RadioAstron and millimetron space observatories: Multiverse models and the search for life

The transition from the radio to the millimeter and submillimeter ranges is very promising for studies of galactic nuclei, as well as detailed studies of processes related to supermassive black holes, wormholes, and possible manifestations of multi-element Universe (Multiverse) models. This is shown by observations with the largest interferometer available—RadioAstron observatory—that will be used for the scientific program forMillimetron observatory. Observations have also shown the promise of this range for studies of the formation and evolution of planetary systems and searches for manifestations of intelligent life. This is caused by the requirements to use a large amount of condensedmatter and energy in large-scale technological activities. This range can also be used efficiently in the organisation of optimal channels for the transmission of information.     

基于加权指数型子波的质心频移法估算品质因子

吸收衰减是引起地震资料分辨率降低的一个重要因素,品质因子的估计是地震波吸收衰减研究的重点和难点.相比VSP等观测资料,基于地面地震记录可以估算得到整个工区的品质因子分布,具有一定的可行性和较好的经济性.常规方法一般根据地震记录的时频谱,采用谱比法或质心频移法提取品质因子,易受复合干扰的影响.针对复合波对时频谱的影响,这里采用相似背景分离技术,弱化复合干扰.基于加权指数型子波的质心频移法,是一个较为稳定的Q值估算方法,但理论精度局限于地震子波谱假设的限制.这里采用改进的拟合方式,获得比常规方法理论精度更高、更稳定的Q值.模型仿真实验和实际资料测试表明,基于加权指数型子波的质心频移法能较好地提取地层品质因子,具有一定的可行性和实用性.     

透射槽波相邻道质心频率的层析成像方法

槽波勘探是煤层工作面小构造探测的主要方法之一,该方法主要是利用槽波的能量衰减特征。当检波器的耦合差或工作面存在较大地质异常时,会显著影响槽波在不同频段上的能量分布,降低槽波探测结果的稳定性和准确性。利用槽波信号的质心频率变化特征进行反演成像是一种创新且有效的方法,但该方法存在震源质心频率准确估算及兼顾震源差异性的难题。为此,提出基于透射相邻道槽波信号,估算其质心频率相对变化量的层析成像方法。基于理论分析,推导出相邻道槽波质心频率相对变化量(M_i)的计算公式;采用二维数值模拟方法,验证槽波M_i值与传播距离的正向线性变化规律;通过槽波实测试验,对比分析了相邻道质心频率成像方法的效果。结果证明,槽波信号存在频移现象,槽波相邻道M_i值层析成像方法是有效,该方法克服了震源差异性和震源质心频率人为选择不当对成像结果造成的影响,为槽波勘探数据处理提供了一种新的思路。      

Fifty years of organisational change in container shipping: regional shift and the role of family firms

Spectacular growth has marked the industry initiated by Malcolm McLean with the sailing of the Ideal-X in 1956. While the growth of container shipping has been typically seen in terms of technological advances, increasing vessel capacity, traffic growth, financial performance and competitiveness, it has been shaped also by organisational transformations. This paper provides an overview of the major companies that make up the container shipping industry, tracing the rapid adoption of containerisation by American carriers to its diffusion to Europe and then Asia. While several carriers belong to business conglomerates, the most dynamic in recent years have been those that are those that possess a family structure. About 12 of the present top 20 carriers are largely family controlled, including 4 out of the top 5. Unlike other capital intensive industries, where the power has shifted towards corporate governance, the container shipping industry retains a strong individualistic entrepreneurial character. At a time when North American ownership in container shipping is no more, the spirit of innovation began 50 years ago by an American visionary is still evident in the entrepreneurial dynamism of many of the industry leaders.     

Rainfall events and climate change in Mediterranean environments: an alarming shift from resource to risk in Eastern Spain

Natural Hazards - Consequences of climate change in Mediterranean environments are difficult to predict, partly because daily data do not fit with the timescale of Mediterranean processes, and...     

Climate change impacts on extreme floods I: combining imperfect deterministic simulations and non-stationary frequency analysis

Flood quantiles are routinely used in hydrologic engineering to design hydraulic structures, optimize erosion control structure and map the extent of floodplains. As an increasing number of papers are pointing out cycles and trends in hydrologic time series, the use of stationary flood distributions leads to the overestimation or underestimation of the hydrologic risk at a given time. Several authors tried to address this problem by using probability distributions with time-varying parameters. The parameters of these distributions were assumed to follow a linear or quadratic trend in time, which may be valid for the short term but may lead to unrealistic long-term projections. On the other hand, deterministic rainfall-runoff models are able to successfully reproduce trends and cycles in stream flow data but can perform poorly in reproducing daily flows and flood peaks. Rainfall-runoff models typically have a better performance when simulation results are aggregated at a larger time scale (e.g. at a monthly time scale vs. at a daily time scale). The strengths of these two approaches are combined in this paper where the annual maximum of the time-averaged outputs of a hydrologic model are used to modulate the parameters of a non-stationary GEV model of the daily maximum flow. The method was applied to the Kemptville Creek located in Ontario, Canada, using the SWAT (Soil and Water Assessment Tool) model as rainfall-runoff model. The parameters of the non-stationary GEV model are then estimated using Monte Carlo Markov Chain, and the optimal span of the time windows over which the SWAT outputs were averaged was selected using Bayes factors. Results show that using the non-stationary GEV distribution with a location parameter linked to the maximum 9-day average flow provides a much better estimation of flood quantiles than applying a stationary frequency analysis to the simulated peak flows.     

The Santonian-Campanian reversed polarity magnetozone and the Late Cretaceous magnetostratigraphical time-scale

Magnetostratigraphical data on the Late Cretaceous Magnetic Quiet Zone (normal geomagnetic polarity zone Jalal) are reviewed. This zone was first defined by Shmeleva (1963) in deposits of the Fergana Ridge (U.S.S.R.), and was there found to contain a reversed (R) magnetozone, named the Kuldja, which was traced to various regions of the U.S.S.R. The Kuldja zone corresponds to magnetozone Gubbio A — defined at Gubbio (Italy). Palaeontological data suggest that it spans the boundary between the Santonian and Campanian stages.     

Climate change impact on extreme precipitation and peak flood magnitude and frequency: observations from CMIP6 and hydrological models

Natural Hazards - Changes in climate intensity and frequency, including extreme events, heavy and intense rainfall, have the greatest impact on water resource management and flood risk management....     

Holocene depocenter shift in the middle-lower Changjiang River basins and coastal area in response to sea level change

Authors collected 38 sedimentary boreholes and numerous seismic profiles from previous publications to delineate the Holocene sedimentation rate of six major depositional sinks in the middle-lower Changjiang River basins and its river coast. The results demonstrate that the highest sedimentation rate of ca. 15 m/ka occurred in the mono-depositional sink of the former Changjiang River mouth during 10 000–8000 aBP, when post-glacial transgression happened and the Changjiang water level remained at lower stand. With the rising of the Changjiang water level in response to sea level rise, Jianghan Basin of the middle Changjiang River becomes the other important depositional sink with highest sedimentation rate of 10 m/ka since 7000 aBP. As Jianghan Basin was mostly filled up at ca. 4000 aBP, Dongting Basin and the lower Changjiang valley trapped sediments in great amounts like in the river mouth. A considerable amount of Changjiang sediments has been delivered, both eastward and southward, to the inner continental shelf of the East China Sea, especially after 2000 aBP. This indicates reduced sediment storage capacity of the middle-lower Changjiang valley and the river mouth. In total, ca. 1307.4 billion tons of sediment have deposited in the middle-lower Changjiang floodplain since 7000 aBP. In the meantime, ca. 947 billion tons of sediment have been deposited in the river coast to form the Changjiang subaqueous delta and the Zhejiang-Fujian along-shelf mud wedge. Our result also reveals two time stages with lower sedimentation rates(< 4 m/ka) in all basins during 8000–7000 aBP and in the estuarine area during 4000–2000 aBP, probably owing to stengthened chemical weathering of decline of monsoon precipitation. __________ Translated from Journal of Palaeogeography, 2007, 9(4):419–429 [译自: 古地理学报]     

Impact of climate change on landslides frequency: the Esino river basin case study (Central Italy)

Researchers have long attempted to determine the amount of rainfall needed to trigger slope failures, yet relatively little progress has been reported on the effects of climate change on landslide initiation. Indeed, some relationships between landslides and climate change have been highlighted, but sign and magnitude of this correlation remain uncertain and influenced by the spatial and temporal horizon considered. This work makes use of statistically adjusted high-resolution regional climate model simulations, to study the expected changes of landslides frequency in the eastern Esino river basin (Central Italy). Simulated rainfall was used in comparison with rainfall thresholds for landslide occurrence derived by two observation-based statistical models (1) the cumulative event rainfall–rainfall duration model, and (2) the Bayesian probabilistic model. Results show an overall increase in projected landslide occurrence over the twenty-first century. This is especially confirmed in the high-emission scenario representative concentration pathway 8.5, where according to the first model, the events above rainfall thresholds frequency shift from ~?0.025 to ~?0.05 in the mountainous sector of the study area. Moreover, Bayesian analysis revealed the possible occurrence of landslide-triggering rainfall with a magnitude never occurred over the historical period. Landslides frequency change signal presents also considerable seasonal patterns, with summer displaying the steepest positive trend coupled to the highest inter-model spread. The methodological chain here proposed aims at representing a flexible tool for future landslide-hazard assessment, applicable over different areas and time horizons (e.g., short-term climate projections or seasonal forecasts).     

Correction to: Impact of climate change on landslides frequency: the Esino river basin case study (Central Italy)

We refine the 1-D velocity model of the Central India Tectonic Zone (CITZ) using well-selected arrival times of P- and S-phases of 354 local earthquakes of magnitude (M_w) between 2.0 and 5.8, recorded by national seismic network from May 1997 to March 2016. Further, we have determined the source mechanisms of 26 selected local events using moment tensor inversion to characterize the dynamics beneath the CITZ. The best-fit simulation between observed and synthetic waveforms obtained the nodal and auxiliary planes of the each faults associated with the earthquake moment magnitude (M_w) for each event. Depth of the fault plane along the CITZ varies from 5 to 38 km. From this study, we found that the western part along the CITZ shows minimum focal depth and reaches maximum 38 kms at Jabalpur in the eastern part. This complex nature of earthquake dynamics occurrence along the CITZ. We propose that the curviplanar the CITZ dominated with sinistral curvature is subjected to compression along the longer ~E–W segments and transtension along shorter segments with ~NE–SW orientations. The occurrences of normal faulting, intrusion of mafic plutons and CLVD mechanisms for earthquakes are interpreted to be linked to the transtension zones and reverse mechanisms associated with the compressions along ~E–W segments.     

Viscoelastic behaviour and temporal fractal properties of lherzolite and marble: possible extrapolation from experimental results to the geological time-scale

The viscoelastic relaxation behaviour of lherzolite and marble and their temporal fractal properties are studied. Based on the high‐temperature viscoelastic behaviour for these rock types derived from the time–temperature superposition principle, the relaxation function for the viscoelastic behaviour of lherzolite and marble can be expressed as a flow law from a power‐law function of temperature‐reduced time given by normalizing the various temperature behaviours, with a non‐integer exponent. The relaxation function is thus time‐scale invariant, i.e. there is a temporal fractal property to the temperature‐reduced time. Their rheological behaviour over geological time‐scales at low temperature can be extrapolated from the experimental high‐temperature behaviour based on the temporal fractal property. Our derived flow law satisfies not only transient behaviour but also steady‐state behaviour.     

Role of latitudinal shift and climate change in evolution of red and yellow palaeosols of the Himalayas: Implications for early Oligocene seasonality and Mid-Miocene enhanced precipitation

Cenozoic atmospheric circulation, climatic changes, sedimentation and weathering over the Indian sub-continent were mainly influenced by the northward drift of the Indian Plate, the shrinking Paratethys, India-Asia collision and the rise of the Himalayas. This study is aimed at exploring the fluvial sedimentary record of the north-west part of the Himalayan Foreland Basin to interpret weathering and pedogenesis during early Oligocene to Mid-Miocene time. Palaeopedological investigation of a 3.1 km thick succession from Kangra sub-basin of the Himalayan Foreland Basin shows that the lower 2 km part of the succession is characterized by the red (10R hue) and the upper 1.1 km part of the succession by the yellow (2.5Y hue) palaeosols with varying intensity of weathering and pedogenesis. The association of sedimentary rocks and pedogenic expression in palaeosols indicate four (Type-A to Type-D) pedofacies in the entire Oligocene–Miocene succession. The pedofacies are defined by a decrease in the intensity of palaeopedogenic development from strongly-developed palaeopedofeatures in Type-A, moderately-developed palaeopedofeatures in Type-B, weakly-developed palaeopedofeatures in Type-C and to the only incipient stage of palaeopedogenesis in Type-D pedofacies. The palaeolatitudinal shift during the convergence of the Indian Plate played a major role in weathering and palaeopedogenesis with the inception of seasonality during the early Oligocene, which is demonstrated by the formation of the red palaeosols with pedogenic CaCO₃ and vertic features in tropical conditions. The transition to yellow palaeosols at about 20 Ma is marked by increased humidity, rapid aggradation, pronounced uplift and enhanced erosion of the hinterland. These yellow palaeosols are characterized by the abundance of weakly-developed Bw and Bss horizons, pure clay pedofeatures and absence of any pedogenic CaCO₃ during short pedogenic intervals in subtropical conditions.     

China: population change and population control

Since 1949 China's population has increased by 500 million and thereby grown at an average rate of 2 % per year. Annual growth rates have varied dramatically, falling from 3.3 % in 1963 to 1.2 % in 1979 and registering a population decline of 13.5 million in the famine years of 1960/61. China's demographic disaster in 1958/61 ranks as one of the most devastating in the history of the world. Chinese leaders have oscillated between pro- and anti-natalist policies. However, in the 1970s the government launched its third, its most intensive and to date its most successful family planning programme. So succesful that the total fertility rate declined from 6.4 in 1968 to 2.2 in 1980 and the level of contraceptive use in China was raised to the levels currently experienced in the Developed World. Despite the high rate of contraceptive prevalence, induced abortion is still extensively used to prevent unplanned births. The extent to which China's birth control programme has been implemented on a voluntary, coercive or compulsory basis is open to question. A rapid increase in the age of marriage and a substantial improvement in female education have made important contributions to the decline in fertility. Large differences in fertility exist between rural and urban China, reflecting significant differences in the average age of marriage and the very marked difference in educational attainment between the cities and the countryside. Whether the government directed family planning programme or socio-economic development has had the greatest impact on the decline in fertility, is under discussion. Whatever the motive force, the pace of demographic modernisation has been impressive and by international standards China now enjoys advanced levels of demographic development at an early stage of economic development.Abbreviations CMP-SPRCP-75-114 China Mainland Press, Survey of People's Republic of China Press 1975, No. 114. - FBIS-CHI-83-112 Foreign Broadcast Information Service, Daily Report, China, 1983, No. 112. - JPRS-CPS-85-012 Joint Publications Research Service, China Report, Political, Sociological and Military Affairs, 1985, No. 12. - SWB/FE/6246/BII Summary of World Broadcast, Far East, No. 6246, section BII.     

Wolf-Rayet stars and relativistic objects: Distinctions between the mass distributions in close binary systems

The observed properties of Wolf-Rayet stars and relativistic objects in close binary systems are analyzed. The final masses M _CO ^f for the carbon-oxygen cores of WR stars in WR + O binaries are calculated taking into account the radial loss of matter via stellar wind, which depends on the mass of the star. The analysis includes new data on the clumpy structure of WR winds, which appreciably decreases the required mass-loss rates $\dot M_{WR}$ for the WR stars. The masses M _CO ^f lie in the range (1–2)M _⊙–(20–44)M _⊙ and have a continuous distribution. The masses of the relativistic objects M _x are 1–20M _⊙ and have a bimodal distribution: the mean masses for neutron stars and black holes are 1.35 ± 0.15M _⊙ and 8–10M _⊙, respectively, with a gap from 2–4M _⊙ in which no neutron stars or black holes are observed in close binaries. The mean final CO-core mass is $\overline M _{CO}^f = 7.4 - 10.3M_ \odot$ , close to the mean mass for the black holes. This suggests that it is not only the mass of the progenitor that determines the nature of the relativistic object, but other parameters as well-rotation, magnetic field, etc. One SB1R Wolf-Rayet binary and 11 suspected WR + C binaries that may have low-mass companions (main-sequence or subgiant M-A stars) are identified; these could be the progenitors of low-mass X-ray binaries with neutron stars and black holes.     

A modelling approach for estimating the frequency of sea level extremes and the impact of climate change in southeast Australia

An efficient approach for evaluating storm tide return levels along the southeastern coastline of Australia under present and future climate conditions is described. Storm surge height probabilities for the present climate are estimated using hydrodynamic model simulations of surges identified in recent tide gauge records. Tides are then accounted for using a joint probability method. Storm tide height return levels obtained in this way are similar to those obtained from the direct analysis of tide gauge records. The impact of climate change on extreme sea levels is explored by adding a variety of estimates of mean sea level rise and by forcing the model with modified wind data. It is shown that climate change has the potential to reduce average recurrence intervals of present climate 1 in 100 year storm tide levels along much of the northern Bass Strait coast to between 1 and 2 years by the year 2070.