Face-to-face with a polar bear

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Decorative photograph showing helicopter over glacierWhat would you do if you found yourself face-to-face with a polar bear?  Run?  Probably not a good idea because polar bears regard anything that runs away as a potential meal and they can reach speeds of 40 kph or 25 mph, so they can easily outrun you.  This question is probably theoretical one for most people, even though climate change is reducing the area of sea ice and forcing polar bears to forage on land, as far south as Newfoundland.  However, it was one that we debated when planning our expedition to Greenland where we did expect to encounter them [see ‘Perched blocks and muskoxen‘ on February 4th 2026].  We considered taking firearms; however, to be effective you need a high-powered rifle and it would have been challenging to transport several from the UK to Greenland so that each group had one available when we were not working together.  More importantly, we were visiting their domain and we had no desire to harm any polar bears.  As an alternative, it was suggested to us that, like us, polar bears find it difficult to run downhill at speed and so this was a potential escape route but, of course, only if you are on a steep hill!  In common with most animals, polar bears are frightened of fire so our chosen means of defence was to remove our shirt, douse it in the liquid stove fuel we were carrying, wrap it around one end of our ice-axe and set it alight as a flaming torch.  We did see polar bears while we were in Greenland, always in the coastal regions and never near to our base camp.  We kept our distance and moved cautiously so that our defence plan never had to be implemented.  Nowadays, the internet provides advice for polar expeditions, see for example the guide of the International Polar Guides Association.

Decorative photograph showing basecampImages: helicopter over Bersaerkerbrae glacier after delivering supplies to base camp (top) and base camp on the western lateral moraine of the Bersaerkerbrae glacier (right).  We never got close enough to a polar bear for a good photograph.

Experiencing success vicariously

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Decorative image of a graduation ceremonyThe final PhD student for whom I will act as lead supervisor is scheduled to finish this month.  I have graduated forty PhD students since I was appointed a lecturer in 1985.  I am still in touch with many of them – they are divided between industry and universities with a bias towards industry (about 60%).  For the first twenty years, I was a sole academic supervisor often with an industrial supervisor providing support.  Then I moved to the US where a PhD committee provides supervisory guidance to the student and supervisor.  By the time I returned to the UK, about fifteen years ago, it had become accepted practice to appoint a second supervisor for each PhD student.  So, although I decided a couple of years ago not to accept any new PhD students as lead supervisor, I am acting as second supervisor for five students.  This is a great role since you have less responsibility, but you are engaged with the exciting research.  The topics vary from understanding the nanoscale mechanics of particles interacting with cells (see, for example, ‘Label-free real-time tracking of individual bacterium‘ on January 25, 2023 through to ‘Structural damage assessment using infrared detectors in fusion environments‘ on March 15, 2023), and just starting this year, innovative methods for communicating confidence in computational models.  Although the research is exciting, at a training session for supervisors during the CDT Winter School that I attended in January (see ‘Experiencing success vicariously‘ on January 7, 2026), we discussed our roles as supervisors and in particular that the research project is not the principal outcome of the PhD.  Instead, the development of the PhD student is the principal outcome.  It’s all about nurturing and mentoring people and the reward is experiencing their success vicariously.

Image: still from a video of a graduation ceremony at the University of Liverpool on December 9, 2025.  As Dean of the School of Engineering, I am at the lectern presenting PhD graduates, but I am hidden behind the Vice-Chancellor who has his back to the camera on the extreme left of the image.  You can watch the video at https://www.liverpool.ac.uk/graduation/the-ceremony/watch-graduation/catch-up/school-of-engineering/9-december-2025-10am/ .

Perched blocks and muskoxen

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Greenland has been in the news recently and as a consequence more people know about it than when I visited there about 45 years ago (see ‘Ice bores and what they can tell us‘ on January 12th, 2022).  I was part of a small expedition that spent a short Arctic summer on the Bersaekerbrae glacier in North East Greenland.  We air-freighted our equipment from Glasgow to Reykjavík in Iceland where we charted an aircraft to fly us, our equipment and supplies to Mestersvik, in Scoresby Land, Greenland.  Mestersvik was a couple of huts and a runway on the edge of Davy Sound where, by chance, there was a helicopter.  I cannot remember why the helicopter was there; however, we persuaded the pilot to lift our supplies and equipment to our basecamp on the glacier which saved us back-packing everything in several day-long treks.  We camped on the edge of the glacier while we undertook a series of scientific studies.  Amongst other things, we counted muskoxen and measured how structures either sunk into the glacier ice or ended up perched on towers of ice (perched blocks), depending on the relative rate of melting of the ice around and beneath them.  These two studies generated my first published research papers – I narrowly missed becoming a zoologist or glaciologist!  While there has been only very limited exploitation of Greenland’s natural resources, the ecology of Greenland is being altered massively by the exploitation of natural resources elsewhere.  Climate change caused by carbon emissions has led to the melting of the Greenland ice sheet, which between 1972 and 2023, lost on average 119 billion tonnes of ice per year, contributing a total of 17.3 mm to sea level rise, according to the EU’s Copernicus Programme.

Research papers:

Patterson EA. Sightings of muskoxen in northern Scoresby Land, Greenland. Arctic, 37(1):61-3. 1984.

Patterson EA. A mathematical model for perched block formation. J. Glaciology, 30(106):296-301, 1984.

 

Webs of expertise and knowledge

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I am writing this post while I am in the middle of leading a breakout activity for more than a hundred PhD students from our Centres for Doctoral Training in nuclear science and engineering, GREEN and SATURN.  We have asked them to construct a knowledge network for a start-up company commissioned to build either a fusion energy power station or a power station based on small modular reactors (SMRs).  A knowledge network is a web of expertise and information whose value comes from the connections and interactions within and outside an organization.  Our aim is to encourage students to think beyond science and engineering and consider the interactions required to deliver safe, economic nuclear power.

We have brought the students together in York from six universities located in the North of England (Lancaster, Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester & Sheffield) and Scotland (Strathclyde).  This is an annual event usually held in the first working week of the New Year (see ‘Nuclear Winter School’ on January 23rd 2019).

The breakout activity has three one-hour time-slots on three consecutive days.  In today’s time-slot, we have divided the students into twenty groups of seven and given them paper, pencils, and a circle stencil plus an eraser with which to draw knowledge networks.  We are hoping for creativity, lively discussions, and some fun.  In yesterday’s one-hour slot, they had briefings from the Chief Manufacturing Engineer for a company building SMRs and the Deputy Chief Engineer of a company developing a fusion power station, as well as from a Digital Knowledge Management Consultant whose PhD led to a paper on knowledge networks, which we shared with the students last month (see ‘Evolutionary model of knowledge management’ on March 6th, 2024).  Tomorrow, one person from each group will have two minutes to present their knowledge network, via a portable visualiser, to an audience of several hundred.  What can go wrong?  Twenty two-minute presentations in one hour with one minute for questions and changeover.

GREEN (Growing skills for Reliable Economic Energy from Nuclear) is co-funded by a consortia of industrial organisations and the UK EPSRC (grant no. EP/S022295/1).

SATURN (Skills And Training Underpinning a Renaissance in Nuclear) succeeded GREEN and is also co-funded by a consortia of industrial organisations and the UK EPSRC (grant no. EP/Y034856/1).

Image shows thumbnail of figure from shared paper with knowledge networks for an engineering consultancy company and an electricity generator, follow this link for full size image.