Temporal analysis of air pollution and its relationship with meteorological parameters in Bahrain, 2006–2012

The objective of this paper is to analyze temporal and seasonal trends of air pollution in Bahrain between 2006 and 2012 by utilizing datasets from five air quality monitoring stations. The non-parametric and robust Theil-Sen approach is employed to study quantitatively temporal variations of particulate matter (PM₁₀ and PM_2.5), nitrogen dioxide (NO₂), sulfur dioxide (SO₂), and ozone (O₃). The calculated annual concentrations for PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 in Bahrain were substantially higher than recommended World Health Organization (WHO) guideline standards. Results showed increasing trends for PM₁₀, PM_2.5, and SO₂ whereas O₃ and its precursor NO₂ showed decreasing behavior. The general increase in air pollution trends is in agreement with prediction of air pollution models for Middle East region due to economic growth, industrialization, and urbanization. The significances of long-term trends were examined. Additional to actual (unadjusted) trends, meteorological adjusted (deseasonalized) trends and seasonal trends were quantified. The box-plot analysis visually illustrated monthly variations of key air pollutants. It showed that only PM₁₀ and PM_2.5 exhibited seasonal pattern, and their concentrations increased during summer and decreased during winter. The effects of ambient air temperature, relative humidity, wind speed, and rainfall on particulate matter (PM) concentrations were further investigated. The Spearman correlation coefficient results demonstrated significant negative correlation between relative humidity and PM concentrations (??0.595 for PM₁₀ and ??0.526 for PM_2.5) while significant positive correlation was observed between temperature and PM concentrations (0.420 for PM₁₀ and 0.482 for PM_2.5).     

LA-ICP-MS U-Pb zircon geochronology and Hf isotope,geochemistry and kinetics of the Daxigou anorthosite from Kuruqtagh block,NW China

Kuruqtagh block is the best area for Precambrian geology in Xinjiang Autonomous Region, NW China, since it exposed complete Precambrian lithology units. The study of this ancient base will deepen the understanding of the Precambrian evolution of the Tarim Basin. In this paper, we studied the petrology, geochemistry, zircon LA-ICPMS U-Pb chronology and zircon Hf isotope of Daxigou anorthosite （DA） which is located at the northem margin of Tarim craton and discussed the rock formation, tectonic and geological significance. Zircons from the intrusions display oscillatory zoning and high Th/U ratios （0.39-1.35）, implying their magmatic origin. Zircon LA-ICP-MS U-Pb dating results indicate that they formed during the Paleoproterozoic age with the weighted 2~6pb/238U average age of 1818~9 Ma, which is significantly different from former＇s Neoproterozoic age, and is co- incidentally identical with its associated syenite granite age within the error range. Studies on petrogeochemistry suggest that DA belongs to medium-sodium peraluminous alkaline type, rich in Pb, La, Th and LILE, and poor in HFSE （Gd, Nd, and Ta）. The chondrite-normalized REE pattern is slightly to the right form. The average Y~REE is 317.2~ 10-6; HREE show moderate fractionation [average LREE/HREE is 14.71, average （La/Yb）N is 24.77; average （LaJSm）N is 3.85, and average （Gd/Yb）y is 3.46]; and the 6Eu and 8Ce are not obvious. Their initial Hf isotope ratios and Hf two-stage model ages range from -6.6 to -4.43 and 2.63 to 2.74 Ga, respectively. Taken together, it is sug- gested that Daxigou anorthosite is a typical volcanic anorthosite and its primary magma could be contaminated by the partial melt Neoarchaean crust and mainly formed in the arc environment, which recoded the tectonic-magma activities response of the Tarim refers to the amalgamation of the supercontinent Columbia.     

The cause of unproportionately large higher mode contributions in the inelastic seismic responses of high‐rise core‐wall buildings

In the conventional seismic design of high‐rise reinforced concrete core‐wall buildings, the design demands such as design shear and bending moment in the core wall are typically determined by the response spectrum analysis procedure, and a plastic hinge is allowed to form at the wall base to limit the seismic demands. In this study, it is demonstrated by using a 40‐story core‐wall building that this conventional approach could lead to an unsafe design where the true demands—the maximum inelastic seismic demands induced by the maximum considered earthquake—could be several times greater than the design demands and be unproportionately dominated by higher vibration modes. To identify the cause of this problem, the true demands are decomposed into individual modal contributions by using the uncoupled modal response history analysis procedure. The results show that the true demands contributed by the first mode are reasonably close to the first‐mode design demands, while those contributed by other higher modes are much higher than the corresponding modal design demands. The flexural yielding in the plastic hinge at the wall base can effectively suppress the seismic demands of the first mode. For other higher modes, however, a similar yielding mechanism is either not fully mobilized or not mobilized at all, resulting in unexpectedly large contributions from higher modes. This finding suggests several possible approaches to improve the seismic design and to suppress the seismic demands of high‐rise core‐wall buildings. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Geomorphology of the Alluvial Sediments and Bedrock in an Intermontane Basin: Application of Variogram Modeling to Electrical Resistivity Soundings

The study describes a methodology used to integrate legacy resistivity data with limited geological data in order to build three-dimensional models of the near subsurface. Variogram analysis and inversion techniques more typically found in the petroleum industry are applied to a set of 1D resistivity data taken from electrical surveys conducted in the 1980s. Through careful integration with limited geological data collected from boreholes and outcrops, the resultant model can be visualized in three dimensions to depict alluvium layers as lithological and structural units within the bedrock. By tuning the variogram parameters to account for directionality, it is possible to visualize the individual lithofacies and geomorphological features in the subsurface. In this study, an electrical resistivity data set collected as part of a groundwater study in an area of the Peshawar basin in Pakistan has been re-examined. Additional lithological logs from boreholes throughout the area have been combined with local outcrop information to calibrate the data. Tectonic activity during the Himalayan orogeny has caused uplift in the area and generated significant faulting in the bedrock resulting in the formation of depressions which are identified by low resistivity values representing clays. Paleo-streams have reworked these clays which have been eroded and replaced by gravel–sand facies along paleo-channels. It is concluded that the sediments have been deposited as prograding fan-shaped bodies and lacustrine deposits with interlayered gravel–sand and clay–silt facies. The Naranji area aquifer system has thus been formed as a result of local tectonic activity with fluvial erosion and deposition and is characterized by coarse sediments with high electrical resistivities.     

Regolith breccia Northwest Africa 7533: Mineralogy and petrology with implications for early Mars

Northwest Africa 7533, a polymict Martian breccia, consists of fine‐grained clast‐laden melt particles and microcrystalline matrix. While both melt and matrix contain medium‐grained noritic‐monzonitic material and crystal clasts, the matrix also contains lithic clasts with zoned pigeonite and augite plus two feldspars, microbasaltic clasts, vitrophyric and microcrystalline spherules, and shards. The clast‐laden melt rocks contain clump‐like aggregates of orthopyroxene surrounded by aureoles of plagioclase. Some shards of vesicular melt rocks resemble the pyroxene‐plagioclase clump‐aureole structures. Submicron size matrix grains show some triple junctions, but most are irregular with high intergranular porosity. The noritic‐monzonitic rocks contain exsolved pyroxenes and perthitic intergrowths, and cooled more slowly than rocks with zoned‐pyroxene or fine grain size. Noritic material contains orthopyroxene or inverted pigeonite, augite, calcic to intermediate plagioclase, and chromite to Cr‐bearing magnetite; monzonitic clasts contain augite, sodic plagioclase, K feldspar, Ti‐bearing magnetite, ilmenite, chlorapatite, and zircon. These feldspathic rocks show similarities to some rocks at Gale Crater like Black Trout, Mara, and Jake M. The most magnesian orthopyroxene clasts are close to ALH 84001 orthopyroxene in composition. All these materials are enriched in siderophile elements, indicating impact melting and incorporation of a projectile component, except for Ni‐poor pyroxene clasts which are from pristine rocks. Clast‐laden melt rocks, spherules, shards, and siderophile element contents indicate formation of NWA 7533 as a regolith breccia. The zircons, mainly derived from monzonitic (melt) rocks, crystallized at 4.43 ± 0.03 Ga (Humayun et al. 2013 ) and a ¹⁴⁷Sm‐¹⁴³Nd isochron for NWA 7034 yielding 4.42 ± 0.07 Ga (Nyquist et al. 2016 ) defines the crystallization age of all its igneous portions. The zircon from the monzonitic rocks has a higher Δ¹⁷O than other Martian meteorites explained in part by assimilation of regolith materials enriched during surface alteration (Nemchin et al. 2014 ). This record of protolith interaction with atmosphere‐hydrosphere during regolith formation before melting demonstrates a thin atmosphere, a wet early surface environment on Mars, and an evolved crust likely to have contaminated younger extrusive rocks. The latest events recorded when the breccia was on Mars are resetting of apatite, much feldspar and some zircons at 1.35–1.4 Ga (Bellucci et al. 2015 ), and formation of Ni‐bearing pyrite veins during or shortly after this disturbance (Lorand et al. 2015 ).     

Radio frequency interference measurements in Indonesia

We report the first measurements of radio frequency spectrum occupancy performed at sites aimed to host the future radio astronomy observatory in Indonesia. The survey is intended to obtain the radio frequency interference (RFI) environment in a spectral range from low frequency 10 MHz up to 8 GHz. The measurements permit the identification of the spectral occupancy over those selected sites in reference to the allocated radio spectrum in Indonesia. The sites are in close proximity to Australia, the future host of Square Kilometre Array (SKA) at low frequency. Therefore, the survey was deliberately made to approximately adhere the SKA protocol for RFI measurements, but with lower sensitivity. The RFI environment at Bosscha Observatory in Lembang was also measured for comparison. Within the sensitivity limit of the measurement equipment, it is found that a location called Fatumonas in the surrounding of Mount Timau in West Timor has very low level of RFI, with a total spectrum occupancy in this measured frequency range being about 1 %, mostly found at low frequency below 20 MHz. More detailed measurements as well as a strategy for a radio quiet zone must be implemented in the near future.     

Prediction of extreme rainfall event using weather pattern recognition and support vector machine classifier

A major component of flood alert broadcasting is the short-term prediction of extreme rainfall events, which remains a challenging task, even with the improvements of numerical weather prediction models. Such prediction is a high priority research challenge, specifically in highly urbanized areas like Mumbai, India, which is extremely prone to urban flooding. Here, we attempt to develop an algorithm based on a machine learning technique, support vector machine (SVM), to predict extreme rainfall with a lead time of 6–48 h in Mumbai, using mesoscale (20–200 km) and synoptic scale (200–2,000 km) weather patterns. The underlying hypothesis behind this algorithm is that the weather patterns before (6–48 h) extreme events are significantly different from those of normal weather days. The present algorithm attempts to identify those specific patterns for extreme events and applies SVM-based classifiers for extreme rainfall classification and prediction. Here, we develop the anomaly frequency method (AFM), where the predictors (and their patterns) for SVM are identified with the frequency of high anomaly values of weather variables at different pressure levels, which are present before extreme events, but absent for non-extreme conditions. We observe that weather patterns before the extreme rainfall events during nighttime (1800 to 0600Z) is different from those during daytime (0600 to 1800Z) and, accordingly, we develop a two-phase support vector classifier for extreme prediction. Though there are false alarms associated with this prediction method, the model predicts all the extreme events well in advance. The performance is compared with the state-of-the-art statistical technique fingerprinting approach and is observed to be better in terms of false alarm and prediction.     

The effect of oxygen as a light element in metallic liquids on partitioning behavior

Oxygen has been considered a potentially important light element in metallic liquids during a range of planetary processes, yet the influence of O in a metallic melt on element partitioning behavior is largely unknown. To investigate the effect of O in such systems, we conducted experiments in the Fe‐S‐O system, doped with 25 trace elements, which produced two immiscible metallic liquids. Our results indicate that the presence of O in the metallic liquid produces a distinctive chemical signature for W and Ga in particular. Tungsten shows an affinity for O in the metallic liquid and partitions more strongly into the metallic melt in the presence of O. The partitioning of Ga is relatively constant despite the presence of O, which is in contrast to the majority of the other siderophile elements in the study. Our experiments from 1400 to 1600 °C show no significant effect from temperature on the partitioning behavior of any trace elements over this limited temperature range. This distinctive chemical signature due to the presence of O in the metallic liquid has potential implications for modeling core formation, evaluating isotopic signatures produced by core crystallization, and interpreting chemical assemblages observed in meteorites.     

Compositions of unzoned and zoned metal in the CBb chondrites Hammadah al Hamra 237 and Queen Alexandra Range 94627

Abstract— The CB_b chondrites are rare, primitive, metal‐rich meteorites that contain several features, including zoned metal, that have previously been interpreted as evidence for origins in the solar nebula. We have measured concentrations of Ni, Cu, Ga, Ru, Pd, Ir, and Au within both zoned and unzoned metal grains in the CB_b chondrites Hammadah al Hamra (HaH) 237 and Queen Alexandra Range (QUE) 94627 using laser ablation inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry. The refractory elements Ni, Ru, and Ir are enriched in the grain cores, relative to the rims, in the zoned metal. All refractory elements are uniform across the unzoned metal grains, at concentrations that are highly variable between grains. The volatile elements Cu, Ga, and Au are usually depleted relative to chondritic abundances and are most often uniform within the grains but are sometimes slightly elevated at the outermost rim. The Pd abundances are nearly uniform, at close to chondritic abundances, in all of the metal grains. A condensation origin is inferred for both types of metal. The data support a model in which the zoned metal formed at high temperatures, in a relatively rapidly cooling nebular gas, and the unzoned metal formed at lower temperatures and at a lower cooling rate. The CB_b metal appears to have formed by a process very similar to that of the CH chondrites, but the CB_b meteorite components experienced even less thermal alteration following their formation and are among the most primitive materials known to have formed in the solar nebula.     

Efficiency of seismic attributes in detecting near-surface cavities

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the efficacy of using seismic attributes to detect near-surface cavities. The methods used in this study include interpreting dispersion curves and amplitude mapping of the multichannel analysis of surface wave (MASW) technique and interpreting the delay in first arrivals of compressional waves. To test these methods, a seismic survey was conducted above a known near-surface cavity in Al-Suman Area, Saudi Arabia. The cause of the cavity is carbonization in the area; there are many cavities similar to this one. The seismic data were collected using a seismograph system with 48 vertical geophones. Both techniques show a tangible result for detecting the cavity. The 2D section of shear wave velocity, which was obtained by inverting the dispersion curves from the MASW technique, leads us to determine the shape of the cavity, as described by a low-velocity zone. Frequency against relative offset is plotted and shows a significant frequency drop in the presence of the cavity, which also provides an indication to the presence of cavity underneath. This interpretation is matched by the interpretation of observed delays in first arrivals of compressional waves. The integration of both P wave seismic refraction and MASW gives confidence in the result and matches observations of the existing cavity closely.