Miocene facies associations and sedimentary evolution of the Southern Transylvanian Basin (Romania): Implications for hydrocarbon exploration

The Transylvanian Basin is a mature hydrocarbon province of Romania characterized by two petroleum systems: Mesozoic (thermogenic) and Miocene (biogenic). An extensive outcrop-based sedimentological and micropaleontological study correlated to seismic and well data discusses the elements of the Miocene petroleum system. The facies associations are indicative of alluvial, fandelta, shallow- and deep-marine settings. These are grouped into four different depositional systems (evaporite, mud-carbonate, sand-mud and sand-gravel). Their evolution in time and space shows large differences between various parts of the basin that have important consequences for exploration.     

Carcinogenic risk evaluation for human health risk assessment from soils contaminated with heavy metals

Human activities have progressively increased in recent years. Consequently, significant environment deterioration resulted. Soils have a particularly varied vulnerability to heavy metal pollution, especially in the vicinity of industrial areas. Heavy metal contamination of soil may induce risks and hazards to humans and the ecosystem, while toxic metals in soil can severely inhibit the biodegradation of organic contaminants. This paper is focused on human health risk assessment from extremely contaminated soil with heavy metals, mainly with carcinogenic elements. The study refers to an agricultural area in the vicinity of an old metallurgical processing industrial facility. The contaminants evaluated in the present paper are beryllium (Be), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni) and lead (Pb). Contamination level is pointed out through laboratory analysis results of soil samples taken from 0–0.2 m, 0.2–0.4 m soil layers and up to 2.1 m soil depth. Some heavy metal concentrations (Cd, Cr and Pb) exceed the intervention thresholds for sensitive areas, as they are stipulated in the national regulation in Romania. The identified average concentration levels of Cd, Cr^VI and Pb in the first layer of the investigated land are 23.83, 7.71 and 704.22 mg/kg_d.w, respectively. The results show that the potential risk of human health is relevant (higher than the acceptable one after World Health Organization) and a possible solution for the remediation should become a major concern for the investigated area.     

Contributions to the spectral theory of seismic sources and determination of the parameters of earthquake foci

A spectral theory of seismic sources is developed which treats earthquake foci as band-pass filters. This concept is applied to focal mechanisms of the type double-couple with moment, and the obtained spectral function of the source is compared with those obtained by other authors. Finally some formulae for the determination of geometric and dynamic source parameters from the bandpass parameters are presented.     

Possible Cause-Effect Relationships Between Vrancea (Romania) Earthquakes and Some Global Geophysical Phenomena

The possibility that the Earth's tides are a triggering factor of Vrancea subcrustal earthquakes is investigated in the first part of this paper. A possible correlation between Vrancea subcrustal earthquakes and geomagnetic jerks is demonstrated in the second part. The last part of the paper presents a number of results concerning a possible relationship between the regularities of strong Vrancea subcrustal seismicity and the Chandler nutation parameters. An attempt is made to integrate all of these phenomena in a more general framework that takes into account physical processes in the Earth mantle and core. A long-term prediction of the next strong Vrancea earthquake is finally attempted.     

Key pluvial parameters in assessing rainfall erosivity in the south-west development region,Romania

Located in the south-western part of Romania, the south-west development region overlaps the main relief forms: the Carpathians mountains, the Getic Subcarpathians, the Getic piedmont, the Romanian plain and the Danube valley. The study aims at providing an overview on the main pluvial parameters and their role in assessing rainfall erosivity in the study area. The authors assessed the occurrence, frequency and magnitude of some of the most significant pluvial parameters and their impact on the climatic aggressiveness in the study area. Thus, the monthly and annual mean and extreme climatic values for different rainfall related parameters (e.g., maximum amounts of precipitation/24 hr, heavy rainfall), as well as relevant indices and indicators for pluvial aggressiveness (Fournier, Fournier Modified, Angot) were calculated. The rainfall erosivity was assessed in order to provide both the spatial distribution of the triggering extreme weather phenomena and the resulted intensity classes for the analysed indices and indicators. The authors used long-term precipitation records (1961–2010) for the selected relevant meteorological stations distributed throughout all analysed relief units.     

Hypercube-Based Visualization Architecture for Web-Based Environmental Geospatial Information Systems

The geospatial field significantly influences the development of the environmental domain, including a wide range of geospatial and cartographic information systems, such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Multimedia Atlas Information Systems (MAIS) and more recently web-based GIS (Web-GIS). In this context, we introduce web-based environmental geospatial information systems (Web-EGIS) as a special case of Web-GIS, aiming to integrate the functionalities of geospatial information systems with the enormous quantity of specialized, distributed and highly heterogeneous environmental geo-referenced data and services. We define three main characteristics of the Web-EGIS. The first is a generic hypercube-based data organization and visualization. The next characteristic is a standard-based, three-tier service-oriented architecture. The third and last characteristic is the traceability of the architectural and design decisions, for which we introduce the new concept of an ‘Environmental Application Context’, arguing that not only the functional but also the non-functional requirements (NFRs) have an important role in defining the architecture, software components and data services of such systems. In a nutshell, a Web-EGIS is characterized by a coherent user experience through the hypercube-based visualization concept, technically supported by a service-oriented architecture that is structured according to an extensive analysis of NFRs. On this basis, we introduce the Geodata visualization and interactive training environment (GeoVITe) Platform for Interdisciplinary Environmental Research as a reference implementation of a Web-EGIS with its basic design requirements, integrative hypercube-based visualization for heterogeneous data sources, extended web cartography functionalities, and its de facto system architecture. The concept of the hypercube-based visualization is better transferred to the system architecture by understanding the ‘Environmental Application Context’ of this particular Web-EGIS, which also makes it easier to maintain and enhance. The resulting system is a support platform for research activities in the environmental domain.     

The characteristics of the chemical flow within the Motru catchment area, south — west Romania

The present paper, with reference to the Motru catchment area, contributes to the hydrochemical studies at an international level and to the completion of the characteristics regarding the chemical flow in Romania. In this regard, it emphasizes once again the dependence between the content of dissolved salts (fixed residue — mg/l) on the one hand and the lithological conditions, human activity, flow and the surface of the catchments on the other hand. The calculation and the analysis of the chemical flow for the Motru catchment area (located in the south-west of Romania) was performed on the basis of two parameters: the average flow of dissolved chemical substances (mg/s) and specific average chemical flow (t/kmp year) recorded at the monitoring stations on the Motru River and its tributaries during the period 2005–2009. The values obtained (for example: 2.63 mg/s and 47.7 t/km² year, at the Fata Motrului station, on the Motru River, in 2009) confirm the importance of the areal factors of natural background in the analysis of chemical flow as a morpho-dynamic process and implicitly for the chemical quality of surface waters.     

Who owns the name? Fandom,social inequalities and the contested renaming of a football club in Timişoara,Romania

ABSTRACT

Recent scholarship in critical toponymy has raised questions about the impacts on urban residents of selling naming rights and the possibility of contesting the commodification of urban place names. This article examines these issues using Poli Timi?oara, the major football team of Timi?oara, Romania, as a case study. The cash-strapped local authority sold the naming rights for the team to raise revenue. However, when the club’s private owner was unable to finance the team, the local authority reacquired the naming rights of Poli, now under the name Asocia?ia Club Sportiv Poli (a new team with a small fan base). Drawing on the everyday narratives of fans, this article explores how the commodification of a local club name can cause social tensions. This is important for understanding urban residents’ access, or lack thereof, to social capital resources and how this leads to the manifestation of social inequalities which co-determine fans’ reactions and responses to the change in the name of a sports team. The findings suggest that commodifying names can mobilize serious contestations among partisan groups about who owns the name, although such contestations appear to be on uncertain ground because of post-communist urban practices of delayed economic restructuring.     

Amplitude domain analysis for the 30 August 1986 Vrancea intermediate earthquake

The amplitude domain analysis applied to the major Vrancea (Romania) earthquake of 30 August 1986 leads to the determination of some parameters characterizing the amplitude and the time duration of the signal.Digital three-component acceleration data, obtained at 10 Romanian seismic stations with epicentral distances between 40 and 200 km, are used. The results are compared with those obtained by Schenk for strong Californian earthquakes.Paper presented in the 21st General Assembly of the European Seismological Commission, Sofia, 1988.