First record of dinosaur trackway from Tibet,China

Three sauropod trackways comprise eight tracks that resemble Brontopodus tracks have been found at the Morong track site in Changdu Prefecture, Tibet, China. These wide- (or sub-wide)-gauge tracks suggest that there was a large sauropod, possibly a member of Titanosauriformes, in Changdu Prefecture during the Early-Middle Jurassic. The sauropod fauna from Changdu Prefecture, Tibet not only has elements in common with the sauropod fauna from the Sichuan Basin, but may include more diverse faunal components.     

Definition and measurement of salinity in salt lakes

Salinity is the most important chemical attribute of athalassic salt lakes. Even so, some confusion persists of what salinity means and how to measure it. For sal lakes, salinity is best defined as the sum total of all ion concentrations, or total ion concentration. Ideally, it is recommended that salinities be expressed on a mass per mass basis and as ppt (parts per thousand). Direct measurements of salinity can only be derived from full ionic analyses. Indirect measurements can be derived by determinations of density, conductivity, freezing point depression and total dissolved solids or matter.     

Research on the geography of agricultural change: redundant or revitalized?

Summary Future research directions for agricultural geography were the subject of debate in Area in the late 1980s, and the subsequent application of political economy ideas undoubtedly revived interest in agricultural research. This paper argues that agricultural geography contains greater diversity than the dominant political economy discourse would suggest. It reviews 'other' areas of agricultural research such as policy, post- productivism, people, culture and animals, presenting future suggestions which should ensure that agricultural research continues revitalized rather than redundant into the next millennium.     

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley as a risk area

The Upper Middle Rhine Valley, granted the status of a World Heritage site, is well known for its unique inner narrow valley of Quaternary age with its historical legacy of numerous medieval castles and old towns. Less known is that this has always been a risk area of floods and gravitative mass movements. Up to the recent past, mainly ice floods caused enormous damage. The inhabitants of the valley were well aware that they lived in a risk area, but they had learned to handle the flood hazard. With the demise of ice floods over the last 40 years, due to climate change and because of the additional heating of the river water by power plants, the awareness of flood hazards has been much diminished, in contrast to that of potential damage by rockfalls and landslides which were also much feared in the past, though at the local level only. Still in the people’s memory is the Kaub catastrophe of March 10, 1876, when 28 persons were killed by a landslide. Nowadays, even minor rockfalls are a major threat, as they will affect the much-used traffic lines on both banks of the river, in particular the railroads. Therefore, since 2002, on behalf of German Rail (Deutsche Bahn, DB), all problematic slopes have been protected by costly steel-ring nets, although they are an aesthetic problem by UNESCO standards. The feeling of absolute safety created among the public is only subjective, though, as planners are well aware of. Moreover, the impact of modern climate change on slope stability is nearly unknown. Therefore, it is still necessary to develop a risk map for the narrow valley, with emphasis on gravitational hazards.     

The Canary Islands swell: a coherence analysis of bathymetry and gravity

The Canary Archipelago is an intraplate volcanic chain, located near the West African continental margin, emplaced on old oceanic lithosphere of Jurassic age, with an extended volcanic activity since Middle Miocene. The adjacent seafloor does not show the broad oceanic swell usually observed in hotspot-generated oceanic islands. However, the observation of a noticeable depth anomaly in the basement west of the Canaries might indicate that the swell is masked by a thick sedimentary cover and the influence of the Canarian volcanism. We use a spectral approach, based on coherence analysis, to determine the swell and its compensation mechanism. The coherence between gravity and topography indicates that the swell is caused by a subsurface load correlated with the surface volcanic load. The residual gravity/geoid anomaly indicates that the subsurface load extends 600 km SSW and 800 km N and NNE of the islands. We used computed depth anomalies from available deep seismic profiles to constrain the extent and amplitude of the basement uplift caused by a relatively low-density anomaly within the lithospheric mantle, and coherence analysis to constrain the elastic thickness of the lithosphere ( T_e ) and the compensation depth of the swell. Depth anomalies and coherence are well simulated with T_e =28–36 km, compensation depth of 40–65 km, and a negative density contrast within the lithosphere of ∼33 kg m⁻³. The density contrast corresponds to a temperature increment of ∼325°C, which we interpret to be partially maintained by a low-viscosity convective layer in the lowermost lithosphere, and which probably involves the shallower parts of the asthenosphere. This interpretation does not require a significant rejuvenation of the mechanical properties of the lithosphere.     

A mass ratio limit for primordial black holes

We augment our scenario for the formation of astronomical objects from macroscopic superstrings by the assumption that the central matter keeps its identity in the fragmentation. From the condition that the angular momentum per mass squared of this matter should be less than the Kerr limit G/c, we obtain upper limits for the ratio of the mass of central black holes M(BH) to the mass M of the host object. This limit is M(BH)/M ≈ 0.001, and, expressed in observed quantities, approximately M(BH)/M ≈ σ²/(v · c) where σ is the r.m.s. velocity, v the rotational velocity and c the velocity of light. The valuesM(BH) agree with the observed behaviour both in order of magnitude and in the variation with velocity dispersion. (© 2003 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The impact of binary-star yields on the spectra of galaxies

One of the complexities in modelling integrated spectra of stellar populations is the effect of interacting binary stars besides Type Ia supernovae (SNeIa). These include common envelope systems, cataclysmic variables, novae, and are usually ignored in models predicting the chemistry and spectral absorption line strengths in galaxies. In this paper, predictions of chemical yields from populations of single and binary stars are incorporated into a galactic chemical evolution model to explore the significance of the effects of these other binary yields. Effects on spectral line strengths from different progenitor channels of SNeIa are also explored. Small systematic effects are found when the yields from binaries, other than SNeIa, are included, for a given star formation history. These effects are, at present, within the observational uncertainties on the line strengths. More serious differences can arise in considering different types of SNIa models, their rates and contributions.     

Observation of the solar eclipse 1966 May 20 in the region between 3.2 cm to 2.7 m wavelength

The solar eclipse 1966 May 20 was observed at 3.2, 10, 15, 20, 54, 59 cm, 1.05, 1.34 and 2.7 m wavelength by the observatories of the Heinrich-Hertz-Institut. The meter-wavelength observations were superposed by a noise storm. The result shows a region of enhanced radiation from the plages near the central meridian at the short wavelengths. Consulting additionally the observations made at Kiel, NERA, and Ondejov in the region of about 1.2 m wavelength it is possible to localize the source of the noise storm.