Northern opportunities: A strategic review of Canada's Arctic icebreaking services

Climate change presages increasingly ice-free waters in the Canadian Arctic and fundamental reconfiguration of Asia–Europe and Asia–US East Coast marine transportation networks via the Northwest Passage (NWP). Retreating sea ice will impact the annual re-supply of goods to northern communities, natural resource development, cruise ship and adventure tourism activity, and the fishing industry. Reviews of infrastructure to support increased shipping activity and support future developments highlight an ageing Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) icebreaker fleet. This paper aims to debate the need for, and provision, ownership and management of Arctic icebreaking services required to serve a NWP. It reports perceptions by 110 experts of future marine activity in the Canadian Arctic and CCG services, principally Arctic icebreaking, in terms of their effectiveness and efficiency. The extent of possible private involvement is identified and evaluated. The requirements needed to ensure timely and uninterrupted marine transportation from vessels operating in these waters are highlighted.     

Pleistocene fluvial sediments,palaeontology and archaeology of the upper River Thames at Latton,Wiltshire, England

Pleistocene fluvial sediments of the Northmoor Member of the Upper Thames Formation exposed at Latton, Wiltshire, record episodic deposition close to the Churn–Thames confluence possibly spanning the interval from Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 7 to 2. The sequence is dominated by gravel facies, indicating deposition by a high‐energy, gravel‐bed river. A number of fine‐grained organic sediment bodies within the sequence have yielded palaeoenvironmental and biostratigraphical data from Mollusca, Coleoptera, vertebrates, pollen and plant macrofossils. The basal deposit (Facies Association A) contains faunal material indicating temperate conditions. Most of the palaeontological evidence including a distinctive small form of mammoth (Mammuthus cf. trogontherii), together with the U‐series age estimate of >147.4 ± 20 kyr suggest correlation with MIS 7. The overlying deposits (Facies Associations B and C) represent deposition under a range of climatic conditions. Two fine‐grained organic deposits occurred within Association B; one (Association Ba) in the northern part of the pit as a channel fill and the other (Association Bb) in its southern part as a scour‐fill deposit. The coleopteran assemblages from Ba, indicate that it accumulated under temperate oceanic conditions, while Bb, which also yielded a radiocarbon age estimate of 39 560 ± 780 ¹⁴C yr BP, was formed under much colder and more continental climatic conditions. The sequence is considered to represent deposition within an alluvial fan formed at the Churn–Thames confluence; a depositional scenario which may account for the juxtaposition of sediments and fossils of widely differing age within the same altitudinal range. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Inverse compton scattering in anisotropic synchrotron sources

Models of compact, high brightness temperature sources such as quasars and active galactic nuclei often predict substantial inverse-compton scattered flux to be produced at high frequencies. As these fluxes are not observed, it is necessary to assume that extreme relativistic and/or anisotropic effects dominate the source. The often used equations to include these effects however are derived with several simplifying assumptions, which may not always be consistent with the derived source parameters (for example, the assumption of no time dependence in a violently variable quasar may not be appropriate). We therefore present here an explicit derivation of the dependence of the rate of inverse compton scattering on anisotropies in the source, to emphasise the importance and number of assumptions required in the derivation.     

The impact of aquifer stratification on saltwater intrusion characteristics. Comprehensive laboratory and numerical study

Laboratory experiments and numerical simulations were utilized in this study to assess the impact of aquifer stratification on saltwater intrusion. Three homogeneous and six layered aquifers were investigated. Image processing algorithms facilitated the precise calculation of saltwater wedge toe length, width of the mixing zone, and angle of intrusion. It was concluded that the length of intrusion in stratified aquifers is predominantly a function of permeability contrast, total aquifer transmissivity and the number of heterogeneous layers, being positively correlated to all three. When a lower permeability layer overlays or underlays more permeable zones its mixing zone widens, while it becomes thinner for the higher permeability strata. The change in the width of the mixing zone (WMZ) is positively correlated to permeability contrast, while it applies to all strata irrespectively of their relative vertical position in the aquifer. Variations in the applied hydraulic head causes the transient widening of WMZ. These peak WMZ values are larger during saltwater retreat and are negatively correlated to the layer's permeability and distance from the aquifer's bottom. Moreover, steeper angles of intrusion are observed in cases where low permeability layers overlay more permeable strata, and milder ones in the inverse aquifer setups. The presence of a low permeability upper layer results in the confinement of the saltwater wedge in the lower part of the stratified aquifer. This occurs until a critical hydraulic head difference is applied to the system. This hydraulic gradient value was found to be a function of layer width and permeability contrast alike.     

Five new and three improved mutual orbits of transneptunian binaries

We present three improved and five new mutual orbits of transneptunian binary systems (58534) Logos-Zoe, (66652) Borasisi-Pabu, (88611) Teharonhiawako-Sawiskera, (123509) 2000 WK₁₈₃, (149780) Altjira, 2001 QY₂₉₇, 2003 QW₁₁₁, and 2003 QY₉₀ based on Hubble Space Telescope and Keck II laser guide star adaptive optics observations. Combining the five new orbit solutions with 17 previously known orbits yields a sample of 22 mutual orbits for which the period P, semimajor axis a, and eccentricity e have been determined. These orbits have mutual periods ranging from 5 to over 800 days, semimajor axes ranging from 1600 to 37,000 km, eccentricities ranging from 0 to 0.8, and system masses ranging from 2 × 10¹⁷ to 2 × 10²² kg. Based on the relative brightnesses of primaries and secondaries, most of these systems consist of near equal-sized pairs, although a few of the most massive systems are more lopsided. The observed distribution of orbital properties suggests that the most loosely-bound transneptunian binary systems are only found on dynamically cold heliocentric orbits. Of the 22 known binary mutual orbits, orientation ambiguities are now resolved for 9, of which 7 are prograde and 2 are retrograde, consistent with a random distribution of orbital orientations, but not with models predicting a strong preference for retrograde orbits. To the extent that other perturbations are not dominant, the binary systems undergo Kozai oscillations of their eccentricities and inclinations with periods of the order of tens of thousands to millions of years, some with strikingly high amplitudes.     

Phytopigments and fatty acids in the gut of the deposit-feeding heart urchin Echinocardium cordatum in the southern North Sea: Selective feeding and its contribution to the benthic carbon budget

As part of a broader study on benthic-pelagic coupling in the southern North Sea, specimens of the common heart urchin Echinocardium cordatum were sampled for analyses on phytopigments and fatty acids in their guts. Results were interpreted in the context of feeding and ecological functioning of the heart urchins in the benthic system. Ingestion selection factors for both component groups were relatively high, 5 to 9 for chlorophyll a and 9 to 130 for total fatty acids. The data point to at least partially different sources of the pigments and of the fatty acids. Next to algal detritus, small infauna relatively rich in fatty acids might be preferentially co-ingested with the detritus. Due to digestive breakdown and absorption, the concentrations of pigments and fatty acids were importantly decreased, indicating a rather high digestion efficiency for this subsurface deposit feeder, up to 80%. The results indicate that E. cordatum increases its energy acquisition by strong selectivity and a high digestive efficiency. Optimal foraging is likely to apply on deposit-feeding invertebrates in relatively food-rich coastal environments as much as it does in the food-poor deep-sea environment. Using chlorophyll a as a proxy for carbon, the contribution of the urchin population to the momentary benthic carbon budget was calculated at 7% to 42%.