The water and trace element contents of melt inclusions across an active subduction zone

Water concentrations of olivine-hosted melt inclusions show no consistent variation across the northern part of the Central American subduction zone in southeastern Guatemala. Magmatic water contents remain moderately high (~2 wt%) throughout the back-arc region. Melt inclusions from some of these back-arc basalts also have notably high CO₂ contents (>900 ppm CO₂). The B and B/Ce ratios of melt inclusions systematically decline across the arc, the first parameters to exhibit systematic changes across southeastern Guatemala. It appears, therefore, that dehydration-driven, flux-melting persists across the arc, although decompression melting is of approximately equal importance in the back-arc region. Dehydration of the slab/wedge region is regarded as semi-continuous down-dip, to depths of at least 175–200 km. Moderate water contents are maintained by stepwise dehydration reactions, while truly incompatible fluid mobile elements are progressively stripped from the Cocos plate. The notably high CO₂ contents of some back-arc basalts may indicate increasing devolatilization of subducted carbonate sediments with slab depth. The moderate H₂O contents of back-arc basaltic magmas has likely contributed to their early fractionation of clinopyroxene around the Moho.Editorial responsibility: T.L. Grove     

OBC signal fidelity

A suite of three tests was performed to characterize the signal fidelity of OBC 4C acquisition systems. The test methodology was to evaluate individual sensor stations by acquiring source lines that were parallel to the in‐line and cross‐line horizontal sensors and source lines that were at 45° to the in‐line and cross‐line sensors. This technique provides constant azimuth gathers with a uniform offset range and removes issues associated with source array directivity. Characterization of the test data identified the frequency content of the geophone signals and the correlation between the vertical and cross‐line geophones as the most sensitive indicators of signal infidelity. In the former case, stations with questionable signal fidelity exhibited a very reverberatory signal. This signal was most evident on the cross‐line sensor. In the latter case, when normalized cross‐correlation coefficients are computed in a moving window, the cross‐line sensor and the vertical sensor are highly correlated, beginning several hundred milliseconds after the first arrivals. These characteristics can be exploited to allow stations with questionable signal fidelity to be programmatically identified. One means of identifying questionable stations is to compute the histogram of the instantaneous frequency. The frequency distributions from questionable stations are unambiguously distinguishable from stations that exhibit better signal fidelity. It was noted that signal fidelity appeared as a range, between acceptable and poor. To characterize the signal fidelity of an acquisition system adequately, the number of test samples must be statistically significant.     

Public pharmaceutical expenditure: identification of spatial effects

The aim of the present study is to analyse the spatio-temporal dynamics underlying Spanish pharmaceutical expenditure increases. We suggest alternative ways to resolve the problem of identifying exogenous and endogenous spatial spillover in a seemingly unrelated regression framework, while parametric instability is captured using linear time trends in the coefficients. The results highlight the need of considering these dynamic aspects in the pharmaceutical expenditure analysis.     

Spectral Characteristics of the He <Emphasis Type="SmallCaps">i</Emphasis> D<Subscript>3</Subscript> Line in a Quiescent Prominence Observed by THEMIS

We analyze the observations of a quiescent prominence acquired by the Téléscope Heliographique pour l’Étude du Magnetisme et des Instabilités Solaires (THEMIS) in the He?i 5876 Å (He?i D₃) multiplet aiming to measure the spectral characteristics of the He?i D₃ profiles and to find for them an adequate fitting model. The component characteristics of the He?i D₃ Stokes I profiles are measured by the fitting system by approximating them with a double Gaussian. This model yields an He?i D₃ component peak intensity ratio of \(5.5\pm0.4\), which differs from the value of 8 expected in the optically thin limit. Most of the measured Doppler velocities lie in the interval ±?5 km?s^?1, with a standard deviation of ±?1.7 km?s^?1 around the peak value of 0.4 km?s^?1. The wide distribution of the full-width at half maximum has two maxima at 0.25 Å and 0.30 Å for the He?i D₃ blue component and two maxima at 0.22 Å and 0.31 Å for the red component. The width ratio of the components is \(1.04\pm0.18\). We show that the double-Gaussian model systematically underestimates the blue wing intensities. To solve this problem, we invoke a two-temperature multi-Gaussian model, consisting of two double-Gaussians, which provides a better representation of He?i D₃ that is free of the wing intensity deficit. This model suggests temperatures of 11.5 kK and 91 kK, respectively, for the cool and the hot component of the target prominence. The cool and hot components of a typical He?i D₃ profile have component peak intensity ratios of 6.6 and 8, implying a prominence geometrical width of 17 Mm and an optical thickness of 0.3 for the cool component, while the optical thickness of the hot component is negligible. These prominence parameters seem to be realistic, suggesting the physical adequacy of the multi-Gaussian model with important implications for interpreting He?i D₃ spectropolarimetry by current inversion codes.     

GPU-Accelerated Simulation of Massive Spatial Data Based on the Modified Planar Rotator Model

Mathematical Geosciences - A novel Gibbs Markov random field for spatial data on Cartesian grids based on the modified planar rotator (MPR) model of statistical physics has been recently introduced...     

Regularized kriging as a generalization of simple, universal, and bayesian kriging

In this article the properties of regularized kriging (RK) are studied. RK is obtained as a result of relaxing the universal kriging (UK) non-bias condition by using the support vectors methodology. More specifically, we demonstrate how RK is a continuum of solutions in function of the regularizing parameter, which includes as particular and extreme cases, simple kriging (SK) and UK, and as an intermediate case, Bayesian kriging (BK). Likewise, expressions are obtained for the mean, variance and mean squared error (MSE), as also the expression for the corresponding estimator of the coefficients of the mean. Finally, we investigate the relationship between RK and the support vector machines. By means of simulations we compare the MSE for RK with those for BK and UK, for different association models, for different levels of noise, and for differently sized mean coefficients. The RK results prove to be an improvement on the UK and BK results, and, moreover, these improvements are proportionally greater for greater levels of noise.     

The influence of bend amplitude and planform morphology on flow and sedimentation in submarine channels

We present a series of experiments that investigate the morphology of sediment deposits within sinuous submarine channels of different sinuosity (S = 1.14–1.94) and planform (symmetric and asymmetric bends), generated by bedload-dominated turbidity current flows. Flows were generated by releasing dense saline gravity currents over a mobile sediment bed through pre-formed sinuous channels. Flows had a basal-outwards helicity and produced a characteristic bed morphology with point bars downstream of the bend apex at the inside of bends and scour at the outside of bends. An increasing loss of fluid through overspill with increasing channel sinuosity results in a decreasing magnitude of cross-stream velocity downstream, a decreasing amount of erosion and deposition, and decreasing transverse slopes of in-channel deposits. Basal fluid from within the channel is transported over the outer-levee at bends, implying that proximal outer-bend levee deposits will have similar sediment composition to that within the channel. More deposition of coarse material might be expected on levees and in overbank regions close to higher amplitude bends. No simple relationship was observed between superelevation and sinuosity, probably due to changes in the relative influences of downstream velocity and bend curvature on centrifugal force and inertial run-up. In the channel with the tightest initial bend curvature, overspill fluid from Bend 1 re-entered the channel at Bend 2, dominating flow characteristics and disrupting the basal-outwards helicity observed in the other channels. Higher sinuosity channels and those with shallow regional and levee slopes are thus more likely to have a higher proportion of anomalous flow and sedimentation patterns due to the influence of overspill fluid re-entry into the channel. The results of this investigation are combined with published observations to enable the synthesis of a new model for sedimentation in sinuous submarine channels.     

Full-scale experimental investigations on the response of a flooded passenger vehicle under subcritical conditions

Natural Hazards - Vehicles can be easily swept away by floodwaters once the flow velocity and depth reach certain critical limits, with probabilities toward fatality reported to be nearly 50%....     

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy evaluation of wind farm power production as function of wind speed and direction

Wind velocity assumes a critical part for measuring the power created by the wind turbines. Nonetheless, power production from wind has a few weaknesses. One significant issue is that wind is a discontinuous energy source which implies that there exists substantial variability in the generation of vigor because of different variables, for example, wind speed. Wind direction is a significant variable for proficient turbine control for getting the most energy with a given wind speed. Taking into account the conjectures on wind heading, it might be conceivable to adjust the turbine to the wind bearing to get the most energy yield. Since both forecasts of wind speed and direction are basic for effective wind energy collecting it is crucial to develop a methodology for estimation of wind speed and direction and afterwards to estimate wind farm power production as function of wind pace and heading distribution. Despite the fact that various numerical functions have been proposed for demonstrating the wind speed and direction frequency distribution, there are still disadvantages of the models like very demanding in terms of calculation time. In this investigation adaptive neuro-fuzzy inference system (ANFIS), which is a particular sort of the artificial neural networks (ANN) family, was used to anticipate the wind speed and direction frequency dispersion. Thereafter, the ANFIS system was utilized to gauge wind homestead power creation as function of wind velocity and bearing. Neural system in ANFIS modifies parameters of enrollment capacity in the fuzzy logic of the fuzzy inference system. The reenactment outcomes exhibited in this paper demonstrate the adequacy of the created technique.     

Oil-bearing inclusions in vein quartz and calcite and,bitumens in veins: Testament to multiple phases of hydrocarbon migration in the Barrandian basin (lower Palaeozoic), Czech Republic

The petroleum charge history of the Barrandian basin was investigated by analysing quartz and calcite and organic phases that occur in veins and fractures cutting dolerite sills within the Liteň Formation (Silurian). The geochemical characteristics of fluid inclusions trapped in vein quartz and calcite, vein bitumens and adjacent potential source rocks when combined with burial and thermal history data reflect the presence of at least three separate hydrocarbon charge episodes. Solid highly reflecting (R_max = 0.92–1.49%) bitumen provides information on the first and oldest episode of oil migration. The precursor oil was probably derived relatively early during diagenesis from nearby organic-rich sediments and was subsequently thermally altered to form the solid bitumen.