The Levant Slumps and the Phoenician Structures: collapse features along the continental margin of the southeastern Mediterranean Sea

Two distinct series of slumps deform the upper part of the sedimentary sequence along the continental margin of the Levant. One series is found along the base of the continental slope, where it overlies the disrupted eastern edge of the Messinian evaporites. The second series of slumps transects the continental margin from the shelf break to the Levant Basin. It seemed that the two series were triggered by two unrelated, though contemporaneous, processes. The shore-parallel slumps were initiated by basinwards flow of the Messinian salt, that carried along the overlying Plio-Quaternary sediments. Seawater that percolated along the detachment faults dissolved the underlying salt to form distinctly disrupted structures. The slope-normal slumps are located on top of large canyons that cut into the pre-Messinian sedimentary rocks. A layer of salt is found in the canyons, and the Plio-Quaternary sediments were deposited on that layer. The slumps are bounded by large, NW-trending faults where post-Messinian faulted offset was measured. We presume that the flow of the salt in the canyons also drives the slope-normal slumps. Thus thin-skinned halokynetic processes generated the composite post-Tortonian structural patterns of the Levant margin. The Phoenician Structures are a prime example of the collapse of a distal continental margin due to the dissolution of a massive salt layer.     

海藻中类胡萝卜素抗超氧自由基活性研究

在植物组织内，类胡萝卜素除具有集光功能外，还具有其他的重要生物学功能，类胡萝卜素作为光保护剂可抵抗光、氧和光敏色素的有害作用，也可作为化学反应物抵抗细胞所产生的化学物质引起的氧化损伤，保护光合系统免受光动力敏化作用的破坏。类胡萝卜素光保护作用的主要机制如下:(1)类胡萝卜素对三重线态敏化剂的淬灭；(2)类胡萝卜素对1O2的淬灭；(3)类胡萝卜素对自由基反应的抑制，它的这种生物学活性在医学领域也具有重要的应用价值。胡萝卜素在生物系统中的保护作用包括失活由电激活的单线态氧(1O2)，失活反应性的化学物质如过氧化物自由基和烷氧基，这些自由基产生于细胞内，并可能会引起有害的氧化作用。类胡萝卜素的保护功能与直接的抗氧化活性或与对细胞内抗氧化水平的调节有关(Krinsky，1990)。对于类胡萝卜素清除脂类过氧化物自由基的能力和作用机理已经进行了详细的研究(Burton et al.，1984; Burton, 1989; Terao，1989; Palozza et al.，1992b; Tsuchihashi et al.，1995)，但对于类胡萝卜素清除超氧阴离子自由基的能力尚未见有详细研究报道。本文以邻苯三酚自氧化体系作为超氧自由基的发生体系，对海藻中分离纯化制备的类胡萝卜素清除该种自由基的能力进行了初步的探讨。     

Model Test of Sand Restraining Force on Pipeline

This paper describes the model tests for determining the axial friction and the lateral resistance of sand to pipeline by using fine sand and prototype pipeline, and the calculation method based on limit analysis theory is verified. The effect of cyclic loading is considered in the test.     

Spatial and Temporal Variations of Sound Speed at the PN Section

Gridded sound speed data were calculated using Del Grosso's formulation from the temperature and salinity data at the PN section in the East China Sea covering 92 cruises between February 1978 and October 2000. The vertical gradients of sound speed are mainly related to the seasonal variations, and the strong horizontal gradients are mainly related to the Kuroshio and the upwelling. The standard deviations show that great variations of sound speed exist in the upper layer and in the slope zone. Empirical orthogonal function analysis shows that contributions of surface heating and the Kuroshio to sound speed variance are almost equivalent. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Embryonic and larval development of Babylonia formosae habei (Altena and Gittenberger, 1981) (Gastropoda:Buccinidae) on China''''s coast

The development of embryos and larvae of Babylonia formosae habei living along the southeast coast of China is observed under laboratory conditions. The egg masses are laid by females on hard substrate at night and each capsule contains 100-500 eggs. Each egg is 250-280 mm in diameter. The first two cleavages of the embryo are meridional and equal, and a polar lobe is produced. Larval kidney, which only consists of a single cell, appears during the gastrula stage on each side of the embryo. The right tentacle develops prior to the left one. At 25-27℃, an intracapsulate veliger stage is reached about 4.5 d after deposition. The larvae hatch on the fifth day as swimming veligers with a shell length of 360 -500 mm. The newly hatched larva can ingest suspended algal cells from the water column and remains in the pelagic stage for 8-10 d. The newly settled juveniles are 900-1 200 mm in shell length.     

Atmospheric forcing of fine-sand transport on a low-energy inner shelf: south-central Louisiana,USA

Hydrodynamic and sediment transport measurements from instrumentation deployed during a 54-day winter period at two sites on the Louisiana inner shelf are presented. Strong extratropical storms, with wind speeds of 7.8 to 15.1 m s^-1, were the dominant forcing mechanism during the study. These typically caused mean oscillatory flows and shear velocities about 33% higher than fair weather (averaging 12.3 and 3.2 cm s^-1 at the landward site, and 11.4 and 2.7 cm s^-1 at the seaward site, respectively). These responses were coupled with mean near-bottom currents more than twice as strong as during fair weather (10.3 and 7.5 cm s^-1 at the landward and seaward sites, respectively). These flowed in approximately the same direction as the veering wind, causing a net offshore transport of fine sand. Weak storms were responsible for little sediment transport whereas during fair weather, onshore sand transport of approximately 25-75% of the storm values appears to have occurred. This contradicts previous predictions of negligible fair-weather sediment movement on this inner shelf.     

夏季东海西部表层海水中的pCO2及海-气界面通量

根据2001年夏季长江口及东海西部海域表层海水pCO     

皱纹盘鲍对氯霉素的通透性吸收与扩散

在海水溶液中的氯霉素分子可以越过皱纹盘鲍Ｈａｌｉｏｔｉｓ ｄｉｓｃｕｓ ｈａｎｎａｉ Ｉｎｏ的体表结构进入其血淋巴液中。鲍血淋巴液中氯霉素的浓度与药浴液的氯霉素浓度，温度均呈线性关系，药浴时间的效应表现的Ｓ形逼近曲线。在２０℃的海水中，鲍血淋巴液中的氯霉素向体外扩散的半衰期为４２ｍｉｎ。     

Remote estimation of surficial seafloor properties through the application Angular Range Analysis to multibeam sonar data

The variation of the backscatter strength with the angle of incidence is an intrinsic property of the seafloor, which can be used in methods for acoustic seafloor characterization. Although multibeam sonars acquire backscatter over a wide range of incidence angles, the angular information is normally neglected during standard backscatter processing and mosaicking. An approach called Angular Range Analysis has been developed to preserve the backscatter angular information, and use it for remote estimation of seafloor properties. Angular Range Analysis starts with the beam-by-beam time-series of acoustic backscatter provided by the multibeam sonar and then corrects the backscatter for seafloor slope, beam pattern, time varying and angle varying gains, and area of insonification. Subsequently a series of parameters are calculated from the stacking of consecutive time series over a spatial scale that approximates half of the swath width. Based on these calculated parameters and the inversion of an acoustic backscatter model, we estimate the acoustic impedance and the roughness of the insonified area on the seafloor. In the process of this inversion, the behavior of the model parameters is constrained by established inter-property relationships. The approach has been tested using a 300 kHz Simrad EM3000 multibeam sonar in Little Bay, NH. Impedance estimates are compared to in situ measurements of sound speed. The comparison shows a very good correlation, indicating the potential of this approach for robust seafloor characterization.     

Phytoplankton biomass and size fractions in surface waters of the Australian sector of the southern ocean

We collected surface water along the 142nd E meridian from Tasmania to Antarctica in December 1999. We measured temperature, salinity and total chlorophyll a; additionally, we collected suspended particle size fractions and used fluorometric analysis to determine the quantity of chlorophyll a in each of four cell size classes: picoplankton (<3 μm), two nanoplankton fractions (3–10 μm and 10–20 μm) and microplankton (> 20 μm). Changes in temperature and salinity show that we crossed 6 water masses separated by 5 fronts. We found low abundance (<0.2 mg m⁻³) of chlorophyll in all size classes, with the exception of higher values near the continent (0.2 to 0.4 mg m⁻³). Lowest chlorophyll values (<0.1 mg m⁻³) were found in the Polar Frontal Zone (51° to 54°S). Microplankton made up the largest portion of total chlorophyll throughout most of the region. We conclude that biomass of all phytoplankton fractions, especially pico-and nanoplankton, was constrained by limiting factors, most probably iron, throughout the region and that ecosystem dynamics within a zone are not circumpolar but are regionalized within sectors.