AIG members have benefited from access to a dedicated Edumine campus for the past ten years. This will change in December when Edumine rolls out a new website and service delivery model.
At the moment, access to the Edumine campus requires payment of a subscription fee that offers full access to Edumine’s catalogue of self-paced, on-line courses and discounted access to live, on-line courses. From December, AIG’s relationship with Edumine will transition to one where every AIG member will receive an automatic, significant discount on the fees for every Edumine course. AIG Campus subscribers will continue to receive the full benefit of their subscription until 31st May 2020, when the campus will be discontinued.
Both on-line content delivery and the courses themselves are being updated and revamped to improve the quality of Edumine’s services.
At the moment, access to the Edumine campus by AIG members requires payment of a subscription fee that offers full access to Edumine’s catalogue of self-paced, on-line courses and discounted access to live, on-line courses. From December, AIG’s relationship with Edumine will transition to one where every AIG member will receive an automatic, significant discount on the fees for every Edumine course. Student members have not had access to the Edumine campus previously. From December, Student members will be able to access the course discounts. AIG Campus subscribers will continue to receive the full benefit of their subscription until 31st May 2020, when the campus will be discontinued.
Edumine is a great resource for AIG members seeking to expand their knowledge and exposure to geoscientific techniques and methods relevant to exploration and mining. The self-paced on-line courses are considered to be of particular benefit to AIG’s international members, and members working commute rosters by providing training that can be completed at any time, anywhere with Internet access. Every Edumine course completed by members will receive both Edumine continuing education units (CEU) and AIG continuous professional development (CPD) hours. Selected Edumine courses may also entitle members to credit towards formal qualifications in mining offered by several universities.
The AIG website team are currently working with Edumine to provide enhanced information regarding Edumine courses for AIG members.
Watch the AIOG website for further information.
The latest edition of AIG News, the Australian Institute of Geoscientists member newsletter is now available in full colour and digital format and best of all FREE for all readers!
Now all AIG Members and Non Members can enjoy our FREE AIG Newsletter in digital format, including all previous editions. Please click here to see our archive of AIG News.
Download the latest copy of AIG News 137 below:
For web: AIG News 137: Download as Single Pages PDF
For web: AIG News 137: Download as Double Page Spread PDF
For print: AIG News 137: Download as Single Pages PDF
For print: AIG News 137: Download as Double Page Spread PDF
Inside this latest issue…
From Your President; Institute News; NSW Branch News; SA Branch News; Education News; Membership Updates; How Good is Your Geological Logging?; Employment Survey; Core Logging Fundamentals Workshop – A day out in Werribee; Vale Keeva Vozoff, Spence Titley, Margaret Ellis; The Monash Student Industry Night for Earth, Atmosphere and Environment; Are you using QGIS yet?; A deep-dive into what the industry wants: Results from the 2018 AIG National Graduate Group Geoscience Survey – Part one of a three-part series; AIG-ALS-GSAQ-Canterbury Brisbane River Cruise; Titanium, a metal with potential; Providing Scale; SMEDG Winter Harbour Cruise 2019; Student report – Rates of magmatic processes preceding steady-state activity at Stromboli, Italy; Science and Science Fiction; (Anthropogenic) Global Heating; building resilience, not argument; Events Calendar and more…
AIG News is optimised to be read with Adobe Reader. Versions are available for printing (with Adobe Reader version 4.1.3 or later) or either reading on-line or downloading for reading off-line with your laptop or tablet (with Adobe Reader version 6.1.5 or later). Both versions have been tested and are compatible with Apple Preview and iBooks for Mac and iPad users.
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We hope that you enjoy the latest AIG News and welcome your feedback.
A recent BBC report described esearch on working hours that suggests overwork leads to being less productive, not more. It is also associated with increases in cardiovascular disease, diabetes and other negative health effects, all of which can take a toll on work-related output.
In 1915, the British government established the Health of Munition Workers Committee (HMWC) to monitor working conditions and advise on matters such as working hours. The committee managed to collect a rich set of data that can tell us a lot about what happens when people work long hours.
The 2015 analysis of this data showed that as hours worked increased, output also increased, but only to a point. Output per hour peaked at about 40 hours of work per week and then fell, despite the extreme national importance of the work being performed.
One-hundred years on, the results of overwork don’t seem to be all that different for knowledge workers. Working too many hours backfires for both employers and employees, whether you measure by decreased outputs, lack of creativity, a drop in quality or poorer interpersonal skills.
More at the BBC Worklife website.
Sponsorship of the podcast was approved by the AIG Council at its meeting earlier this week.
The sponsorship will help Exploration Radio’s presenters Ahmad Saleem and Steve Beresford deliver more great content to listeners, including many AIG members, throughout Australia and internationally.
Exploration Radio is always interesting, topical and a great professional development resource for geoscientists interested in all aspects of mineral exploration everywhere, anytime.
The podcast is particularly beneficial for geoscientists working in the field, on commute rosters or overseas, interested in keeping informed about developments and ideas relevant to both the present and future of their profession.
Listening to Exploration Radio is a valuable, readily accessible source of continued professional development (CPD) hours for AIG members.
Podcast episodes can be downloaded from the Exploration Radio website or most popular podcast distribution channels, including iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play and Spotify.
SEG webinar presented by Greg Hodges, Sander Geophysics
SEG’s European Region Advisory Committee (ERAC) presented a webinar on “Voodoo Geophysics” examining questionable practices instrumentation systems promoted by individuals and companies in January 2019.
The exploration industry has been plagued since the dawn of technology with near?magical oil, gold and waterfinders. They do untold damage to the reputation and business of honest geophysical applications and research. A geophysicist with sound scientific knowledge can usually recognize when geophysics is “from the dark side”, but it can be difficult to convince non?scientists.
Some common characteristics of voodoo geophysical methods are: dubious theoretical bases, fantastic levels of instrument sensitivity, phenomenally accurate interpretations, extraordinary levels of secrecy, and combative or evasive response to challenges.
Fraudulent methods evade scrutiny. Vendors shy away from technical testing and publication. Refusal of the purveyor of a new system to comply with evaluation and publication of results must be viewed with suspicion.
Greg Hodges has established a “voodoo geophysics” database with more than 80 entries so far. He has previously published on this topic.
The SEG webinar is available via You Tube. The video comprises a presentation, followed by the webinar Q&A session.
Click on the image for a high resolution PDF copy.
Click on the image for a high resolution PDF copy
Click on the image for a high resolution PDF copy
Australian Geoscientist Employment Survey June 2019
Employment opportunities for Australia’s geoscientists continued to show a very slowl-improving trend, despite disappoini.ng results for the second quarter (April to June).
The second quarter setback saw unemployment rise from 7.5% at the end of March, to 9.3% at the end of June.On the other hand, underemployment amongst self-employed geoscientists fell from 20.5% to 14.9% for the same period. The underemployment figure represents the proportion of self-employed geoscientists unable to secure more than one quarter of their desired workload.
The survey was completed by 734 respondents nationally. Some 66% of respondents worked or sought work in mineral exploration. A further 18% worked in metalliferous mining, while 5% of respondents worked or sought work in energy resource exploration and production.
Half of Australia’s geoscientists who are currently unemployed have been without work for more than 12 months. A similar proportion sees little prospect of regaining employment in their field in the year ahead. Almost one in ten unemployed geoscientists are looking to leave the profession, seeking more stable employment.
“The depressed employment prospects for geoscientists are a surprise given mineral exploration expenditure rose during the June quarter according to Australian Bureau of Statistics figures released last week although mineral exploration drilling declined,” AIG President, Andrew Waltho said.
“There is little doubt that junior exploration and mining companies especially are experiencing difficulty raising capital to fund new exploration and producers are having to deal with considerable uncertainty and price volatility, at least partly due to trade tensions between the USA and China” Mr Waltho said.
“The increase in work secured by self-employed geoscientists is most welcome, especially in light of the sharp increase in under-employment observed in the previous survey,” Mr Waltho said.
“Long term unemployment is the big issue in these figures. Half of Australia’s unemployed geoscientists have been without work for 12 months or more, and a similar number see no new opportunities on the horizon,” he said.
“Professional institutes, including AIG, are doing whatever we can to help members remain in touch with their colleagues and peers and maintain their skills, but it’s pretty hard to remain motivated when industry conditions appear to be stagnant,” Mr Waltho said.
The employment situation varied significantly between states in the latest survey results.
The lowest levels of both unemployment and under-employment were recorded in Western Australia. Unemployment amongst professional geoscientists fell from 8.5% at the end of March to 7.8% at the end of June, while under-employment fell from 17.6% to 11.0% for the same period.
Victoria recorded the largest fall in the unemployment rate, from 11.8% at the end of March to 5.9% in June. Under-employment in Victoria also fell from 17.6% at the end of March to 14.7% at the end of June.
Queensland, New South Wales, South Australia all recorded increases in both unemployment and under-employment. Only a small number of responses were received from geoscientists working in the Northern Territory and Tasmania, which indicated near-full employment of small pools of local geoscientists.
The National Library of Australia is currently undertaking a program of describing and digitizing their map collections.
The library holds a number of collections from cartographers, geographers, planners and other professionals, including geoscientists, that are kept together as formed collections, separate from the library’s general map collection.
The library recently digitised and described the Dr. J.H. Rattigan map collection, which consists of geological maps of the Hunter Region by G.D. Osborne. The collection has a finding aid.
G.D. Osborne was considered one of Australia’s’ earliest pioneering structural geologists and his hand drawn maps date back to the 1900’s. You can view his collection of hand-drawn maps here.
The library would love to receive feedback and hear how people use these collections. Contact maps@nla.gov.au.
