Vegetation in western Central Mexico during the last 50 000 years: modern analogs and climate in the Zacapu Basin

The late glacial and the transition towards the Holocene marked a period of significant environmental change at a global scale. In western Central Mexico, few records span beyond the Holocene, and little is known about Pleistocene climatic and environmental variability. Here we report on the pollen record of a composite sequence made of three cores that cover the last 50 ka (thousands of calibrated radiocarbon years before present) in the Zacapu Basin, western Central Mexico (～1970 m asl). The conjunction of modern pollen rain from the area with the composite fossil pollen sequence from cores Cantabria, Cantabria 1 and CEMCA Point‐1 provided a detailed history of the vegetation of the area. Recognition of modern environmental patterns through individual modern pollen taxa proved difficult, but multivariate analysis separated different vegetation types. No‐modern‐analog communities relative to the modern vegetation cover of the area were evident, especially during periods of drought. Apparently, summer precipitation was significant before 40 ka and after the deglaciation. However, this moisture source declined from ～40 to 10 ka because tradewinds from the Gulf of Mexico were blocked by the eastern mountains of Central Mexico as a result of lower temperatures. By contrast, westerly and northerly winds were enhanced by maximum ice cover from ～19 to 17 ka, providing abundant winter precipitation and therefore preventing extreme drought in the area. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Reliable Procedure for Molecular Analysis of Airborne Microflora in Three Indoor Environments: An Office and Two Different Museum Contexts

Biological aerosols from air constitute a significant source of exposure to microorganisms in public places. Airborne microorganisms are involved in the development of certain respiratory symptoms, allergies, or infections among users and occupants. Various sampling instruments have commonly been used in aerobiology to collect bacteria and fungi suspended in the air. The objective of this study was to develop a reliable procedure for sampling in indoor public environments presenting different levels of occupancy, airborne bacteria and fungi to be subjected to molecular analysis (bacteria and fungi quantitative PCR, capillary electrophoresis single strand conformation polymorphism fingerprinting). Four different sampling devices were tested in situ in an office building (open‐plan type) and the sampling strategy chosen was tested in two museum contexts. In accordance with the drawbacks involved to our study (quantitative and qualitative aspects, cost, and overcrowding), cyclone device appeared to be most suitable. The results underline the effectiveness of this high‐volume aerosol sampling device for both qualitative and quantitative molecular analysis. Four in situ sampling collections were carried out in 1 day in the Louvre Museum to study quantitative and qualitative variations of airborne bacterial and fungal diversity. The quantitative results revealed a similar order of magnitude for the numbers of both bacteria and fungi. In the Louvre Museum, the samples yielded between 3.7 × 10⁴ and 4.1 × 10⁴ genome equivalent (GE) bacteria/m³ air and between 5.0 × 10⁴ and 5.9 × 10⁴ GE fungi/m³ air and in the Decorative Arts Museum between, 2.1 × 10⁴ and 2.5 × 10⁴ GE bacteria/m³ air and between 1.4 × 10⁴ and 1.7 × 10⁴ GE fungi/m³ air. The results also indicate that the dominant bacterial community displayed a stable structure over a short period of time whereas dominant eukaryotic airborne community appeared more variable.     

A mathematical hysteretic model for elastomeric isolation bearings

An analytical model for high damping elastomeric isolation bearings is presented in this paper. The model is used to describe mathematically the damping force and restoring force of the rubber material and bearing. Ten parameters to be identified from cyclic loading tests are included in the model. The sensitivity of the ten parameters in affecting the model is examined. These ten parameters are functions of a number of influence factors on the elastomer such as the rubber compound, Mullins effect, scragging effect, frequency, temperature and axial load. In this study, however, only the Mullins effect, scragging effect, frequency and temperature are investigated. Both material tests and shaking table tests were performed to validate the proposed model. Based on the comparison between the experimental and the analytical results, it is found that the proposed analytical model is capable of predicting the shear force–displacement hysteresis very accurately for both rubber material and bearing under cyclic loading reversals. The seismic response time histories of the bearing can also be captured, using the proposed analytical model, with a practically acceptable precision. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Quantifying sediment storage in a high alpine valley (Turtmanntal,Switzerland)

The determination of sediment storage is a critical parameter in sediment budget analyses. But, in many sediment budget studies the quantification of magnitude and time‐scale of sediment storage is still the weakest part and often relies on crude estimations only, especially in large drainage basins (>100 km²). We present a new approach to storage quantification in a meso‐scale alpine catchment of the Swiss Alps (Turtmann Valley, 110 km²). The quantification of depositional volumes was performed by combining geophysical surveys and geographic information system (GIS) modelling techniques. Mean thickness values of each landform type calculated from these data was used to estimate the sediment volume in the hanging valleys and the trough slopes. Sediment volume of the remaining subsystems was determined by modelling an assumed parabolic bedrock surface using digital elevation model (DEM) data. A total sediment volume of 781·3×10⁶–1005·7×10⁶ m³ is deposited in the Turtmann Valley. Over 60% of this volume is stored in the 13 hanging valleys. Moraine landforms contain over 60% of the deposits in the hanging valleys followed by sediment stored on slopes (20%) and rock glaciers (15%). For the first time, a detailed quantification of different storage types was achieved in a catchment of this size. Sediment volumes have been used to calculate mean denudation rates for the different processes ranging from 0·1 to 2·6 mm/a based on a time span of 10 ka. As the quantification approach includes a number of assumptions and various sources of error the values given represent the order of magnitude of sediment storage that has to be expected in a catchment of this size. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chemical Composition of Ancient Celadon Material （1127-1279 A.D.） from Zhejiang, China and Its Implication

The microprobe EDXRF equipment was used for analysis of the major and trace elements in glaze layer-transitive layer-body layer of the celadon from the Altar Yao （Kiln） and Laohudong Yao in the Southern Song Dynasty （1127-1279 A.D.）, Zhejiang, China. The K values of the discriminant factor for the celadon wares are larger than 8, which means the celadon of the Altar Yao and Laohudong Yao are different from that of the Longquan Yao. The former two belong to the Guan Yao system （the Chinese imperial kilns）, but the latter to the Min Yao system （the Chinese popular kilns）. The principle component analysis shows their relationship between the Altar and Laohudong wares with provenance postulation. The thickness of the transitive layer in the Altar and Laohudong wares is obviously different, which reveals the microstructure characteristics of the celadon even though both kinds of wares belong to the imperial kiln system.     

Modeling Urban Land Use Changes Using Support Vector Machines

Support Vector Machines (SVM) is a machine learning (ML) algorithm commonly applied to the classification of remotely sensing data and more recently for modeling land use changes. However, in most geospatial applications the current literature does not elaborate on specifications of the SVM method with respect to data sampling, attribute selection and optimal parameters choices. Therefore the main objective of this study is to present and investigate the SVM technique for modeling urban land use change. The SVM model building procedure is presented together with the detailed evaluation of the output results with respect to the choice of datasets, attributes and the change of SVM parameters. Geospatial datasets containing nine land use classes and spatial attributes for the Municipality of Zemun, Republic of Serbia were used for years 2001, 2003, 2007 and 2011. The Correlation‐based Feature Subset method, kappa coefficient, Area Under Receiver Operating Characteristic Curve (AUC) and kappa simulation were used to perform the model evaluation and compare the model outputs with the real land use datasets. The obtained results indicate that the SVM‐based models perform better when implementing balanced data sampling, reduced data sets to informative subsets of attributes and properly identify the optimal learning parameters.     

Effect of loading duration on uncertainty in creep analysis of clay

Some studies suggest that creep parameters should be determined using a greater quantity of creep test data to provide more reliable prediction regarding the deformation of soft soils. This study aims to investigate the effect of loading duration on model updating. One‐dimensional consolidation data of intact Vanttila clay under different loading durations collected from the literature is used for demonstration. The Bayesian probabilistic method is used to identify all unknown parameters based on the consolidation data during the entire consolidation process, and their uncertainty can be quantified through the obtained posterior probability density functions. Additionally, the optimal models are also determined from among 9 model candidates. The analyses indicate that the optimal models can describe the creep behavior of intact soft soils under different loading durations, and the adopted method can evaluate the effect of loading duration on uncertainty in the creep analysis. The uncertainty of a specific model and its model parameters decreases as more creep data are involved in the updating process, and the updated models that use more creep data can better capture the deformation behavior of an intact sample. The proposed method can provide quantified uncertainty in the process of model updating and assist engineers to decide whether the creep test data are sufficient for the creep analysis.     

中国大陆科学钻探工程主孔（734～933m）榴辉岩和片麻岩元素及Sr-Nd同位素地球化学研究

对中国大陆科学钻探工程主孔两段榴辉岩与片麻岩互层的岩芯样品(Ⅰ:734.21-737.16m和Ⅱ:929.67-932.86m)分别进行了主要元素和微量元素以及Sr-Nd同位素分析。结果表明:(1)榴辉岩具有较大的成分变化范围(SiO2含量为46.8%-59.8%),表现出平坦或轻稀土(LREE)富集的分布模式和大离子亲石元素(LILE)富集或亏损以及Nb、Ta负异常特征。部分榴辉岩样品具有明显低的活动性元素(Rb、Ba和K)含量,指示了板块俯冲过程中的脱水变质效应;(2)两段岩芯中的片麻岩具有明显不同的主量和微量元素组成,其中第Ⅰ段具有相对较低的SiO2含量(61.3%～66.2%)和高的重稀土(HREE)含量,而第Ⅱ段具有明显偏高的SiO2含量(73.8%～74.1%)和低的HREE含量。但两段均表现出LREE富集和Eu负异常以及LILE富集和高场强元素(Nb、Ta、Ti)负异常特征;(3)榴辉岩和第Ⅰ段岩芯中的片麻岩具有相近的且偏高的εNd(750Ma)值(-3.6- 0.5),而第Ⅱ段岩芯中的片麻岩具有明显偏低的εNd(750Ma)值(-8.7)。部分片麻岩样品表现出较高的87Sr/86Sr比值(0.7070)和非常低的Rb/Sr比值(0.008),指示岩石Rb-Sr同位素体系受到了变质扰动。非活动性元素如Zr、Hf、Nb、Ta、Ti、Y、REE和Ti在脱水变质过程中没有受到明显扰动,因此可用于恢复榴辉岩和片麻岩的原岩性质及其形成的大地构造背景。根据分析样品的元素和Nd同位素特点,推测榴辉岩原岩具有板内玄武岩性质,第Ⅰ段岩芯中的片麻岩原岩为玄武质岩浆上升过程中同化地壳物质形成的中性岩,而第Ⅱ段岩芯中的片麻岩原岩为地壳物质重熔形成的酸性岩。因此,深钻榴辉岩和片麻岩原岩为新元古代华南陆块北缘裂谷构造带双峰式岩浆活动的产物,在岩浆侵位过程中经历了高温大气降水热液蚀变。