泥河湾地区第四纪下限问题

本文主要根据泥河湾地区红崖剖面资料,着重讨论泥河湾层的时代归属、第四纪下限和泥河湾古湖的演化等问题。笔者认为,泥河湾层不仅包括下更新统,而且还包括部分中更新统和部分上新统,但不包括上更新统;第四纪下限年龄为2.6MaB.P.。本文还提出泥河湾古湖早在第三纪就已经形成,自第四纪以来至少有五次大的湖水涨缩,可能曾经一度干涸的看法。     

由观测复发间隔得到的经验地震概率

给定断层段在前面一次破裂后某一特定时间Ｔ发生破裂的概率Ｐ，可由观测到的该断层段上复发间隔的样本作经验性的评估。假设的全部条件是特定时间段内破裂的概率与该断层段上所有破裂轮回的概率相同。假定观测到的ｎ个复发间隔中有ｍ个与前面一次地震后段Ｔ内发生破裂的轮回相应。新的一次轮回中破裂也落在最近一次地震后时间段Ｔ内的概率密度由β分布Ｐ（ｐ│ｍ，ｎ）＝｛（ｎ＋１）！／［ｍ！（ｎ－ｍ）！］｝ｐ＾ｍ（１－ｐ）＾ｎ     

Large Magellanic Cloud Planetary Nebula Morphology: Probing Stellar Populations and Evolution

Planetary nebulae (PNe) in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) offer the unique opportunity to study both the population and evolution of low- and intermediate-mass stars, by means of the morphological type of the nebula. Using observations from our LMC PN morphological survey, and including images available in the Hubble Space Telescope Data Archive and published chemical abundances, we find that asymmetry in PNe is strongly correlated with a younger stellar population, as indicated by the abundance of elements that are unaltered by stellar evolution (Ne, Ar, and S). While similar results have been obtained for Galactic PNe, this is the first demonstration of the relationship for extragalactic PNe. We also examine the relation between morphology and abundance of the products of stellar evolution. We found that asymmetric PNe have higher nitrogen and lower carbon abundances than symmetric PNe. Our two main results are broadly consistent with the predictions of stellar evolution if the progenitors of asymmetric PNe have on average larger masses than the progenitors of symmetric PNe. The results bear on the question of formation mechanisms for asymmetric PNe-specifically, that the genesis of PNe structure should relate strongly to the population type, and by inference the mass, of the progenitor star and less strongly on whether the central star is a member of a close binary system.