The Early Pleistocene Praetiglian and Ludhamian pollen stages in the North Sea Basin and their relationship to the marine isotope record

In this paper, the currently accepted correlation of the Early Pleistocene Ludhamian stage of England with the Tiglian‐A sub‐stage of the Netherlands is challenged. Recent investigations of Early Pleistocene marine North Sea deposits from a borehole near Noordwijk (the Netherlands) yielded evidence from molluscs, dinoflagellate cysts and sporomorphs for an alternation of warm‐temperate and arctic intervals within the Praetiglian and Tiglian stages. Marine equivalents of the terrestrial‐based pollen sub‐stages Tiglian A and B have been recognised in the upper part of the sequence. A Praetiglian age can be assigned to the lower part of the sequence on the basis of mollusc analysis. Within the Praetiglian, an alternation of warm and cold phases has been recognised from both the dinoflagellate cyst and molluscan records. Three cold phases within the Praetiglian are tentatively correlated with marine isotope stages (MIS) 96–100. The molluscan assemblages provide evidence for climate forcing of the sea level: highest sea levels are reached in the warm‐temperate intervals. Within the Praetiglian, an interval with an acme zone of the dinoflagellate cyst Impagidinium multiplexum, is correlated with the Ludhamian and tentatively linked to MIS 97 and/or MIS 96. The cold molluscan assemblages from the Noordwijk borehole include an acme zone of Megayoldia thraciaeformis, the first and only occurrence of this North Pacific bivalve in the North Sea Basin. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Oxygen isotopic compositions and origins of calcium‐aluminum‐rich inclusions and chondrules

Abstract— Primary minerals in calcium‐aluminum‐rich inclusions (CAIs), Al‐rich and ferromagnesian chondrules in each chondrite group have δ¹⁸O values that typically range from ?50 to +5%0. Neglecting effects due to minor mass fractionations, the oxygen isotopic data for each chondrite group and for micrometeorites define lines on the three‐isotope plot with slopes of 1.01 ± 0.06 and intercepts of ?2 ± 1. This suggests that the same kind of nebular process produced the ¹⁶O variations among chondrules and CAIs in all groups. Chemical and isotopic properties of some CAIs and chondrules strongly suggest that they formed from solar nebula condensates. This is incompatible with the existing two‐component model for oxygen isotopes in which chondrules and CAIs were derived from heated and melted ¹⁶O‐rich presolar dust that exchanged oxygen with ¹⁶O‐poor nebular gas. Some FUN CAIs (inclusions with isotope anomalies due to fractionation and unknown nuclear effects) have chemical and isotopic compositions indicating they are evaporative residues of presolar material, which is incompatible with ¹⁶O fractionation during mass‐independent gas phase reactions in the solar nebula. There is only one plausible reason why solar nebula condensates and evaporative residues of presolar materials are both enriched in ¹⁶O. Condensation must have occurred in a nebular region where the oxygen was largely derived from evaporated ¹⁶O‐rich dust. A simple model suggests that dust was enriched (or gas was depleted) relative to cosmic proportions by factors of ～10 to >50 prior to condensation for most CAIs and factors of 1–5 for chondrule precursor material. We infer that dust‐gas fractionation prior to evaporation and condensation was more important in establishing the oxygen isotopic composition of CAIs and chondrules than any subsequent exchange with nebular gases. Dust‐gas fractionation may have occurred near the inner edge of the disk where nebular gases accreted into the protosun and Shu and colleagues suggest that CAIs formed.     

Application of an improved self-starter to geoacoustic inversion

The self-starter is improved using the operator of the split-step Pade solution. In addition to providing greater stability and being applicable closer to the source, the improved self-starter is an efficient forward model for geoacoustic inversion. It is necessary to solve only O(10) tridiagonal systems of equations to obtain the acoustic field on a vertical array located O(10) wavelengths from a source. This experimental configuration is effective for geoacoustic inverse problems involving unknown parameters deep in the ocean bottom. For problems involving depth-dependent acoustic parameters, the improved self-starter can be used to solve nonlinear inverse problems involving O(10) unknown sediment parameters in less than a minute on the current generation of workstations     

Gravitational collapse and equilibrium conditions of a toroidal vortex with thermal pressure

We found the equilibrium conditions for a self-gravitating toroidal vortex by taking thermal pressure into account. These conditions are shown to significantly differ from those for a disk or a sphere. The evolution of a thin vortex turns it into a compact vortex that loses mechanical stability for low masses at a polytropic index γ<4/3 but retains stability for sufficiently high masses and densities determined by the velocity circulation in the vortex.     

A weak outburst of the millisecond X-ray pulsar SAX J1808.4-3658 in October 1996 as detected from RXTE slew data

Analysis of the RXTE slew data in October 1996 revealed a weak X-ray burst from the millisecond pulsar SAX J 1808.4-3658. The 3–20-keV energy spectrum of the source can be described by a power law with an index of 2.0 and a(3-to 20 keV) luminosity of ～1.4×10³⁵ erg s^?1 (the distance to the source was taken to be 2.5 kpc). Because of the short exposure time, we failed to detect weak pulsations at a frequency of 401 Hz in the source. The (2σ) upper limit of the pulse fraction is ～13%.     

The host galaxies of active galactic nuclei

We examine the properties of the host galaxies of 22 623 narrow-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) with  0.02 < z < 0.3  selected from a complete sample of 122 808 galaxies from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. We focus on the luminosity of the [O  iii ]λ5007 emission line as a tracer of the strength of activity in the nucleus. We study how AGN host properties compare with those of normal galaxies and how they depend on L [O  iii ]. We find that AGN of all luminosities reside almost exclusively in massive galaxies and have distributions of sizes, stellar surface mass densities and concentrations that are similar to those of ordinary early-type galaxies in our sample. The host galaxies of low-luminosity AGN have stellar populations similar to normal early types. The hosts of high-luminosity AGN have much younger mean stellar ages. The young stars are not preferentially located near the nucleus of the galaxy, but are spread out over scales of at least several kiloparsecs. A significant fraction of high-luminosity AGN have strong Hδ absorption-line equivalent widths, indicating that they experienced a burst of star formation in the recent past. We have also examined the stellar populations of the host galaxies of a sample of broad-line AGN. We conclude that there is no significant difference in stellar content between type 2 Seyfert hosts and quasars (QSOs) with the same [O  iii ] luminosity and redshift. This establishes that a young stellar population is a general property of AGN with high [O  iii ] luminosities.     

MAXIPOL: a balloon-borne experiment for measuring the polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation

We discuss MAXIPOL, a bolometric balloon-borne experiment designed to measure the E-mode polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) on angular scales of 10^′ to 2°. MAXIPOL is the first CMB experiment to collect data with a polarimeter that utilizes a rotating half-wave plate and fixed wire-grid polarizer. We present the instrument design, elaborate on the polarimeter strategy and show the instrument performance during flight with some time domain data. Our primary dataset was collected during a 26 h turnaround flight that was launched from the National Scientific Ballooning Facility in Ft. Sumner, New Mexico in May 2003. During this flight five regions of the sky were mapped. Data analysis is in progress.     

Exchange and correlation interactions in electron-positron plasma

The effect of particle-particle interaction on the adiabatic index γ for an electron-positron plasma is considered. An improved method for numerically calculating the Hartree-Fock exchange integral is presented and its relativistic asymptotics is determined. An approximation formula is derived for the correlation part of the interaction in the low-density limit. This formula includes degeneracy and the positron component.     

39Ar‐40Ar ages of eucrites and thermal history of asteroid 4 Vesta

Abstract— Eucrite meteorites are igneous rocks that derived from a large asteroid, probably 4 Vesta. Past studies have shown that after most eucrites formed, they underwent metamorphism in temperatures up to ≥800°C. Much later, many were brecciated and heated by large impacts into the parent body surface. The less common basaltic, unbrecciated eucrites also formed near the surface but, presumably, escaped later brecciation, while the cumulate eucrites formed at depths where metamorphism may have persisted for a considerable period. To further understand the complex HED parent body thermal history, we determined new ³⁹Ar‐⁴⁰Ar ages for 9 eucrites classified as basaltic but unbrecciated, 6 eucrites classified as cumulate, and several basaltic‐brecciated eucrites. Precise Ar‐Ar ages of 2 cumulate eucrites (Moama and EET 87520) and 4 unbrecciated eucrites give a tight cluster at 4.48 ± 0.02 Gyr (not including any uncertainties in the flux monitor age). Ar‐Ar ages of 6 additional unbrecciated eucrites are consistent with this age within their relatively larger age uncertainties. By contrast, available literature data on Pb‐Pb isochron ages of 4 cumulate eucrites and 1 unbrecciated eucrite vary over 4.4–4.515 Gyr, and ¹⁴⁷Sm‐¹⁴³Nd isochron ages of 4 cumulate and 3 unbrecciated eucrites vary over 4.41–4.55 Gyr. Similar Ar‐Ar ages for cumulate and unbrecciated eucrites imply that cumulate eucrites do not have a younger formation age than basaltic eucrites, as was previously proposed. We suggest that these cumulate and unbrecciated eucrites resided at a depth where parent body temperatures were sufficiently high to cause the K‐Ar and some other chronometers to remain as open diffusion systems. From the strong clustering of Ar‐Ar ages at ?4.48 Gyr, we propose that these meteorites were excavated from depth in a single large impact event ?4.48 Gyr ago, which quickly cooled the samples and started the K‐Ar chronometer. A large (?460 km) crater postulated to exist on Vesta may be the source of these eucrites and of many smaller asteroids thought to be spectrally or physically associated with Vesta. Some Pb‐Pb and Sm‐Nd ages of cumulate and unbrecciated eucrites are consistent with the Ar‐Ar age of 4.48 Gyr, and the few older Pb‐Pb and Sm‐Nd ages may reflect an isotopic closure before the large cratering event. One cumulate eucrite gives an Ar‐Ar age of 4.25 Gyr; 3 additional cumulate eucrites give Ar‐Ar ages of 3.4–3.7 Gyr; and 2 unbrecciated eucrites give Ar‐Ar ages of ?3.55 Gyr. We attribute these younger ages to a later impact heating. Furthermore, the Ar‐Ar impact‐reset ages of several brecciated eucrites and eucritic clasts in howardites fall within the range of 3.5–4.1 Gyr. Among these, Piplia Kalan, the first eucrite to show evidence for extinct ²⁶Al, was strongly impact heated ?3.5 Gyr ago. When these data are combined with eucrite Ar‐Ar ages in the literature, they confirm that several large impact heating events occurred on Vesta between ?4.1–3.4 Gyr ago. The onset of major impact heating may have occurred at similar times for both Vesta and the moon, but impact heating appears to have persisted for a somewhat later time on Vesta.