid reef." 🧪⚒️

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
Platy heliolitids from Lau Käldu, Gotland, upper Ludfordian. a–c: A fragment of a platy corallum of Stelliporella parvistella. a - top view with abundant Aulopora sp. sclerobionts; b - side view; c - bottom view with visible growth increments and bryozoan sclerobionts (arrows). d–e: A fragment of a platy corallum of Heliolites interstinctus. d - top view; e - side view. f: An irregular, “rising” corallum (sensu Król et al. 202431 of S. parvistella; top view. Favositid sclerobiont visible in bottom left (arrow).
December 4, 2025 at 6:17 AM
obialik.bsky.social
I do appreciate Google Scholar's attempt at recommending papers to me... but they are mostly relevant to stuff I did years ago, I'm on completely different things now.

(It does make a hit from time to time, but mostly at pointing at papers I pass on to other people)
December 3, 2025 at 9:40 PM
obialik.bsky.social
I'm still on the fence about Brombal and Segovia's Batgirl, but this little sequence is such a cool callback to earlier elements in the series and was the best part of the issue for me.
Wake up, brother. Our enemies will not defeat themselves.
December 3, 2025 at 4:57 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Do you wanna make a pockmark?
Come on, bubble away,
We'll pump a bit of gas
Burst through the floor
Erupt into the air.

(cool analog experiment, gives me ideas for a future experiment) 🧪⚒️

Link: agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1029/...
Snapshots showing the main stages of gas escape through a seal (gas accumulation at the seal-reservoir interface, seal breaching, gas seepage through the seal, and pockmark initiation) in three representative experiments of increasing clay layer thickness hc (see Table 1 for details). The three experiments exemplify the three main deformation mechanism: (Left column) Doming (experiment #1A, hc = 0.7 cm) is initiated by gas accumulation at the seal-reservoir interface. When the accumulated gas causes large enough dome deflection, the dome is breached by Mode-I (open) fracturing, leading to the development of a Type-2 pockmark (see also Movie S1); (Middle column) Brittle deformation (#5D, hc = 2.2 cm). Gas accumulation at the reservoir-seal interface produces a mound in the seal, followed by Mode-II sub-vertical faulting. Seepage then occurs through these shear faults, bounding an uplifted plug, leading to the development of a Type I pockmark (see also Movie S3); (Right column) Plastic deformation (#2D, hc = 3.8 cm), shows gas transmitted to the surface by ascending gas bubbles, leading to the development of a Type-1 pockmark (see also Movie S4). In each snapshot (only shown is the central part of the cell) the lower part (dark gray) is the top of the sand layer, and the middle part (light gray) is the clay (seal) layer which is overlaid by water (black). Rows I–VI correspond to progressive deformation stages since injection started (I); time (min:sec) since injection shown in upper left corner.
December 3, 2025 at 3:28 PM
obialik.bsky.social
So I was reading this article about "hyperproductive" (>50 papers a year) researchers and...

#AcademicSky #ScienceMemes
plot of the number of papers per year vs. peer respect
December 3, 2025 at 2:51 PM
Reposted by Dr. Or M. Bialik |📚|🔬|🌊|⚒️
egu-ssp.bsky.social
If you are working on #stratigraphy & #age #modelling, consider submitting an abstract to #EGU26 SSP2.6 by January 15.

Visit - www.egu26.eu to find details to submit abstracts

@dadevlee.bsky.social
December 3, 2025 at 7:04 AM
obialik.bsky.social
It's bloody time that office suites will fully integrate *.webp (and *.webm) support, especially copy-pasting from browser.
The format is 15 years old and everywhere!
December 3, 2025 at 9:16 AM
obialik.bsky.social
There was a little environmental victory here recently; an area was halted for offshore O&G exploration. The press made it sound like it was a massive thing, smoky meeting rooms, a fleet of research ships... in reality, it came down to about six people.

It doesn't take much to make a difference.
December 3, 2025 at 7:54 AM
obialik.bsky.social
Cities are still attracting people and continue to grow. With that, we have to remember that compact urban planning is crucial for those people to have water and sanitation; the sprawl might deprive them of those. 🧪

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s44...
Baseline water stress (horizontal axis) and yearly precipitation (vertical axis). The baseline water stress (from [20]) measures the ratio of total water demand (including domestic, industrial, irrigation, and livestock uses) to available renewable surface and groundwater supplies. When the baseline water stress is equal to one, the water demand equals the renewable supply. Higher values indicate that withdrawals are larger than the available renewable water. The rainfall is the average monthly precipitation between 1970 and 2000, aggregated to a yearly value [21]. Most urban water is piped from reservoirs and water basins rather than sourced directly from rainfall, so values serve only as proxies to illustrate the vastly different contexts cities face in terms of available drinking water supply. Right - We compute both values for 11,000 cities (each represented by a different disc). The colour corresponds to the region, and the size of the disc corresponds to the population. Left - The rainfall and baseline water stress of each region are the average of cities weighted by the population. There are cities, mainly in Africa, Asia, and parts of America, where the baseline water stress is high and the rain is scarce. In those cities, granting access to water is more challenging. An interactive version is available in https://vis.csh.ac.at/urban-thirst/
December 3, 2025 at 6:38 AM
obialik.bsky.social
I hate to admit it, and I know that it has only a limited impact on my career at this point, but I was honestly a bit stressed that I won't be topping last year's citation numbers. But it finally matched last year's numbers, and we still have a whole month to go (hint hint, wink wink).

#AcademicSky
Total citations per year from 2018 to 2025 (at day of posting), this year's count is currently at 451, which is... fine, but I want to hit higher figures.
December 2, 2025 at 6:31 PM
obialik.bsky.social
The late Miocene possibly had lower athmospheric pCO2 than we have right now (but higher than pre-industrial), but that was enough for there not to be permafrost in North Greenland.
Once a local threshold is reached, that is enough sometimes. 🧪

Link: www.nature.com/articles/s41...
December 2, 2025 at 3:43 PM
obialik.bsky.social
Domestic cats 🐈‍⬛ are most genetically similar to African wildcats, but the (modern) domestic cats probably weren't introduced into Europe until the 1st century CE, which is rather late, all things considered. 🧪

Link: www.science.org/doi/10.1126/...
The genomes of ancient cats from archaeological sites across Europe and Anatolia (circles in the map) revealed that domestic cats were introduced to Europe from North Africa starting at 2,000 years ago, several millennia after the onset of the Neolithic in Europe; African wildcats in Sardinia originate from a distinct wildcat population in Northwest Africa
December 2, 2025 at 4:22 AM