TAOS – The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey

The Taiwanese‐American Occultation Survey (TAOS) seeks to determine the number and size spectrum for small (∼3 km) bodies in the Kuiper Belt. This will be accomplished by searching for the brief occultations of bright stars (R ∼ 14) by these objects. We have designed and built a special purpose photometric monitoring system for this purpose. TAOS comprises four 50 cm telescopes, each equipped with a 2048 × 2048 pixel CCD camera, in a compact array located in the central highlands of Taiwan. TAOS will monitor up to 2 000 stars at 5 Hz. The system went into scientific operation in the autumn of 2005. (© 2006 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

A Simple Model Of The Convective Internal Boundary Layer And Its Application To Surface Heat Flux Estimates Within Polynyas

A simple model of the convective (thermal) internalboundary layer has been developed for climatologicalstudies of air-sea-ice interaction, where in situobservations are scarce and first-order estimates ofsurface heat fluxes are required. It is amixed-layer slab model, based on a steady-statesolution of the conservation of potentialtemperature equation, assuming a balance betweenadvection and turbulent heat-flux convergence. Boththe potential temperature and the surface heat fluxare allowed to vary with fetch, so the subsequentboundary-layer modification alters the fluxconvergence and thus the boundary-layer growth rate.For simplicity, microphysical and radiativeprocesses are neglected.The model is validated using several case studies.For a clear-sky cold-air outbreak over a coastalpolynya the observed boundary-layer heights,mixed-layer potential temperatures and surface heatfluxes are all well reproduced. In other cases,where clouds are present, the model still capturesmost of the observed boundary-layer modification,although there are increasing discrepancies withfetch, due to the neglected microphysical andradiative processes. The application of the model toclimatological studies of air-sea interaction withincoastal polynyas is discussed.     

欧洲莱茵河流域洪水管理行动计划述评

旨在提高和改善莱茵河的防洪和流域可持续管理水平的“洪水管理行动计划”于1998年开始实施,其内容和措施以及欧洲国家在流域可持续发展管理方面的思路和模式对我国江河流域的防洪和洪泛区管理可资借鉴.     

Biot dispersion for P‐ and S‐wave velocities in partially and fully saturated sandstones

Ultrasonic compressional‐ and shear‐wave velocities have been measured on 34 samples of sandstones from hydrocarbon reservoirs. The sandstones are all of low clay content, high porosity, and cover a wide range of permeabilities. They were measured dry and brine‐saturated under hydrostatic effective stresses of 10, 20 and 40 MPa. For eight of the sandstones, ultrasonic velocity measurements were made at different partial water saturations in the range from dry to fully saturated. The Gassmann–Biot theory is found to account for most of the changes in velocities at high effective stress levels when the dry sandstones are fully saturated with brine, provided the lower velocities resulting when the dry sandstone initially adsorbs small amounts of moisture are used to determine the elastic properties of the ‘dry’ sandstone. At lower effective stress levels, local flow phenomena due to the presence of open microcracks are assumed to be responsible for measured velocities higher than those predicted by the theory. The partial saturation results are modelled fairly closely by the Gassmann–Biot theory, assuming heterogeneous saturation for P‐waves.     

The population of faint transients in the Galactic Centre

BeppoSAX has detected a population of faint transient X-ray sources in the Galactic Centre. I show that a simple irradiated disc picture gives a consistent fit to the properties of this population, and that it probably consists of low-mass X-ray binaries (LMXBs) that have evolved beyond their minimum orbital periods of ∼80 min. Since all post-minimum systems are transient, and neutron star LMXBs are more common than black hole LMXBs in the Galaxy, the majority of these systems should contain neutron stars, as observed. This picture predicts that the Galactic Centre transients should have orbital periods in the range ∼80–120 min, and that most of them should repeat in the next few years. In this case, the total number of post-minimum transients in the Galaxy would be considerably smaller than the usual estimates of its total LMXB population. I discuss possible reasons for this.     

The evolution of the Gulf of Corinth (Greece): an aftershock study of the 1981 earthquakes

Summary. A preliminary study of the aftershocks of three earthquakes that occurred near to Corinth (Greece) in 1981 is combined with observations of the morphology and faulting to understand the evolution of the Eastern Gulf of Corinth. The well located aftershocks form a zone 60km long and 20km wide. They do not lie on the main fault planes and are mostly located between the north-dipping faulting on which the first two earthquakes occurred and the south-dipping faulting associated with the third event. A cluster of aftershocks also lies in the footwall of the eastern end of the south-dipping fault of the third event.
Morphologically, it is observed that in the evolution of the Eastern Gulf of Corinth, antithetic faulting apparently predates the appearance of the main faulting at the surface. This evolution can be explained by motion on a deep seated, shallow angle, aseismic normal fault. A model based on such a fault also accounts for the aftershock distribution of the 1981 earthquakes.     

The importance of goats to a natural environment: a case study from Epirus (Greece) and Southern Albania

In the Epirus region of North-west Greece, spring flows in villages have reduced dramatically over the last few decades, in some cases with serious economic consequences. We argue here that this has resulted from the major reduction of grazing by mountain goats over the same period together with other associated land-use changes. Normally such a contention would be impossible to demonstrate because many different causes could be invoked. However, prior to 1946 culturally homogenous Greek-speaking communities with identical pastoral practices were separated by the closure of the Greek-Albanian border. Changes of spring flow have not occurred on the Albanian side of the border where heavy grazing has continued. In a region such as Greece where pastoralism has continued for thousands of years, the environment had reached an equilibrium with goat grazing. Apart from the reduction of spring flows, other undesirable ecological consequences are occurring.
It is also interesting to note that long-term water table changes such as those occurring in Epirus have been attributed to tectonic effects and thought to potentially predict earthquakes. The effect however, may be the result of goats and other livestock 'leaving' and not the result of earthquakes 'coming'.