Non-power law behavior in fragmentation cascades

Collisions resulting in fragmentation are important in shaping the mass spectrum of minor bodies in the asteroid belt, the Kuiper Belt, and debris disks. Models of fragmentation cascades typically find that in steady-state, the solution for the particle mass distribution is a power law in the mass. However, previous studies have typically assumed that the mass of the largest fragment produced in a collision with just enough energy to shatter the target and disperse half its mass to infinity is directly proportional to the target mass. We show that if this assumption is not satisfied, then the power law solution for the steady-state particle mass distribution is modified by a multiplicative factor, which is a slowly varying function of the mass. We derive analytic solutions for this correction factor and confirm our results numerically. We find that this correction factor proves important when extrapolating over many orders of magnitude in mass, such as when inferring the number of large objects in a system based on infrared observations. In the course of our work, we have also discovered an unrelated type of non-power law behavior: waves can persist in the mass distribution of objects even in the absence of upper or lower cutoffs to the mass distribution or breaks in the strength law.     

EPR and magnetism of the nanostructured natural carbonaceous material shungite

The X-band EPR and magnetic susceptibility in the temperature range 4.2–300 K study of the shungite-I, natural nanostructured material from the deposit of Shunga are reported. Obtained results allow us to assign the EPR signal to conduction electrons, estimate their number, N _P, and evaluate the Pauli paramagnetism contribution to shungite susceptibility. A small occupation (~5%) of the localized nonbonding π states in the zigzag edges of the open-ended graphene-like layers and/or on σ (sp ^2+x ) orbitals in the curved parts of the shungite globules has been also revealed. The observed temperature dependence of the EPR linewidth can be explained by the earlier considered interaction of conduction π electrons with local phonon modes associated with the vibration of peripheral carbon atoms of the open zigzag-type edges and with peripheral carbon atoms cross-linking different nanostructures. The relaxation time T ₂ and diffusion time T _D are found to have comparable values (2.84 × 10⁻⁸ and 1.73 × 10⁻⁸ s at 5.2 K, respectively), and similar dependence on temperature. The magnetic measurements have revealed the suppression of orbital diamagnetism due to small amount of large enough fragments of the graphene layers.     

VxOware: software for managing virtual observatory metadata

The recent Heliophysics Virtual Observatory (VxO) effort involves the development of separate observatories with a low overlap in physical domain or area of scientific specialization and a high degree of overlap in metadata management needs. VxOware is a content and metadata management system. While it is intended for use by a VxO specifically, it can also be used by any entity that manages structured metadata. VxOware has many features of a content management system and extensively uses the W3C recommendations for XML (Extensible Markup Language), XQuery (XML Query), and XSLT (Extensible Style Sheet Language Transformations). VxOware has features such as system and user administration, search, user-editable content, version tracking, and a wiki. Besides virtual observatories, the intended user-base of VxOware includes a group or an instrument team that has developed a directory structure of data files and would like to make this data, and its associated metadata, available in the virtual observatory network. One of the most powerful features of VxOware is the ability to link any type of object in the observatory to other objects and the ability for every object to be tagged.     

A late Cenozoic Earth's crust and climate dynamics record from Lake Baikal

The sedimentary record from Lake Baikal (Siberia, Russia) has been an important source of information about paleoclimatic variability in the northern hemisphere and dynamics of continental rift development. A lack of reliable chronology has, however, been a major obstacle to fully utilizing the Baikal archive for time scales beyond about 4-5 Myr. In this paper we use the distribution of ¹⁰Be to establish a new chronology for the longest core drilled in Lake Baikal so far. The ¹⁰Be-based chronology spans the last 8 Myr and provides better constraints on sedimentation rates and consequently on an east-west tectonic extension in the lake, which has been apparently coeval with other rifts in Asia that are related to the Tibetan plateau uplift. Our data also show higher ¹⁰Be flux in the sediment section older then 5 Myr compared with the younger period. This can be explained partly by warm and humid climatic conditions of the Miocene and partly by a high cosmic ray flux to the Earth resulting from possible low geomagnetic field intensity during that time.