Biodiversity of rocky intertidal benthic communities associated with copper mine tailing discharges in northern Chile

Copper mine tailings have been discharged around the city of Chanaral, in northern Chile, for more than 60 years. This report summarizes a 17-month long monitoring study of species richness and biodiversity at five intertidal sites around the point of the tailing discharge. Total dissolved copper in sites close to the point of discharge varied between 8.72 microg/l and 34.15 microg/l, showing that there has not been a significant reduction since 1994. However, species richness has increased, suggesting a possible recovery of the system. While diversity of sessile organisms correlates negatively with dissolved copper, diversity of mobile invertebrates did not correlate with the metal concentration. To explain the observed results we discuss the role of algal turf interference on the distribution of mobile invertebrates at reference sites, a top-down effect caused by the absence of carnivores at impacted sites, and an avoidance strategy by some species to reduce their contact with contaminated seawater.     

Measuring the Cosmic Equation of State with Counts of Galaxies

We show that the gas in growing density perturbations is vulnerable to the influence of winds outflowing from nearby collapsed galaxies that have already formed stars. This suggests that the formation of nearby galaxies with masses less, similar10(9) M( middle dot in circle) is likely to be suppressed, irrespective of the details of galaxy formation. An impinging wind may shock-heat the gas of a nearby perturbation to above the virial temperature, thereby mechanically evaporating the gas, or the baryons may be stripped from the perturbation entirely if they are accelerated to above the escape velocity. We show that baryonic stripping is the most effective of these two processes, because shock-heated clouds that are too large to be stripped are able to radiatively cool within a sound crossing time, limiting evaporation. The intergalactic medium temperatures and star formation rates required for outflows to have a significant influence on the formation of low-mass galaxies are consistent with current observations, but may soon be examined directly via associated distortions in the cosmic microwave background and with near-infrared observations from the Next Generation Space Telescope, which may detect the supernovae from early-forming stars.     

An assessment of the potential use of the nematode to copepod ratio in the monitoring of metals pollution. The Chañaral case

We discuss the use of the nematode to copepod ratio in relation to determining the extent of metals impact using the Cha?aral area of northern Chile, where the dumping of copper mine tailings has taken place for many years, as an example. Data were collected from 12 beaches in the area on eight occasions between January 1997 and October 1998. We find that the ratio is not a good predictor of pollution due to the generally low densities of meiofauna on impacted beaches and the absence of harpacticoid copepods from those beaches. We suggest that in the case of metal pollution the mean number of Harpacticoida per site may be a better indicator of impact stress. We rule out the use of the nematode to copepod ratio as an indicator in biomonitoring studies where metal enrichment is thought to occur.     

国际矿物学协会新矿物及矿物命名委员会最近批准的新矿物

公布了国际矿物学协会新矿物及矿物命名委员会批准的１９９４年度的新矿物。各矿物的描内容为：化学式，国际矿物学协会编号，与其它矿物关系，晶系，空间群，晶胞参数、颜色，光泽，透明度，光性，Ｘ射线衍射的强线。