Minerals Engineering retains its number 1 position

It was good to catch up with Dean Eastbury, Executive Publishing Manager of Elsevier, at last month's Computational Modelling '15 conference in Falmouth. Joining us for our annual summer review of Minerals Engineering was Dr. Pablo Brito-Parada, of Imperial College, UK, recently appointed as Associate Editor of the journal. Pablo will be looking after the special issue of Computational Modelling, as well as November's Flotation '15 conference.

With Pablo and Dean in Falmouth

In terms of author satisfaction, the results of the Author Feedback Programme were very similar to the outstanding results reported last year (posting of 6th August 2014). Flow of papers to the journal continues to increase, with 829 papers submitted in 2014, compared with 739 in 2013. Papers from China show the largest increase, but unfortunately 88% of Chinese papers are rejected, which contributes markedly to the journal's current rejection rate of 73%. We are obviously still struggling a little to impress on prospective authors what constitutes a good journal paper, so I hope that Dean, Pablo, and IJMP's Kathryn Hadler will have a good turnout for their Authors' Workshop preceding Flotation '15 in November.

ScienceDirect downloads continue to increase and in 2014 passed half a million (530,537) for the first time, compared with 460,961 in 2013.

Impact Factor (IF) is important to many people, and although the 2014 IFs of the three Elsevier journals Hydrometallurgy, Minerals Engineering and International Journal of Mineral Processing fell compared with 2013, Minerals Engineering still retains its number 1 spot for mineral processing journals, and the gap between Minerals Engineering and the specialist Hydrometallurgy is closing.

The overall result is very pleasing and as always I would like to take this opportunity of thanking all those who work with me to maintain Minerals Engineering's consistently high standard; the Editorial Board, supplemented by around 275 reviewers, who give up their valuable time to contribute to the peer-review process, my excellent Publishing Manager at Elsevier, Dean Eastbury and his very helpful team, particularly Naveen Raja who deals patiently with all production problems, and last but by no means least, all the authors who submit their valuable research work to the journal and the associated MEI Conferences.

Victoria Falls- as close as it gets

What a way to wind up the Copper Cobalt conference this afternoon by a trip to Livingstone Island in the middle of the Zambezi and on the very edge of the Victoria Falls' 340 foot plunge into the first gorge. Accompanied by conference delegates Ian Townsend, of Outotec UK, and Colorado School of Mines' Corby Anderson, we retraced the steps of David Livingstone who was the first European to view the Falls from this island in 1855. A truly memorable day was completed by a dip in one of the deep pools, no more than a metre from the abyss. A scary, but truly remarkable experience that we will never forget.

Dr. Anderson, I presume

With Ian and Corby a metre from the long drop

Sundowner on the Zambezi

A wonderful end to the second day of the SAIMM Copper-Cobalt Conference, with a sunset cruise on the Zambezi River, followed by a braai (BBQ) in the Mosi-oa-Tunya National Park.

July's first mining sundowner

And what a place to hold a sundowner, on the Zambian bank of the Zambezi River. A wonderful Sunday evening on the deck of the Royal Livingstone Hotel, watching the sun set on the Zambezi, courtesy of Sibelco Australia, who sponsored the welcoming cocktail function for the opening of the SAIMM's Copper Cobalt conference which commences tomorrow morning.

Mosi-oa-Tunya

Barbara and I arrived in Livingstone, Zambia a couple of hours ago. MEI is a media partner for the Copper Cobalt Africa conference, organised by the SAIMM, which starts tomorrow evening.

The conference is being held in the Mosi-oa-Tunya (The Smoke that Thunders) National Park, and the venue is only a few minutes walk from the Zambezi River and the awesome Victoria Falls. We are looking forward to catching up with old friends and making new ones over the course of next week.

The Zambezi before its plunge......

.....300 feet into the first gorge

The life of a Cornish miner in perspective

Around this time last year my good friend and Elsevier publisher Dean Eastbury and I walked the 9 miles between Tintagel and Port Isaac, said to be one of the most demanding stretches of the whole 630 mile South West Way (posting of 30 July 2014). We both agreed that it was one of the hardest hikes we have ever done, and there is no way that I could have contemplated walking it again the next day. In all we had made a vertical ascent of 2285 feet in 4 hours, and all we wanted to do on arrival at Port Isaac was visit the local pub and down a couple of cool beers in double quick time.

Dean and I are regular hikers, fit and healthy, and were walking in the clear Cornish air. So let's try to put my posting of 25th May into perspective where I talked about the 'hellish conditions' in the deep mines of Cornwall in the 1890s, recorded by photographer extraordinaire J.C. Burrow.

An American geologist on LinkedIn commented on the posting and Burrow's photographs "primitive by today's standards, but "Hellish"? What in these photographs invokes the term "Hellish"?

Well, let me explain. First of all there were no cages to haul miners up and down the shaft in the early days, although some of the deeper mines installed man engines, as shown in the posting. The main method of accessing the mine workings was by a series of ladders, sometimes stretching down to depths of 2000 feet or more. Not surprisingly falls were commonplace, particularly at the end of a long shift, where the ascent up the ladders "to grass" would be the equivalent of the walk that Dean and I did in the sunshine.

But these were not fit and healthy hikers - the miners were prone to many different diseases as a result of working daily in hot, damp and dusty conditions underground. Bronchitis, silicosis, TB and rheumatism were all common complaints, making life expectancy short, and few miners in the early days were fit to work beyond the age of 40. Even in the late 20th century many tin miners died from silicosis caused by rock drilling, but in the 19th century there was no dust suppression by water. Particles of mica dust punctured the miners' lungs - it was a terrible, wasting illness.

Conditions at the rock face were almost unbearable, temperatures reaching 45C due to the very steep geothermal gradient in Cornish granite. The cramped, hot tunnel ends were occasionally fouled by the stench of human excrement. In such damp, moist conditions, a disease known as ancylostomiasis thrived, the symptoms of which were red skin blotches and anaemia, caused by contact with a parasitic hookworm that lived in human faeces. The air in the mine was polluted by dust and fumes from detonated explosives and could barely sustain a candle, some miners choosing to snub their candles out and work in complete darkness in order to conserve air.

All miners, including the women and children on the surface would work a ten hour day, six days a week in the 19th century, and although many miners and their families lived in cottages rented from the mining company, many would still have to walk several miles to and from work, in clothes wet with sweat from hours of underground toil.

Life for a miner was a far cry from the romantic view portrayed in so many of today's tourist brochures and the success of Cornwall's tin mining industry often overshadows the human cost. And there is me whingeing about the gruelling walk that Dean and I did. It really puts into perspective how lucky we are today.