Dust supply from river floodplains: the case of the lower Huang He (Yellow River) recorded in a loess–palaeosol sequence from the Mangshan Plateau

The Mangshan Plateau is located on the south bank of the Huang He (Yellow River) just west of the city of Zhengzhou, well outside the Loess Plateau in central China. Mixing models of the grain‐size data indicate that the loess deposits are mixtures of three loess components. Comparison of the mixing model with existing models established for a series of loess–palaeosol sequences from the Loess Plateau indicates that the Mangshan loess has been supplied from a proximal dust source, the Huang He floodplain, during major dust outbreaks. The high accumulation rates, the composition of the loess components, and especially the high proportions of a sandy loess component support this. Owing to the exceptionally high accumulation rates, the Mangshan grain size, magnetic susceptibility and carbonate records provide a high‐resolution archive of environmental and climate change. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Fire and ice: unravelling the climatic and volcanic history of James Ross Island, Antarctic Peninsula

Back in the mid-nineteenth century British explorer James Clark Ross took his ships, HMS Terror and HMS Erebus , farther south than anyone else had been. He now lends his name to James Ross Island, a part-volcanic edifice that rises out of the sea off the north-east tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. The island records a geological history dating back to the Cretaceous, though its great peaks are volcanic. The most recent rocks of the island record a monumental struggle between fire and ice, the volcanoes, and the ice sheets that cover them. The glacigenic sediments that are interspersed with the volcanic rocks contain rich fossil assemblages which suggest that at times, the climate was warmer, with the ice retreating. Their study may help us to delimit the patterns of climate change in the Antarctic Peninsula region as Earth's global climate warms.     

The Roche Limit

The role of tides in deforming and possibly disrupting a secondary body orbiting about a primary body has been known for a considerable time. This was first inspired by the observations of ocean tides on Earth and then seen as playing an important role in the formation and evolution of the Earth–Moon system. Finally, in the beginning of the 20th century it was generally thought to have a significant role in the formation of the solar system through the tidal disruption of the Sun. Here, an overview of the historical developments of the ideas concerned with tidal disruption of a secondary body that can lead to mass loss is given. Some discussion of possible extensions to consider more realistic situations where the secondary body may not be moving on a circular orbit and may not rotate so as to maintain the phase-on configuration to the primary body is also given.     

Line forming regions in active galaxies and their nuclei

The spectra of active galaxies and their nuclei are rich in emission and absorption line features. A major aim of present research is the development of self-consistent hydrodynamic models for the production of the line-forming regions. We here review such modelling and stress the central role played by shock phenomena induced by winds and explosions on scales ranging from the circumstellar to the intergalactic.     

Biostratigraphic and aminostratigraphic constraints on the age of the Middle Pleistocene glacial succession in north Norfolk,UK

Considerable debate surrounds the age of the Middle Pleistocene glacial succession in East Anglia following some recent stratigraphical reinterpretations. Resolution of the stratigraphy here is important since it not only concerns the glacial history of the region but also has a bearing on our understanding of the earliest human occupation of north‐western Europe. The orthodox consensus that all the tills were emplaced during the Anglian (Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12) has recently been challenged by a view assigning each major till to a different glacial stage, before, during and after MIS 12. Between Trimingham and Sidestrand on the north Norfolk coast, datable organic sediments occur immediately below and above the glacial succession. The oldest glacial deposit (Happisburgh Till) directly overlies the ‘Sidestrand Unio‐bed’, here defined as the Sidestrand Hall Member of the Cromer Forest‐bed Formation. Dating of these sediments therefore has a bearing on the maximum age of the glacial sequence. This paper reviews the palaeobotany and describes the faunal assemblages recovered from the Sidestrand Unio‐bed, which accumulated in a fluvial environment in a fully temperate climate with regional deciduous woodland. There are indications from the ostracods for weakly brackish conditions. Significant differences are apparent between the Sidestrand assemblages and those from West Runton, the type site of the Cromerian Stage. These differences do not result from contrasting facies or taphonomy but reflect warmer palaeotemperatures at Sidestrand and a much younger age. This conclusion is suggested by the higher proportion of thermophiles at Sidestrand and the occurrence of a water vole with unrooted molars (Arvicola) rather than its ancestor Mimomys savini with rooted molars. Amino acid racemisation data also indicate that Sidestrand is significantly younger than West Runton. These data further highlight the stratigraphical complexity of the ‘Cromerian Complex’ and support the conventional view that the Happisburgh Till was emplaced during the Anglian rather than the recently advanced view that it dates from MIS 16. Moreover, new evidence from the Trimingham lake bed (Sidestrand Cliff Formation) above the youngest glacial outwash sediments (Briton's Lane Formation) indicates that they also accumulated during a Middle Pleistocene interglacial – probably MIS 11. All of this evidence is consistent with a short chronology placing the glacial deposits within MIS 12, rather than invoking multiple episodes of glaciation envisaged in the ‘new glacial stratigraphy’ during MIS 16, 12, 10 and 6. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Swimming with…Devonian fish

Armoured jawless fish, or 'ostracoderms', lived 450–360 million years ago, and display unusual morphologies, unlike any modern fish group. Since they left no living descendants, their mode of swimming has, until recently, remained speculative, although this is a crucial question as the first true pectoral fins evolved within the 'ostracoderms'. The discovery of the oldest-known fish trails, from the Early Devonian (400 million year old) 'Lower Old Red Sandstone' of south-east Wales offers new insights into the swimming behaviour of these early fish, notably the osteostracan 'ostracoderms' (or cephalaspids), whose horseshoe-shaped head and paddle-shaped pectoral fins have remained a functional riddle.     

Ultraviolet solar irradiance measurement from 200 to 358 nm during spacelab 1 mission

The paper presents the results obtained from the UV-spectrometer of the Solar Spectrum Experiment during the Spacelab 1 mission in December 1983. The irradiance data concern 492 passbands, which are located between 200 and 358 nm at almost equidistant wavelengths separated by about 0.3 nm. The passbands have a well-defined, bell-shaped profile with a full width at half maximum of about 1.3 nm. The data, which have an error budget between 4 and 5%, agree closely with the spectral distributions observed by Heath (1980) and Mentall et al. (1981) and confirm that the solar irradiance and the fluxes of Sun-like stars show about the same spectral distribution down to at least 240 nm.     

THOUGHTS ON MAPPING BY PHOTOGRAMMETRY

Topics of immediate practical interest formed the basis of the Address. Particular emphasis was placed upon problems of point transfer, pre-marking of ground control points, aerial triangulation by observation of independent models, and the status of photogrammetric operators.     

A community-wide intercomparison exercise for the determination of dissolved iron in seawater

The first large-scale international intercomparison of analytical methods for the determination of dissolved iron in seawater was carried out between October 2000 and December 2002. The exercise was conducted as a rigorously “blind” comparison of 7 analytical techniques by 24 international laboratories. The comparison was based on a large volume (700 L), filtered surface seawater sample collected from the South Atlantic Ocean (the “IRONAGES” sample), which was acidified, mixed and bottled at sea. Two 1-L sample bottles were sent to each participant. Integrity and blindness were achieved by having the experiment designed and carried out by a small team, and overseen by an independent data manager. Storage, homogeneity and time-series stability experiments conducted over 2.5 years showed that inter-bottle variability of the IRONAGES sample was good (< 7%), although there was a decrease in iron concentration in the bottles over time (0.8–0.5 nM) before a stable value was observed. This raises questions over the suitability of sample acidification and storage.     

A detailed survey near Mount Eratosthenes Eastern Mediterranean

A detailed marine survey made to the South West of Mount Eratosthenes is described. The results show the existence of a narrow zone of WNW trending deformed sediment west of the mount surrounded by an evaporite sequence in different stages of deformation.This work was intended to settle the conflict between the results of three previous interpretations of the tectonic structure of this area. We see the area being characterised by five areas with different degrees of tectonic deformation yet showing little causal relationship to overburden of Nile Cone sediments. A fault controlled cliff coincides with the previously described salt wall and strike slip fault yet we see no evidence for its diapiric origin nor positive evidence for strike slip motion along it. We concur with the previously observed area of higher free-air gravity anomalies termed the Eratosthenes tectonic zone, although it is traversed by several boundaries between areas of different deformation. Our results thus show some agreements and some re-interpretations of the observations. This complicated region is not yet fully understood however.