Numerical modelling of permafrost in bedrock in northern Fennoscandia during the Holocene

The occurrence of permafrost in bedrock in northern Fennoscandia and its dependence on past and presently ongoing climatic variations was investigated with one- (1D) and two-dimensional (2D) numerical models by solving the transient heat conduction equation with latent heat effects included. The study area is characterized by discontinuous permafrost occurrences such as palsa mires and local mountain permafrost. The ground temperature changes during the Holocene were constructed using climatic proxy data. This variation was used as a forcing function at the ground surface in the calculations. Several versions of the present ground temperature were applied, resulting in different subsurface freezing–thawing conditions in the past depending on the assumed porosity and geothermal conditions.Our results suggest that in high altitude areas with a cold climate (present mean annual ground temperature between 0°C and −3°C), there may have been considerable variations in permafrost thickness (ranging from 0 to 150 m), as well as periods of no permafrost at all. The higher is the porosity of bedrock filled with ice, the stronger is the retarding effect of permafrost against climatic variations.Two-dimensional models including topographic effects with altitude-dependent ground temperatures and slope orientation and inclination dependent solar radiation were applied to a case of mountain permafrost in Ylläs, western Finnish Lapland, where bedrock permafrost is known to occur in boreholes to a depth of about 60 m. Modelling suggests complicated changes in permafrost thickness with time as well as contrasting situations on southern and northern slopes of the mountain.Extrapolating the climatic warming of the last 200 years to the end of the next century when the anticipated increase in the annual average air temperature is expected to be about 2 K indicates that the permafrost occurrences in bedrock in northern Fennoscandia would be thawing rapidly in low-porosity formations. However, already a porosity of 5% filled with ice would retard the thawing considerably.     

The effects of gravitational radiation on circular binary systems with spins

In any theory of gravitation that predicts the existence of gravitational waves, it is shown that, in the absence of mass exchange and mass loss and subjected to a condition, a circular binary system with spherically-symmetrical components cannot evolve in such a way that the spin angular velocity is always a linear function of the orbital velocity. Probably this relation between the angular velocities cannot be realized in any time interval. In particular, the system cannot remain in a synchronized state. Of eight special cases of evolution of this binary system, three cases, where the separation increases, are shown to be kinematically impossible while a restriction on the variation of a parameter governing the evaluation of the system can be made in another. In one of the kinematically allowed special cases the separation increases.     

Coulometric TCO2 analyses for marine studies; an introduction

Progress in the introduction of coulometry for the analysis of total carbon dioxide (TCO₂) in marine waters is described. An extractor—stripper removes CO₂ that is measured coulometrically by the quantity of electricity (coulombs) used to electrogenerate OH^? ions for the titration of the acid formed by the reaction of CO₂ and ethanolamine. The equivalence point is detected photometrically with thymolphthalein as the indicator, and Faraday's Law relates coulombs to equivalents of titrant generated and CO₂ determined so that there are no standard curves needed or titrants to standardize or store. Accuracy was determined by adding gelatin capsules containing 100–1500 μg C of pure CaCO₃ into the stripper, and accuracies of better than ± 1 μg C were achieved. The best precision for natural seawater (± 1 standard error) of ± 0.5 μmol l^?1 was found for 17 samples of Bermuda coastal waters having a mean TCO₂ of 2007.2 μmol l^?1 (0.05% CV). Sources of error and precautions are discussed. This method, which has been used successfully at sea, can be used to study a variety of marine phenomena involving TCO₂.     

A focal plane detector design for a wide-band Laue-lens telescope

The energy range above 60 keV is important for the study of many open problems in high energy astrophysics such as the role of Inverse Compton with respect to synchrotron or thermal processes in GRBs, non thermal mechanisms in SNR, the study of the high energy cut-offs in AGN spectra, and the detection of nuclear and annihilation lines. Recently the development of high energy Laue lenses with broad energy bandpasses from 60 to 600keV have been proposed for a Hard X ray focusing Telescope (HAXTEL) in order to study the X-ray continuum of celestial sources. The required focal plane detector should have high detection efficiency over the entire operative range, a spatial resolution of about 1mm, an energy resolution of a few keV at 500keV and a sensitivity to linear polarization. We describe a possible configuration of the focal plane detector based on several CdTe/CZT pixelated layers stacked together to achieve the required detection efficiency at high energy. Each layer can operate both as a separate position sensitive detector and polarimeter or work with other layers to increase the overall photopeak efficiency. Each layer has a hexagonal shape in order to minimize the detector surface required to cover the lens field of view. The pixels would have the same geometry so as to provide the best coupling with the lens point spread function and to increase the symmetry for polarimetric studies.     

Spectrophotometric Variability of Mira

Data from the Pulkovo spectrophotometric data base on the absolute quasimonochromatic fluxes from oCet in the 320–1080 nm range are used to determine the physical parameters of this star in different phases of its light curve. The continuum emission layer is found to expand between the phases of the cycle corresponding to the rising and falling branches of the light curve. The average expansion velocity is 32 km/s. By the time the star’s brightness has fallen by roughly three magnitudes, its radius has increased by almost a factor of three. Over this same time the temperature of the layer has fallen from 3000 K to 2200 K. For this expansion velocity, the calculated mass rate loss is ⊙ M /year.__________Translated from Astrofizika, Vol. 48, No. 2, pp. 175–189 (May 2005).     

Kinetic studies of lead(II) uptake by the seagrass Zostera muelleri in water by radiotracing,atomic absorption spectrometry and electrochemical techniques

Evidence was found that uptake of lead from seawater in both model and natural systems by the leaves of the seagrass Zostera muelleri does occur for live, dead and scraped leaves at all the lead concentrations tested. Positive uptake of lead was measured using the three analytical techniques of radio-tracer, differential pulse anodic stripping voltammetry and atomic absorption spectrometry; similar uptake profiles were obtained for each technique. Profiles always showed an initial rapid uptake phase followed by a gradual transition to a plateau phase at which an approximate equilibrium between lead attached to seagrass and free ionic lead in seawater was reached. The presence of active lead uptake processes was indicated in experiments which attempted to remove lead from leaves by a chelating agent.     

Characterization of zonal winds in the stratosphere of Titan with UVES

Titan has been observed with UVES, the UV-Visual Echelle Spectrograph at the Very Large Telescope, with the aim of characterizing the zonal wind flow. We use a retrieval scheme originally developed for absolute stellar accelerometry [Connes, P., 1985. Astrophys. Space Sci., 110, 211-255] to extract the velocity signal by simultaneously taking into account all the lines present in the spectrum. The method allows to measure the Doppler shift induced at a given point by the zonal wind flow, with high precision. The short-wavelength channel (4200-5200 Å) probes one scale height higher than the long-wavelength one (5200-6200 Å), and we observe statistically significant evidence for stronger winds at higher altitudes. The results show a high dispersion. Globally, we detect prograde zonal winds, with lower limits of 62 and 50 m s⁻¹ at the regions centered at 200 and 170 km altitude, but approximately a quarter of the measurements indicates null or retrograde winds.     

Report of the International Astronomical Union Division I Working Group on Precession and the Ecliptic

The IAU Working Group on Precession and the Equinox looked at several solutions for replacing the precession part of the IAU 2000A precession–nutation model, which is not consistent with dynamical theory. These comparisons show that the (Capitaine et al., Astron. Astrophys., 412, 2003a) precession theory, P03, is both consistent with dynamical theory and the solution most compatible with the IAU 2000A nutation model. Thus, the working group recommends the adoption of the P03 precession theory for use with the IAU 2000A nutation. The two greatest sources of uncertainty in the precession theory are the rate of change of the Earth’s dynamical flattening, ΔJ₂, and the precession rates (i.e. the constants of integration used in deriving the precession). The combined uncertainties limit the accuracy in the precession theory to approximately 2 mas cent⁻². Given that there are difficulties with the traditional angles used to parameterize the precession, z_A, ζ_A, and θ_A, the working group has decided that the choice of parameters should be left to the user. We provide a consistent set of parameters that may be used with either the traditional rotation matrix, or those rotation matrices described in (Capitaine et al., Astron. Astrophys., 412, 2003a) and (Fukushima Astron. J., 126, 2003). We recommend that the ecliptic pole be explicitly defined by the mean orbital angular momentum vector of the Earth–Moon barycenter in the Barycentric Celestial Reference System (BCRS), and explicitly state that this definition is being used to avoid confusion with previous definitions of the ecliptic. Finally, we recommend that the terms precession of the equator and precession of the ecliptic replace the terms lunisolar precession and planetary precession, respectively.