英国伦敦自然历史博物馆的翼龙收藏：历史、综述、近期管理发展和振奋人心的新发现

Although the Natural History Museum’s pterosaur collection is not large (approximately 1060 specimens), it is of great historical and scientific importance. Most of the material is figured, and several holotypes are housed here. Pterosaurs from UK localities are well represented, but foreign material is also present as original specimens and as high quality casts.     

Correlative and comparative characterization of main ion concentrations in laterite groundwater in semi-arid northern Burkina Faso

About 24 samples from hand-dug wells and boreholes were used to characterize concentrations of the main inorganic ions in a laterite environment under semi-arid climatic conditions in Tikaré, northern Burkina Faso. It was found that the most represented groundwater anion in groundwater was HCO₃ ⁻ with average levels of 49.1 mg/L in the dry season and 33.5 mg/L in the rainy season. The most represented cation was Ca²⁺ with mean concentrations of 13.7 and 9.5 mg/L, respectively. The main processes, which influence the concentrations of these ions, are evaporation (dry season), local enrichment of recharge water in some elements, ion exchange and fixation by clay minerals (in case of K⁺). The best correlations were found between Ca²⁺ and Mg²⁺ (r = 0.95), Cl⁻ and Na⁺ (r = 0.95), HCO₃ ⁻ and Mg²⁺ (r = 0.89), HCO₃ ⁻ and Ca²⁺ (r = 0.89), and between HCO₃ ⁻ and Na⁺ (r = 0.80). In general, the quality of the groundwater from the different wells sampled for this study was good enough to serve as drinking water. However, there were situations where the quality of water was polluted because of anthropogenic contaminants (mainly NO₃ ⁻, K⁺, Cl⁻) from septic tanks and manure pits located in the vicinity of some sampled wells. In addition, application of fertilizers also represents a potential anthropogenic contamination source with regard to SO₄ ²⁻, Ca²⁺, K⁺, Na⁺, and Mg²⁺. Considering the high concentrations of SO₄ ²⁻, Mg²⁺, Na⁺ and Ca²⁺ found in one borehole, the deeper, fractured aquifers were also likely to be enriched in these elements. In contrast, the shallow aquifers are likely to be contaminated with Cl⁻, NO₃ ⁻ and K⁺. Cl⁻ and K⁺ seem to be locally present in recharge water as shown by their relative higher mean concentrations in the rainy season samples.     

An Australia Telescope survey for CMB anisotropies

We have surveyed six distinct 'empty fields' using the Australia Telescope Compact Array (ATCA) in an ultracompact configuration with the aim of imaging, with a high brightness sensitivity, any arcminute-scale brightness-temperature anisotropies in the background radio sky. The six well-separated regions were observed at a frequency of 8.7 GHz, and the survey regions were limited by the ATCA primary beams which have a full width at half-maximum of 6 arcmin at this frequency; all fields were observed with a resolution of 2 arcmin and an rms thermal noise of 24 μJy beam⁻¹. After subtracting foreground confusion detected in higher resolution images of the fields, residual fluctuations in Stokes I images are consistent with the expectations from thermal noise and weaker (unidentified) foreground sources; the Stokes Q and U images are consistent with expectations from thermal noise.
Within the sensitivity of our observations, we have no reason to believe that there are any Sunyaev–Zeldovich holes in the microwave sky surveyed. Assuming Gaussian-form CMB anisotropy with a 'flat' spectrum, we derive 95 per cent confidence upper limits of Q _flat<10–11 μK in polarized intensity and Q _flat<25 μK in total intensity. The ATCA filter function peaks at l =4700 and has half-maximum values at l =3350 and 6050.     

Modelling the Middle Pleistocene uplift in the Ardennes–Rhenish Massif: thermo-mechanical weakening under the Eifel?

Middle Pleistocene uplift in the Eifel has been interpreted as the isostatic response of the lithosphere to a deep buoyant hot body. The spatial and temporal distribution of the uplift in the Ardennes–Rhenish Massif Region has recently been constrained by new data of river incision that have been compiled in this work. The uplift distribution can be reproduced using a thin elastic plate model and assuming that the uplift is created by a deep buoyant load, the distribution of which coincides with the weakening. Models incorporating a lithospheric weakening provide a better fit of the observed uplift than models with homogeneous flexural rigidity. These results are confirmed by numerical experiments using a depth-dependent elasto-plastic plate rheology, linking the flexural model with the thermo-mechanical structure of the lithosphere.     

Seasonal and long-term trends in the water quality of Florida Bay (1989–1997)

Analysis of 6 yr of monthly water quality data was performed on three distinct zones of Florida Bay: the eastern bay, central bay, and western bay. Each zone was analyzed for trends at intra-annual (seasonal), interannual (oscillation), and long-term (monotonic) scales. the variables TON, TOC, temperature, and TN∶TP ratio had seasonal maxima in the summer rainy season; APA and Chla, indicators of the size and activity of the microplankton tended to have maxima in the fall. In contrast, NO₃ ⁻, NO₂ ⁻, NH₄ ⁺, turbidity, and DO_sat, were highest in the winter dry season. There were large changes in some of the water quality variables of Florida Bay over the study period. Salinity and TP concentrations declined baywide while turbidity increased dramatically. Salinity declined in the eastern, central, and western Florida Bay by 13.6‰, 11.6‰, and 5.6‰, respectively. Some of the decrease in the eastern bay could be accounted for by increased freshwater flows from the Everglades. In contrast to most other estuarine systems, increased runoff may have been partially responsible for the decrease in TP concentrations as input concentrations were 0.3–0.5 μM. Turbidity in the eastern bay increased twofold from 1991 to 1996, while in the central and western bays it increased by factors of 20 and 4, respectively. Chla concentrations were particularly dynamic and spatially heterogeneous. In the eastern bay, which makes up roughly half of the surface area of Florida Bay, Chla declined by 0.9 μg l⁻¹ (63%). The hydrographically isolated central bay zone underwent a fivefold increase in phytoplankton biomass from 1989 to 1994, then rapidly declined to previous levels by 1996. In western Florida Bay there was a significant increase in Chla, yet median concentrations of Chla in the water column remained modest (∼2 μg l⁻¹) by most estuarine standards. Only in the central bay did the DIN pool increase substantially (threefold to sixfold). Notably, these changes in turbidity and phytoplankton biomass occurred after the poorly-understood seagrass die-off in 1987. It is likely the death and decomposition of large amounts of seagrass biomass can at least partially explain some of the changes in water quality of Florida Bay, but the connections are temporally disjoint and the process indirect and not well understood.     

Numerical modeling of Maranhão Gulf tidal circulation and power density distribution

Ocean Dynamics - Marine resources are outstanding among renewable energy for their wide occurrence and diverse possibilities of exploitation. The tidal resource can be harnessed by the use of both...     

Vertical Discretization Impact in Numerical Modeling of Matrix Diffusion in Contaminated Groundwater

Understanding the effects of contaminants that can diffuse into low-permeability (“low-k”) zones is crucial for effective groundwater remedial decision-making. Because low-k zones can serve as low-level sources of contamination to more transmissive zones over time, an accurate evaluation of the impacts of matrix diffusion at contaminated sites is vital. This study compared numerical groundwater flow and transport simulations using MODFLOW/RT3D at a hypothetical site using three cases, each with increasing discretization of the vertical 10-m thick domain: (1) a coarse multilayer heterogeneous grid based on one layer for each of four different hydrogeological units, (2) a “low-resolution” discretization approach where the low-k units were divided into several sublayers giving the model 10 layers, and (3) a “high-resolution” numerical model with 199 layers that are a few centimeters thick. When comparing the results of each case, significant differences were observed between the discretizations used, even though all other model input data were identical. The conventional grid models (Cases 1 and 2) appeared to underestimate groundwater plume concentrations by a factor ranging from 1.1 to 36 when compared to the high-resolution grid model (Case 3), and underestimated predicted cleanup times by more than a factor of 10 for some of the hypothetical sampling points in the modeling domain. These results validate the implication of Chapman et al. (2012), that conventional vertical discretization of numerical groundwater flow and transport models at contaminated sites (with layers that are greater than 1 m thick) can lead to significant errors when compared to more accurate high-resolution vertical discretization schemes (layers that are centimeters thick).     

Detecting,sourcing, and age-dating dredged sediments on the open shelf,southern California,using dead mollusk shells

Molluscan shell debris is an under-exploited means of detecting, sourcing, and age-dating dredged sediments in open-shelf settings. Backscatter features on the Southern California shelf are suggestive of dredged sediment hauled from San Diego Bay but deposited significantly inshore of the EPA-designated ocean disposal site. We find that 36% of all identifiable bivalve shells > 2 mm (44% of shells > 4 mm) in sediment samples from this 'short dump' area are from species known to live exclusively in the Bay; such shells are absent at reference sites of comparable water depth, indicating that their presence in the short-dump area signals non-compliant disposal rather than natural offshore transport or sea level rise. These sediments lack the shells of species that invaded California bays in the 1970s, suggesting that disposal preceded federal regulations. This inexpensive, low-tech method, with its protocol for rejecting alternative hypotheses, will be easy to adapt in other settings.