The pole of the Mohr diagram

The pole of a Mohr diagram, for the two-dimensional case, is a unique point on the Mohr circle which permits any point on the Mohr circle to be related to the direction in the physical plane associated with that point. A Mohr diagram can be constructed for any second rank tensor. To illustrate the simplicity of this geometrical construction two examples of the use of the pole are presented, one for the strain tensor and the other for the stress tensor.     

Are Australia’s suburbs swamped by Asians and Muslims? Countering political claims with data

Recent decades have seen substantial growth across many developed-world countries of right-wing populist political parties whose policies oppose immigration and multiculturalism as threats to the majority way of life there. These are exemplified in Australia by Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, which was successful at elections there at the turn of the twenty-first century and again in 2016. Part of this party’s rhetoric focuses on the geography of immigrant groups in Australia’s cities, with claims that their members live in ghettos. Is that factually correct? Using data from the 2011 Australian census this paper analyses the distribution of Asians and Muslims (the two groups picked out by One Nation and its leader) at four spatial scales within the country’s 11 largest urban areas. It finds no evidence at all of intensive residential segregation of Muslims, and although there are concentrations of Asians—notably in Sydney and Melbourne—most residents claiming Asian ancestry live in neighbourhoods and suburbs where they form a minority (in many cases a small minority) only of the local population.     

Accelerator measurement of NaI response to medium energy neutrons and application to a Satellite-Borne Spectrometer

We report on the response of a prototype detector to medium energy neutrons. The neutrons were produced by n-p scattering of a neutron beam on a hydrogen target. The measurements provide unique data on the efficiency and response of large NaI scintillators to neutrons in the energy range 36–709 MeV. We apply the results to the high-energy mode of the Gamma-Ray Spectrometer (GRS) on the Solar Maximum Mission satellite by estimating its efficiency for neutron detection. This estimate is compared to earlier Monte Carlo calculations of the GRS efficiency.     

Sand settling through bedform-generated turbulence in rivers

Fluvial bedforms generate a turbulent wake that can impact suspended-sediment settling in the passing flow. This impact has implications for local suspended-sediment transport, bedform stability, and channel evolution; however, it is typically not well-considered in geomorphologic models. Our study uses a three-dimensional OpenFOAM hydrodynamic and particle-tracking model to investigate how turbulence generated from bedforms and the channel bed influences medium sand-sized particle settling, in terms of the distribution of suspended particles within the flow field and particle-settling velocities. The model resolved the effect of an engineered bedform, which altered the flow field in a manner similar to a natural dune. The modelling scenarios alternated bed morphology and the simulation of turbulence, using detached eddy simulation (DES), to differentiate the influence of bedform-generated turbulence relative to that of turbulence generated from the channel bed. The bedform generated a turbulent wake that was composed of eddies with significant anisotropic properties. The eddies and, to a lesser degree, turbulence arising from velocity shear at the bed substantially reduced settling velocities relative to the settling velocities predicted in the absence of turbulence. The eddies tended to advect sediment particles in their primary direction, diffuse particles throughout the flow column, and reduced settling likely due to production of a positively skewed vertical-velocity fluctuation distribution. Study results suggest that the bedform wake has a significant impact on particle-settling behaviour (up to a 50% reduction in settling velocity) at a scale capable of modulating local suspended transport rates and bedform dynamics. © 2020 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Microstructural and chemical transformations accompanying deformation of granite in a shear zone at Miéville,Switzerland; with implications for stress corrosion cracking and superplastic flow

At Miéville, in the Aiguilles-Rouges Massif, granitic rocks of the basement are deformed into mylonites within a major subvertical shear zone. The ambient temperature during translation is estimated at 250° C±30° C from fluid inclusion filling temperatures in syntectonic microveins, from ¹⁸O quartzilmenite of+15%, and from mineralogical criteria. Porphyroclasts of both oligoclase and orthoclase feldspar decrease from initial diameters of 20 mm and assume elliptical shapes during progressive deformation, due to recrystallisation of the margins to ultra-fine polygonal grains which extend out from the porphyroclasts in thin trails: the final stable grain size is <5 . The recrystallised feldspar has a composition of the parent porphyroclast,+albite, requiring relative gains of Na and losses of K+Ca compared to the precursor, and implying short range redistribution of the components during deformation. Decrease of free energy associated with the deformation catalysed change in feldspar composition, coupled with stored strain energy in the porphyroclasts may account for recrystallisation to a stable aggregate of ultrafine grain size. The long trails imply exceptionally high ductility, which, coupled with microstructural criteria, and admixture of quartz from neighbouring pure quartz aggregates by grain boundary sliding, is interpreted in terms of superplastic flow. Estimated temperatures of T/T _m0.2 for the inferred superplastic deformation is lower by a factor of 2 than previously recorded for this flow michanism in silicates. The feldspar and quartz probably accomodated grain boundary sliding by intercrystalline diffusion.Biotite responds to deformation by bendgliding, kinking, and recrystallisation in mantles. The reaction of high-Ti parent grains to low-Ti biotite+Fe-muscovite+ ilmenite+chlorite is catalysed at all of these microstructural sites. Progressive deformation of the fine-grained products in the mantles is coupled with steady reaction to low-Fe muscovite+epidote+ sphene+rutile resulting in exceptionally ductile trails, as for the case of feldspar.Biotite grains have pervasive networks of nondisplacive intragranular fractures. At the fracture tips increase of the stress intensity has catalysed the reaction of high-Ti parent grains to low-Ti biotite+muscovite+ ilmenite which occupy the fractures. The fractures propagate and coalesce resulting in mechanical breakdown of the parent grains: these microstructures are believed to be examples of natural stress corrosion cracking. These features are also abundant in feldspar porphyroclasts where at fracture tips orthoclasesecondary orthoclase+albite, and oligoclasesecondary oligoclase+albite. Stress corrosion cracking may be significant in the steady state deformation of crustal rocks at low temperatures when intracrystalline plasticity is not generally dominant.Two way mass balance calculations utilising major and selected trace element data, reveal that deformation of the granite was essentially isochemical, involving average additions of <1 % H₂O+CO₂, at approximately constant specific gravity. The parameters Fe²⁺/Fe and ¹⁸O_{whole rock} maintain relatively constant values across the shear zone, and this also implies limited participation of fluids in the deformation. Alkali elements and titanium display the largest percentage variation during progressive deformation, whereas SiO₂, Al₂O₃, and P₂O₅, together with V, Ni, Cr,Y,Zr, and Nb remain relatively constant. All variations decrease at increasing states of deformation and this is interpreted in terms of mechanical mixing of chemical inhomogeneities of the granite precursor within the shear zone. Constraints imposed by variations in abundance of the relatively immobile elements imply that volume changes accompanying deformation in the shear zone were less than ±10%.     

Algal blooms and climate anomalies in north‐east New Zealand,August ‐December 1992

A raphidophyte‐dominated phytoplankton bloom extended discontinuously along the northeastern coastline of New Zealand, from Bream Tail, north of Leigh, to the western coast of the Coromandel Peninsula from late August until December 1992. The bloom was associated with an “El‐Niño” phase of the Southern Oscillation, resulting in unusually cold sea temperatures. The dominant bloom species in the north was Fibrocapsa japonica and in the south Heterosigma akashiwo. Associated species included the coccolithophorid Gephyrocapsa oceanica and the naked form of the silicoflagellate Dictyocha speculum. By December, numbers of the armoured form of D. speculum had increased, as those of raphidophytes and coccolithophorids declined. Bioassays to test for shellfish biotoxins were negative and Artemia salina bioassays, indicators of ichthyotoxicity, were negative except for Heterosigma akashiwo cultures, isolated from Coromandel water samples.     

Europium sorption to sediments in the presence of natural organic matter: A laboratory and modeling study

Cellulosic materials, such as wood, paper products and cardboard that have been co-disposed with low-level nuclear waste have been shown to produce leachate with natural organic matter (NOM) concentrations of hundreds of mg/L C and, as such, have the potential to influence the fate and transport of radionuclides in the subsurface environment. The objective of this study was to examine the influence of NOM on the sorption of Eu (an analogue for trivalent radionuclides) to two coastal plain sediments from the US Department of Energy’s Savannah River Site. Particular attention was directed at quantifying Eu interactions with NOM sorbed to sediments (NOM_sed) in laboratory experiments and developing conditional stability constants for that interaction using the thermodynamic equilibrium speciation model MINTEQA2. Europium sorption to the two sediments systematically increased as pH increased from 3.9 to 6.7. With increasing additions of NOM to the aqueous phase from 0 to 222 mg/L C, Eu sorption initially increased to a maximum at 10 mg/L C NOM_aq and then decreased with increasing NOM_aq concentrations. Increases in Eu sorption at low NOM additions was attributed to the sorption of NOM to the sediment surface increasing the number of sorption sites on the low cation-exchange capacity sediments and/or increasing the association constant (log K) for the Eu-sediment surface reaction. Decreases in Eu sorption at higher NOM levels was attributed to Eu_aq complexation to NOM_aq being more favored than Eu sorption to the solid phase. A component additivity model was developed to describe the Eu–NOM-sediment system by the additive effects of the three binary system models: Eu–NOM, Eu-sediment and NOM-sediment. The model generally captured the data trends in the ternary system. Conditional stability constants developed from the experimental data for the complexation of Eu to NOM_sed were as much as four orders of magnitude greater than Eu complexation with NOM_aq, presumably due to the NOM_sed deriving additional negative (attractive) charge from the sediment surface. At high initial NOM_aq levels, >99 mg/L C, the model captured the trend of reduced Eu sorption but tended to over-estimate Eu sorption. The additivity approach of combining binary models to form a ternary model was only successful when the unique complexation properties of the NOM_sed were properly calculated.