Optical dating of sand wedges and ice‐wedge casts from Qinghai Lake area on the northeastern Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau and its palaeoenvironmental implications

Sand wedges and ice‐wedge casts in the Qinghai Lake area on the northeastern Qinghai‐Tibetan Plateau (QTP) occur within alluvial gravel or river terrace deposits. In this study, we report the results of quartz Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of the infill of five relict sand wedges and one ice‐wedge cast. Combining our dating results with previously published luminescence ages of permafrost wedges in the Qinghai Lake area, we show that sand/ice wedges formed at c. 62 ka, c. 45 ka and between 30 and 15 ka, and that the mean annual air temperature (MAAT) was depressed by at least ～3°C relative to present during the sand/ice‐wedge formation periods. This new work is partially corroborated by post‐LGM proxy records from lakes and aeolian deposits reported from the northeastern QTP. It also significantly extends the palaeoenvironmental record in the region in the period before the LGM, when other proxy records are rare, allowing a better understanding of the palaeoenvironmental conditions on the northeastern QTP.     

A virtual experiment technique on the elementary behaviour of granular materials with discrete element method

Multi‐scale investigations aided by the discrete element method (DEM) play a vital role for current state‐of‐the‐art research on the elementary behaviour of granular materials. Similar to laboratory tests, there are three important aspects to be considered carefully, which are the proper stress/strain definition and measurement, the application of target loading paths and the designed experiment setup, to be addressed in the present paper. Considering the volume sensitive characteristics of granular materials, in the proposed technique, the deformation of the tested specimen is controlled and measured by deformation gradient tensor involving both the undeformed configuration and the current configuration. Definitions of Biot strain and Cauchy stress are adopted. The expressions of them in terms of contact forces and particle displacements, respectively, are derived. The boundary of the tested specimen consists of rigid massless planar units. It is suggested that the representative element uses a convex polyhedral (polygonal) shape to minimize possible boundary arching effects. General loading paths are described by directly specifying the changes in the stress/strain invariants or directions. Loading can be applied in the strain‐controlled mode by specifying the translations and rotations of the boundary units, or in the stress‐controlled mode by using a servo‐control mechanism, or in the combination of the two methods to realize mixed boundary conditions. Taking the simulation results as the natural consequences originated from a complex system, virtual experiments provide particle‐scale information database to conduct multi‐scale investigations for better understanding in granular material behaviours and possible development of the constitutive theories provided the qualitative similarity between the simulation results from virtual experiments and observations on real material behaviour. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Using a H∞ filter assimilation procedure to estimate root zone soil water content

Root zone soil water content impacts plant water availability, land energy and water balances. Because of unknown hydrological model error, observation errors and the statistical characteristics of the errors, the widely used Kalman filter (KF) and its extensions are challenged to retrieve the root zone soil water content using the surface soil water content. If the soil hydraulic parameters are poorly estimated, the KF and its extensions fail to accurately estimate the root zone soil water. The H‐infinity filter (HF) represents a robust version of the KF. The HF is widely used in data assimilation and is superior to the KF, especially when the performance of the model is not well understood. The objective of this study is to study the impact of uncertain soil hydraulic parameters, initial soil moisture content and observation period on the ability of HF assimilation to predict in situ soil water content. In this article, we study seven cases. The results show that the soil hydraulic parameters hold a critical role in the course of assimilation. When the soil hydraulic parameters are poorly estimated, an accurate estimation of root soil water content cannot be retrieved by the HF assimilation approach. When the estimated soil hydraulic parameters are similar to actual values, the soil water content at various depths can be accurately retrieved by the HF assimilation. The HF assimilation is not very sensitive to the initial soil water content, and the impact of the initial soil water content on the assimilation scheme can be eliminated after about 5–7 days. The observation interval is important for soil water profile distribution retrieval with the HF, and the shorter the observation interval, the shorter the time required to achieve actual soil water content. However, the retrieval results are not very accurate at a depth of 100 cm. Also it is complex to determine the weighting coefficient and the error attenuation parameter in the HF assimilation. In this article, the trial‐and‐error method was used to determine the weighting coefficient and the error attenuation parameter. After the first establishment of limited range of the parameters, ‘the best parameter set’ was selected from the range of values. For the soil conditions investigated, the HF assimilation results are better than the open‐loop results. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Evolution of scouring process downstream of grade‐control structures under steady and unsteady flows

For many incised channels, one of the most common strategies is to install some hard structures, such as grade‐control structures (GCSs), in the riverbed to resist further incision. In this study, a series of experiments, including both steady and unsteady flow conditions, were conducted to investigate the scouring process downstream of a GCS. Three distinct phases, including the initial, developing and equilibrium phases, during the evolution of scour holes were identified. In addition, a semi‐empirical method was proposed to predict the equilibrium scour‐hole profile for the scour countermeasure design. In general, the comparisons between the experimental and simulated results are reasonably consistent. As the studies on temporal variation of the scour depth at GCSs caused by floods are limited, the effect of flood hydrograph shapes on the scour downstream of GCSs without upstream sediment supply was also investigated experimentally in this study. Based on the dimensional analysis and the concept of superposition, a methodology is proposed to simulate the time evolution of the maximum scour depth downstream of a GCS for steady flows. Moreover, the proposed scheme predicts reasonably well the temporal variations of the maximum scour depth for unsteady flows with both single and multiple peak. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

两维银河系旋臂对比度

为改善文献上惯用的表现银河系分子谱线巡视结果的完全平滑了方位信息的径向分布方法,我们发展了原子气体或分子云参量的分环银经分布图,(X—l)_i图,它在某种程度上给出了方位信息。用现存旋臂模型结合这种图我们得到的银道面旋臂区和臂间区的E(HI),E(CO),E(~(13)CO)和N/S(~(13)CO)的两维对比度约为1—2。     

Semi-empirical models of the white-light flare on October 24, 1991

On October 24, 1991, a white-light flare was observed both from space and from the ground. A multi-waveband spectral analysis shows that the peak time of the continuum emission coincides well with that of a radio burst at 2840 MHz and with the hard X-ray emission. Three semi-empirical models, corresponding to the pre-flare condition and to the peak time of continuum emission both with and without non-thermal excitation and ionization of hydrogen by an electron beam, have been obtained. The results indicate that there is fast heating both in the chromosphere and the photosphere. Some evidence is given that this WLF is very likely a result of bombardment by an electron beam. By taking into account non-thermal effects, the chromospheric temperature of the semi-empirical model is significantly reduced.     

Optical and infrared diagnostics of SDSS galaxies in the SWIRE survey

We present the rest-frame optical and infrared colours of a complete sample of  1114 z < 0.3  galaxies from the Spitzer Wide-Area Infrared Extragalactic (SWIRE) Legacy Survey and the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS). We discuss the optical and infrared colours of our sample and analyse in detail the contribution of dusty star-forming galaxies and active galactic nuclei (AGN) to optically selected red sequence galaxies.
We propose that the optical  ( g − r )  colour and infrared  log( L ₂₄/ L _3.6)  colour of galaxies in our sample are determined primarily by a bulge-to-disc ratio. The  ( g − r )  colour is found to be sensitive to the bulge-to-disc ratio for disc-dominated galaxies, whereas the  log( L ₂₄/ L _3.6)  colour is more sensitive for bulge-dominated systems.
We identify ∼18 per cent (195 sources) of our sample as having red optical colours and infrared excess. Typically, the infrared luminosities of these galaxies are found to be at the high end of star-forming galaxies with blue optical colours. Using emission-line diagnostic diagrams, 78 are found to have an AGN contribution and 117 are identified as star-forming systems. The red  ( g − r )  colour of the star-forming galaxies could be explained by extinction. However, their high optical luminosities cannot. We conclude that they have a significant bulge component.
The number densities of optically red star-forming galaxies are found to correspond to ∼13 per cent of the total number density of our sample. In addition, these systems contribute ∼13 per cent of the total optical luminosity density, and 28 per cent of the total infrared luminosity density of our SWIRE/SDSS sample. These objects may reduce the need for 'dry mergers'.