Titan's diverse landscapes as evidenced by Cassini RADAR's third and fourth looks at Titan

Cassini's third and fourth radar flybys, T7 and T8, covered diverse terrains in the high southern and equatorial latitudes, respectively. The T7 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) swath is somewhat more straightforward to understand in terms of a progressive poleward descent from a high, dissected, and partly hilly terrain down to a low flat plain with embayments and deposits suggestive of the past or even current presence of hydrocarbon liquids. The T8 swath is dominated by dunes likely made of organic solids, but also contain somewhat enigmatic, probably tectonic, features that may be partly buried or degraded by erosion or relaxation in a thin crust. The dark areas in T7 show no dune morphology, unlike the dark areas in T8, but are radiometrically warm like the dunes. The Huygens landing site lies on the edge of the T8 swath; correlation of the radar and Huygens DISR images allows accurate determination of its coordinates, and indicates that to the north of the landing site sit two large longitudinal dunes. Indeed, had the Huygens probe trajectory been just 10 km north of where it actually was, images of large sand dunes would have been returned in place of the fluvially dissected terrain actually seen—illustrating the strong diversity of Titan's landscapes even at local scales.     

REE-fractionated trachytes and dacites from Papua New Guinea and their relationship to andesite petrogenesis

Minor trachyte and dacite temporally associated with, but spatially separated from, arc-trench type volcanoes in Papua New Guinea have distinctive REE abundances similar to experimentally produced and theoretically predicted partial melts of eclogite. However, modelling based on small amounts of equilibrium partial melting indicates that only fractionation involving a garnet-dominated residuum can account for the observed REE patterns if the source rock was subducted oceanic basalt. If the source was geochemically evolved, other mineral phases (e.g., amphibole) are possible in the residuum, and there is no necessity to postulate that the downgoing slab was the source for these magmas. The REE fractionated trachytes and dacites appear to be a part of the nearby late Cenozoic volcanic provinces, and possibly represent minor partial melts which only in unusual tectonic situations arrive unmodified at the Earth's surface.     

Turning Contention into Collaboration: Engaging Power,Trust, and Learning in Collaborative Networks

Given the complexity and multiplicity of goals in natural resource governance, it is not surprising that policy debates are often characterized by contention and competition. Yet at times adversaries join together to collaborate to find creative solutions not easily achieved in polarizing forums. We employed qualitative interviews and a quantitative network analysis to investigate a collaborative network that formed to develop a resolution to a challenging natural resource management problem, the conservation of vernal pools. We found that power had become distributed among members, trust had formed across core interests, and social learning had resulted in shared understanding and joint solutions. Furthermore, institutions such as who and when new members joined, norms of inclusion and openness, and the use of small working groups helped create the observed patterns of power, trust, and learning.