The south German Plattenkalks

The Late Jurassic lithographic limestones of southern Germany have yielded some of the most beautiful and scientifically important fossils in the world. The limestones, termed Plattenkalks which translates to flat chalks, are representative of a ‘textbook’ and widely studied example of a Konservate-Lagerstätten.     

Thermochronological insights into the structural contact between the Tian Shan and Pamirs,Tajikistan

Multi‐method thermochronology along the Vakhsh‐Surkhob fault zone reveals the thermotectonic history of the South Tian Shan–Pamirs boundary. Apatite U/Pb analyses yield a consistent age of 251 ± 2 Ma, corresponding to cooling below ~550–350°C, related to the final closure of the Palaeo‐Asian Ocean and contemporaneous magmatism in the South Tian Shan. Zircon (U–Th–Sm)/He ages constrain cooling below ~180°C to the end of the Triassic (~200 Ma), likely related either to deformation induced by the Qiangtang collision or to the closure of the Rushan Ocean. Apatite fission track thermochronology reveals two low‐temperature (<120°C) thermal events at ~25 Ma and ~10 Ma, which may be correlated with tectonic activity at the distant southern Eurasian margin. The late Miocene cooling is confirmed by apatite (U–Th–Sm)/He data and marks the onset of mountain building within the South Tian Shan that is ongoing today.     

Luminex detection of fecal indicators in river samples, marine recreational water, and beach sand

Research to understand and remediate coastal pollution is moving toward a multitiered approach in which traditional enumeration of fecal indicators is accompanied by molecular analysis of a variety of targets. Technology that rapidly detects multiple microbial contaminants would benefit from such an approach. The Luminex 100 system is a suspension array that assays multiple analytes rapidly in a single well of a microtiter plate. The ability of the system to simultaneously detect multiple fecal indicating bacteria in environmental samples was tested. Primer/probe sets were designed to simultaneously detect the following fecal indicators: the Bacteroides fragilis group, Enterococcus spp., Escherichia coli and Shigella spp., Bacteroides distasonis, and Ent. faecalis. Specificity and sensitivity of the Luminex probes was tested against laboratory cultures. In addition, sequencing, culture plate testing, and specificity testing with environmental isolates were steps taken to validate the function of the assay with environmental samples. Luminex response to cultures and to environmental samples was consistent with sequencing results, suggesting that the technology has the potential to simultaneously detect multiple targets for coastal water quality applications, particularly as progress is made to efficiently extract DNA from water and sediment matrices.     

Systematic study of effects of pH and ionic strength on attachment of phage PRD1

Objectives of this work are to investigate effects of pH and ionic strength (IS) on virus transport in saturated soil and to develop a quantitative relationship for these effects. A series of 50-cm column experiments with clean quartz sand under saturated conditions and with pH values of 5, 6, 7, 8, and IS values of 1, 10, and 20 mM were conducted. Bacteriophage PRD1 was used as a model virus. Applying a one-site kinetic model, attachment, detachment, and inactivation rate coefficients were determined from fitting breakthrough curves using the software package Hydrus-1D. Attachment rate coefficients increased with decreasing pH and increasing IS, in agreement with DLVO theory. Sticking efficiencies were calculated from the attachment rate coefficients and used to develop an empirical formula for sticking efficiency as a function of pH and IS. This relationship is applicable under unfavorable conditions for virus attachment. We compared sticking efficiencies predicted by the empirical formula with those from field and column experiments. Within the calibrated range of pH and IS, the predicted and observed sticking efficiencies are in reasonable agreement for bacteriophages PRD1 and MS2. However, the formula significantly overestimates sticking efficiencies for IS higher than 100 mM. In addition, it performs less well for viruses with different surface reactivity than PRD1 and MS2. Effects of pH and IS on detachment and inactivation rate coefficients were also investigated but the experimental results do not allow constraining these parameters with sufficient certainty.     

A regional response in mean westerly circulation and rainfall to projected climate warming over Tasmania, Australia

Coupled ocean–atmosphere general circulation models (GCMs) lack sufficient resolution to model the regional detail of changes to mean circulation and rainfall with projected climate warming. In this paper, changes in mean circulation and rainfall in GCMs are compared to those in a variable resolution regional climate model, the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model (CCAM), under a high greenhouse gas emissions scenario. The study site is Tasmania, Australia, which is positioned within the mid-latitude westerlies of the southern hemisphere. CCAM projects a different response in mean sea level pressure and mid-latitude westerly circulation to climate warming to the GCMs used as input, and shows greater regional detail of the boundaries between regions of increasing and decreasing rainfall. Changes in mean circulation dominate the mean rainfall response in western Tasmania, whereas changes to rainfall in the East Coast are less related to mean circulation changes. CCAM projects an amplification of the dominant westerly circulation over Tasmania and this amplifies the seasonal cycle of wet winters and dry summers in the west. There is a larger change in the strength than in the incidence of westerly circulation and rainfall events. We propose the regional climate model displays a more sensitive atmospheric response to the different rates of warming of land and sea than the GCMs as input. The regional variation in these results highlight the need for dynamical downscaling of coupled general circulation models to finely resolve the influence of mean circulation and boundaries between regions of projected increases and decreases in rainfall.     

On regional dynamical downscaling for the assessment and projection of temperature and precipitation extremes across Tasmania, Australia

The ability of an ensemble of six GCMs, downscaled to a 0.1° lat/lon grid using the Conformal Cubic Atmospheric Model over Tasmania, Australia, to simulate observed extreme temperature and precipitation climatologies and statewide trends is assessed for 1961–2009 using a suite of extreme indices. The downscaled simulations have high skill in reproducing extreme temperatures, with the majority of models reproducing the statewide averaged sign and magnitude of recent observed trends of increasing warm days and warm nights and decreasing frost days. The warm spell duration index is however underestimated, while variance is generally overrepresented in the extreme temperature range across most regions. The simulations show a lower level of skill in modelling the amplitude of the extreme precipitation indices such as very wet days, but simulate the observed spatial patterns and variability. In general, simulations of dry extreme precipitation indices are underestimated in dryer areas and wet extremes indices are underestimated in wetter areas. Using two SRES emissions scenarios, the simulations indicate a significant increase in warm nights compared to a slightly more moderate increase in warm days, and an increase in maximum 1- and 5-day precipitation intensities interspersed with longer consecutive dry spells across Tasmania during the twenty-first century.     

Theoretical twin meteor showers

Attention is drawn to, and theoretical radiants calculated for, 27 hypothetical twin showers to Cook's (1973, in Evolutionary and Physical Properties of Meteoroids, NASA SP-319, U.S. Govt. Printing Office, Washington, D.C.) working list of meteor streams. Of these twin showers, 7 are previously known, 1 is a night-time twin to the ? Geminids, 9 are found to be contained among Sekanina's (1976, Icarus27, 265–321) radar streams, and the remaining 10 are undetected daytime showers. Minimum radii are computed for all of Cook's streams and are used to assess the possibility of detecting the twin showers.     

TIGRE: A new robotic spectroscopy telescope at Guanajuato,Mexico

TIGRE is a new robotic spectroscopy telescope located in central Mexico at the La Luz Observatory of the University of Guanajuato. The 1.2 m telescope is fiber‐coupled to an ´echelle spectrograph with a spectral resolving power exceeding 20000 over most of the covered spectral range between 3800 Å and 8800 Å, with a small gap of 130 Å around 5800 Å. TIGRE operates robotically, i.e. it (normally) carries out all observations without any human intervention, including, in particular, the target selection in any given observing night. In this paper we describe the properties of the TIGRE instrumentation and its technical realization, as well as our first operational experience with the performance and efficiency of the overall system. Finally, we present some examples of recent TIGRE observations. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)