Note on the seismicity of northeastern Italy (Friuli area)

The kinematics and mechanics of the seismicity of the Friuli area in northeastern Italy are discussed, especially the focal mechanism of the catastrophic earthquake of May 6, 1976. Alternative solutions are analyzed. A N-S section, down to 60 km below sea-level, across the Alps from the Bavarian foreland to the Adriatic Sea illustrates these possibilities.     

Reliability of inexpensive charcoal and alpha-track radon monitors

A comparison between single short-term radon measurements and annual radon measurements in basements shows that significant uncertainties should be associated with the short-term measurements. Activated charcoal radon monitors which measure radon over a 3 to 7 day interval yield measurements that should carry a ± 90% uncertainty in terms of estimating annual radon concentration. Alpha-track radon monitors which measure radon over a 3 month interval should carry a ± 30% uncertainty. Decisions about home purchases, home remediation and the development of risk characterizations may often be incorrect if currently popular but unrealistically low estimates of uncertainty are applied to short-term radon measurements. Optimal results are obtained from year-long alpha-track measurements.     

Workplace environmental demands and energizers at two Kuwait oil companies

The Work Compatibility Improvement Framework was developed and used to assess the environmental and ergonomic work conditions at two oil companies in Kuwait: One is a government-owned company, while the other is a private subcontractor of the government-owned company. The work compatibility presents demand–energizer environmental factors that act upon the individuals in the workplace. The reliability coefficients were tested and considered good (0.752) and excellent (0.855) for two domain conditions environment and ergonomics, respectively. Results reveal that in all of the three regions of the government-owned company (north, southwest, east) the ‘overall’ compatibility data for the ‘environment’ is perceived to be poor. The ‘ergonomics’ compatibility data seem to be average in the southeast and west, while it is considered to be poor in the north. As for the private subcontractor, the perceived ‘environment’ is considered to be poor for two departments out of four (slickline and wellhead maintenance), while considered moderate for the remaining two (maintenance and crude/chemical handling). The ‘ergonomics’ compatibility is reported to be poor for crude/chemical handling and wellhead maintenance jobs; while the conditions seem to be moderate for the maintenance and slickline jobs. The major conclusion extracted from this study is that the oil sector organizations in Kuwait are not managed as ergo-environmental enterprises where there is disharmony in the ergonomics system, environmental system, and the ergo-environmental interface interaction. These gaps in the enterprise-wide systems have a significant impact on work productivity and the environment conditions.     

Orbital elements of GSC 0114401023, a new eclipsing binary

We present Strömgrenuvby photometric observations and a series of radial velocities obtained with the Coravel scanner for the 11th magnitude star catalogued in the Guide Star Catalogue as GSC 0114401023. This star was serendipitously identified on UV frames taken with the Very-Wide-Field-Camera aboard Spacelab-1. Radial velocities show the star to be binary and we have determined accurate orbital elements. Photometric data and orbital elements are consistent with the system being a previously-unrecognized eclipsing binary, with period = 33.8766 days and eccentricity = 0.262.Based on observations collected at the Observatoire de Haute Provence (OHP), CNRS, Saint-Michel l'Observatoire, France, and at the European Southern Observatory (ESO), La Silla, Chile.     

Climate change in Lake Baikal: diatom evidence in an area of continuous sedimentation

The presence of inhomogeneous sedimentation is acknowledged as being an important problem in palaeolimnological studies. Sediment records can be disturbed by erosional and redepositional events, which redeposit microfossils within a basin and may then lead to misinterpretations of fossil diatom assemblages. This study uses a combination of sedimentological tools, magnetic susceptibility measurements and high-resolution diatom analysis to show that a sediment core, BAIK80, taken in 345 m water depth from a shoulder region in the North Basin of Lake Baikal, is free of disturbances. Our results confirm that the sediment record is consistent and continuous for the uppermost sediment. Consequently, the fossil diatom data can be used to establish a continuous record of past climate variability over approximately the past 1300 years. Distinct changes occur in downcore abundances of endemic taxa Aulacoseira baicalensis and Cyclotella minuta, and principal components analysis (PCA) indicates a gradual transformation of taxa over the past 1300 years. These changes are likely to be related to climate, although definite links still have to be established. Received: 15 December 1998 / Accepted: 13 September 1999     

The Shaw chondrite,I. The case of the missing metal

The mineralogy, elemental and isotopic composition of the Shaw meteorite indicate that it is a highly metamorphosed L-group chondrite which has lost a portion of its metal and sulfide. The metal which remains has an unusual composition relative to that in other L-group chondrites. It is enriched in Ga, Ge, Ir, Mo, Os, Pt, Re and Ru and depleted in As, Au, Cu and Sb. A comparison of the relative enrichments and depletions in Shaw to those observed in San Cristobal, the extreme end-member of group IAB iron meteorites, shows that the metal phases in these two meteorites have complementary compositions. This implies that the metal in Shaw represents the residual solid of a partial melting process while the missing metal, which drained away, may have gone to form an iron meteorite, like San Cristobal.