USERS′ PERCEPTION OF KOWLOON PARK, HONG KONG： VISITING PATTERNS AND SCENIC ASPECTS

Hong Kong is a hyper-dense city with 7×10⁶ people living in an area of 1100km². One way to improve the livability of compacted and congested cities like Hong Kong is through the provision of urban parks, an aspect that has largely been under-researched. This study focuses on how users perceive and utilize various facilities in the Kowloon Park. The findings revealed that the Kowloon Park is one of the most preferred parks in Hong Kong for both local residents and tourists. Users were quite satisfied with the park’s facilities. Notably, the most important component of an urban park is its greenery. This is followed by water elements, seating places, and facilities for various recreational activities. The improvements users would like to see in urban parks include good design and management, meeting users’ needs, overcoming barriers to use, and providing a high quality and varied experience for different groups in the community. The findings of this study provide a good basis to address park management issues from the users’ perspective. In particular, parks should provide easy access, encourage optimum usage and enable complimentary improvements to the environment. Foundation item: Under the auspices of the Germany-Hong Kong Joint Research Scheme (No.GER/99-00/01) and the Faculty Research Grant of the Hong Kong Baptist University (No.FRG/00-01/I-38) Biography: WONG Koon-kwai (1950—), male, a native of Guangdong Province, Ph.D., associate professor, specialized in the analysis of human-environment interaction. E-mail: kenwong@hkbu.edu.hk     

Geochemical evidence of paleogeography and paleoclimate during deposition of the 2nd Member of Kongdian Formation in Kongnan area

The 2nd Member of Kongdian Formation has been made up of a large number of oil shale and mudstone in the Kongnan aera of Huanghua depression around the Bohai Bay. In the Kongnan area, the lake basins were very large and deep during the deposition of the 2nd Member of Kongdian Formation. During that period,the lakes were sealed, uncommunieated with the sea water and the paleoclimate was very warm and wet in Kongnan area. Analyzing the content of the trace element and the rare earth element, carbon and oxygen isotope in the disquisition, The authors prove the two views correct.     

南海北部自由生活海洋线虫的群落结构和生物多样性

A quantitative study on the community structure and biodiversity of free-living marine nematodes and their relationship with environmental factors in the northern South China Sea were carried out based...     

中高纬度大气低频模态研究进展

大气低频模态是导致中高纬地区季节及气候变化的主要因素,加强低频模态动力机制的认识对于提高短期气候预测水平具有十分重要的科研意义和应用价值。由于中高纬大气低频环流本身的复杂性,关于其动力机制的研究仍然是大气动力学中重点难点问题。本文简单回顾了激发维持低频模态的前两种机制,即:外源强迫、气流的纬向非均匀性对大气低频模态的影响。从观测事实和模式结果出发,着重介绍了瞬变波与基本气流相互作用激发维持低频模态的第三种机制,且详细阐述了线性假设条件下,瞬变波与基本气流相互作用的动力机制。本文最后针对瞬变波与基本气流相互作用研究中一些尚未解决的问题进行了讨论。     

Cosmological and astrophysical neutrino mass measurements

Cosmological and astrophysical measurements provide powerful constraints on neutrino masses complementary to those from accelerators and reactors. Here we provide a guide to these different probes, for each explaining its physical basis, underlying assumptions, current and future reach.     

Jovian temperature and cloud variability during the 2009-2010 fade of the South Equatorial Belt

Mid-infrared 7-20 μm imaging of Jupiter from ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT/VISIR) demonstrate that the increased albedo of Jupiter’s South Equatorial Belt (SEB) during the ‘fade’ (whitening) event of 2009-2010 was correlated with changes to atmospheric temperature and aerosol opacity. The opacity of the tropospheric condensation cloud deck at pressures less than 800 mbar increased by 80% between May 2008 and July 2010, making the SEB (7-17°S) as opaque in the thermal infrared as the adjacent equatorial zone. After the cessation of discrete convective activity within the SEB in May 2009, a cool band of high aerosol opacity (the SEB zone at 11-15°S) was observed separating the cloud-free northern and southern SEB components. The cooling of the SEBZ (with peak-to-peak contrasts of 1.0 ± 0.5 K), as well as the increased aerosol opacity at 4.8 and 8.6 μm, preceded the visible whitening of the belt by several months. A chain of five warm, cloud-free ‘brown barges’ (subsiding airmasses) were observed regularly in the SEB between June 2009 and June 2010, by which time they too had been obscured by the enhanced aerosol opacity of the SEB, although the underlying warm circulation was still present in July 2010. Upper tropospheric temperatures (150-300 mbar) remained largely unchanged during the fade, but the cool SEBZ formation was detected at deeper levels (p > 300 mbar) within the convectively-unstable region of the troposphere. The SEBZ formation caused the meridional temperature gradient of the SEB to decrease between 2008 and 2010, reducing the vertical thermal windshear on the zonal jets bounding the SEB. The southern SEB had fully faded by July 2010 and was characterised by short-wave undulations at 19-20°S. The northern SEB persisted as a narrow grey lane of cloud-free conditions throughout the fade process.The cool temperatures and enhanced aerosol opacity of the SEBZ after July 2009 are consistent with an upward flux of volatiles (e.g., ammonia-laden air) and enhanced condensation, obscuring the blue-absorbing chromophore and whitening the SEB by April 2010. These changes occurred within cloud decks in the convective troposphere, and not in the radiatively-controlled upper troposphere. NH₃ ice coatings on aerosols at p < 800 mbar are plausible sources of the suppressed 4.8 and 8.6-μm emission, although differences in the spatial distribution of opacity at these two wavelengths suggest that enhanced attenuation by a deeper cloud (p > 800 mbar) also occurred during the fade. Revival of the dark SEB coloration in the coming months will ultimately require sublimation of these ices by subsidence and warming of volatile-depleted air.     

A meteoroid stream survey using the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar: II: Identification of minor showers using a 3D wavelet transform

A 7 year survey using the Canadian Meteor Orbit Radar (CMOR), a specular backscattering orbital radar, has produced three million individually measured meteoroid orbits for particles with mean mass near 10⁻⁷ kg. We apply a 3D wavelet transform to our measured velocity vectors, partitioning them into 1° solar longitude bins while stacking all 7 years of data into a single “virtual” year to search for showers which show annual activity and last for at least 3 days. Our automated stream search algorithm has identified 117 meteor showers. We have recovered 42 of the 45 previously described streams from our first reconnaissance survey (Brown, P., Weryk, R.J., Wong, D.K., Jones, J. [2008]. Icarus 195, 317-339). Removing possible duplicate showers from the automated results leaves 109 total streams. These include 42 identified in survey I and at least 62 newly identified streams. Our large data sample and the enhanced sensitivity of the 3D wavelet search compared to our earlier survey have allowed us to extend the period of activity for several major showers. This includes detection of the Geminid shower from early November to late December and the Quadrantids from early November to mid-January. Among our newly identified streams are the Theta Serpentids which appears to be derived from 2008 KP and the Canum Venaticids which have a similar orbit to C/1975 X1 (Sato). We also find evidence that nearly 60% of all our streams are part of seven major stream complexes, linked via secular invariants.     

Dissolution kinetics of calcite at 50-70 °C: An atomic force microscopic study under near-equilibrium conditions

Direct measurements of calcite faces were performed using in situ atomic force microscopy (AFM) to reveal the dissolution processes as a function of solution saturation state and temperature. Time-sequential AFM images demonstrated that step velocities at constant temperature increased with increasing undersaturation. The anisotropy of obtuse and acute step velocities appeared to become more significant as solutions approached equilibrium and temperature increased. At saturation state Ω > 0.02, a curvilinear boundary was formed at the intersection of two acute steps and the initially rhombohedral etch pit exhibited a nearly triangular shape. This suggests that the and steps may not belong to the calcite-aqueous solution equilibrium system. Further increase in the saturation state (Ω ? 0.3) led to a lack of etch pit formation and dissolution primarily occurred at existing steps, in accordance with Teng (2004). Analysis of step kinetics at different temperatures yielded activation energies of 25 ± 6 kJ/mol and 14 ± 13 kJ/mol for obtuse and acute steps, respectively. The inconsistencies in etch pit morphology, step anisotropy, and step activation energies from the present study with those of studies far-from-equilibrium can be explained by increased influence of the backward reaction, or growth, near-equilibrium. We propose that the backward reaction occurs preferentially at the acute-acute kink sites. The kinetics and effective activation energies of near-equilibrium calcite dissolution presented in this work provide accurate experimental data under likely CO₂ sequestration conditions, and thus are crucial to the development of robust geochemical models that predict the long-term performance of mineral-trapped CO₂.     

岛弧环境中不同成因的火成岩组合及其地质意义

岛弧环境的形成是与大洋板块俯冲作用有关,由俯冲流体作用于地幔楔部分熔融形成的钙碱性火成岩组合是岛弧环境中物质组成的主体。此外,目前还识别出与俯冲作用有关的其它的岩石类型:埃达克岩、富铌玄武岩、TTG、赞岐岩、玻安岩等,它们指示着不同的地球动力学背景、壳—幔相互作用过程以及源岩发生部分熔融的物理化学条件。本文主要对形成于岛弧环境中不同成因的火成岩组合的特征、形成机制、成矿作用及动力学意义进行了综述。     

Geospatial spreadsheets with microscale air quality visualization and synchronization for supporting multiple-scenario visual collaboration

A major obstacle of the interdisciplinary communications for decision-making is that each participant prefers the solution from their own area because current collaboration systems cannot effectively mediate among many alternatives. If a visual collaboration system could display multiple alternatives in a single visual presentation, users would be able to compare alternatives with only a few variables, where all other parameters are fixed, at least from a visual perspective. In this study, we developed a visualization tool to support a microscale air quality (MSAQ) management group, the members of which often need to compare the effects of many alternative control methods. The main achievements of this study are: (1) three-dimensional (3D) visualization of the MSAQ using a 3D city model and (2) development of a geospatial spreadsheet (GS) to facilitate visual comparisons, thereby improving decision-making by making it easy to compare differences based on realistic visual display items. A questionnaire-based survey showed that use of the GS could generate a shared perspective and provide a spatiotemporal context for the participants, thereby making it easy to compare, mediate and reach decisions when confronted with many alternatives.