Taxonomy term

Over the last year and a half, the Western U.S. has suffered a rash of devastating landslides. The streak began in September 2013, when heavy rains triggered widespread debris flows across the Colorado Front Range. Then came the tragic landslide that buried Oso, Wash., killing 43 people. Two months later, the West Salt Creek slide, a behemoth rock avalanche in western Colorado, killed three people as it barreled down a 5-kilometer-long path.

Antimony is a lustrous silvery-white semimetal or metalloid. Archaeological and historical studies indicate that antimony and its mineral sulfides have been used by humans for at least six millennia. The alchemist Basil Valentine is sometimes credited with “discovering” the element; he described the extraction of metallic antimony from stibnite in his treatise “The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony,” published sometime between 1350 and 1600. In the early 18th century, Jöns Jakob Berzelius chose the periodic symbol for antimony (Sb) based on stibium, which is the Latin name for stibnite.

The U.S. Geological Survey, including its employees and leadership, have a penchant for self-assessment and an ambition for pragmatic self-improvement. That was on display Thursday, Dec. 18, in San Francisco in an hour-long panel discussion held in conjunction with the annual fall meeting of the American Geophysical Union, and featuring USGS acting director Suzette Kimball along with four of the five most recent past directors and acting directors. The panelists candidly addressed a number of issues, including how USGS has been and should continue adapting to best address its roles in science and public service, as well as internal and external barriers affecting its success in these roles.

Vermiculite comprises a group of hydrated, laminar magnesium-aluminum-iron silicate minerals resembling mica. They are secondary minerals, typically altered biotite, iron-rich phlogopite or other micas or clay-like minerals that are themselves sometimes alteration products of amphibole, chlorite, olivine and pyroxene. Vermiculite deposits are associated with volcanic ultramafic rocks rich in magnesium silicate minerals, and flakes of the mineral range in color from black to shades of brown and yellow. The crystal structure of vermiculite contains water molecules, a property that is critical to its processing for common uses.