The Early Pleistocene Praetiglian and Ludhamian pollen stages in the North Sea Basin and their relationship to the marine isotope record

In this paper, the currently accepted correlation of the Early Pleistocene Ludhamian stage of England with the Tiglian‐A sub‐stage of the Netherlands is challenged. Recent investigations of Early Pleistocene marine North Sea deposits from a borehole near Noordwijk (the Netherlands) yielded evidence from molluscs, dinoflagellate cysts and sporomorphs for an alternation of warm‐temperate and arctic intervals within the Praetiglian and Tiglian stages. Marine equivalents of the terrestrial‐based pollen sub‐stages Tiglian A and B have been recognised in the upper part of the sequence. A Praetiglian age can be assigned to the lower part of the sequence on the basis of mollusc analysis. Within the Praetiglian, an alternation of warm and cold phases has been recognised from both the dinoflagellate cyst and molluscan records. Three cold phases within the Praetiglian are tentatively correlated with marine isotope stages (MIS) 96–100. The molluscan assemblages provide evidence for climate forcing of the sea level: highest sea levels are reached in the warm‐temperate intervals. Within the Praetiglian, an interval with an acme zone of the dinoflagellate cyst Impagidinium multiplexum, is correlated with the Ludhamian and tentatively linked to MIS 97 and/or MIS 96. The cold molluscan assemblages from the Noordwijk borehole include an acme zone of Megayoldia thraciaeformis, the first and only occurrence of this North Pacific bivalve in the North Sea Basin. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Design of stable drainage networks in upland forestry plantations

Erosion of man-made, forestry drainage channels occurs when the plough cuts through the surface peat layer into the underlying erodible mineral soil. A procedure is developed, based on hydraulic considerations, which will allow the drainage engineer to design stable drainage networks in upland forestry plantations. An example design chart is given for an erodible sandy loam type soil.     

MS 1603.6+2600: an accretion disc corona source?

We have observed the eclipsing low-mass X-ray binary MS 1603.6+2600 with Chandra for 7 ks. The X-ray spectrum is well fit with a single absorbed power law with an index of ∼2. We find a clear sinusoidal modulation in the X-ray light curve with a period of  1.7 ± 0.2 h  , consistent with the period of 1.85 h found before. However, no (partial) eclipses were found. We argue that if the X-ray flare observed in earlier X-ray observations was a type I X-ray burst, then the source can only be an accretion disc corona source at a distance of ∼11–24 kpc (implying a height above the Galactic disc of ∼8–17 kpc). It has also been proposed in the literature that MS 1603.76+2600 is a dipper at ∼75 kpc. We argue that, in this dipper scenario, the observed optical properties of MS 1603.6+2600 are difficult to reconcile with the optical properties one would expect on the basis of comparisons with other high-inclination, low-mass X-ray binaries, unless the X-ray flare was not a type I X-ray burst. In that case, the source can be a nearby soft X-ray transient accreting at a quiescent rate, as was proposed by Hakala et al., or a high-inclination source at ∼15–20 kpc.     

Giant Meterwave Radio Telescope observations of an M2.8 flare: Insights into the initiation of a flare–coronal mass ejection event

We present the first observations of a solar flare with the GMRT. An M2.8 flare observed at 1060 MHz with the GMRT on 17 November 2001 was associated with a prominence eruption observed at 17 GHz by the Nobeyama radioheliograph and the initiation of a fast partial halo CME observed with the LASCO C2 coronagraph. Towards the start of the eruption, we find evidence for reconnection above the prominence. Subsequently, we find evidence for rapid growth of a vertical current sheet below the erupting arcade, which is accompanied by the flare and prominence eruption.     

A new stereo‐analytical method for determination of removal blocks in discontinuous rock masses

The paper provides a new stereo‐analytical method, which is a combination of the stereographic method and analytical methods, to separate finite removable blocks from the infinite and tapered blocks in discontinuous rock masses. The methodology has applicability to both convex and concave blocks. Application of the methodology is illustrated through examples. Addition of this method to the existing block theory procedures available in the literature improves the capability of block theory in solving practical problems in rock engineering. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The host galaxies of active galactic nuclei

We examine the properties of the host galaxies of 22 623 narrow-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) with  0.02 < z < 0.3  selected from a complete sample of 122 808 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We focus on the luminosity of the [O  iii ]λ5007 emission line as a tracer of the strength of activity in the nucleus. We study how AGN host properties compare with those of normal galaxies and how they depend on L [O  iii ]. We find that AGN of all luminosities reside almost exclusively in massive galaxies and have distributions of sizes, stellar surface mass densities and concentrations that are similar to those of ordinary early-type galaxies in our sample. The host galaxies of low-luminosity AGN have stellar populations similar to normal early types. The hosts of high-luminosity AGN have much younger mean stellar ages. The young stars are not preferentially located near the nucleus of the galaxy, but are spread out over scales of at least several kiloparsecs. A significant fraction of high-luminosity AGN have strong Hδ absorption-line equivalent widths, indicating that they experienced a burst of star formation in the recent past. We have also examined the stellar populations of the host galaxies of a sample of broad-line AGN. We conclude that there is no significant difference in stellar content between type 2 Seyfert hosts and quasars (QSOs) with the same [O  iii ] luminosity and redshift. This establishes that a young stellar population is a general property of AGN with high [O  iii ] luminosities.