Shear Strength Behavior of Two Landfill Clay Liners

Direct shear tests were conducted to obtain both the shear strength of compacted clay liners (CCLs) specimens and the interface shear strength between compacted clay liner and base soil. These experiments were conducted under the conditions of five different water contents. The experimental results show that shear strength of both CCLs and CCLs/base interface decreases with the increase in the water content of CCLs and base soil. In addition, the considerate concentration of NaCl in leachate has no deteriorating effect on the shear strength of liners. Triaxial shear tests were also conducted on clay liner specimens to obtain total and effective shear strength under a fast compression. The shear strength c‘=100 kPa for sand-bentonite, respectively. These results indicate that the compacted clay-bentonite shows normal consolidation, but that the compacted sand-bentonite exhibits over-consolidation.     

Neural Network-Based Estimation of Principal Metal Contents in the Hokuroku District,Northern Japan,for Exploring Kuroko-Type Deposits

The Hokuroku district, extending over 40 × 40 km² in northern Japan, is known to be dominated by kuroko-type massive sulfide deposits that have a genetic relation to submarine volcanic activity. The deposits are hosted in a specific stratigraphic zone of Miocene volcanic rocks. Because kuroko-type deposits are under exploration in several countries, it is important to integrate the geologic and geochemical data that have been accumulated in the Hokuroku district to characterize the distribution of deposits and produce a map of mineral potential. Thus, we collected data on multiple chemical components from 1917 rock cores at 143 drillhole sites and concentrated on components with relatively large amounts of data, which are SiO₂, Al₂O₃, and Fe₂O₃ as major elements and Cu, Pb, and Zn as trace elements. Although frequencies of these data can be approximated by normal or lognormal distributions, spatial correlation structures cannot be extracted from the semivariograms of each component nor from the cross-semivariograms between two components of the major or minor elements. To handle such complexity, a spatial method of modeling content distribution, SLANS, is developed by applying a feedforward neural network. The principle of SLANS is to train a network repeatedly to recognize the relation between the data value and the location and lithology of a sample point. One-hundred outputs for each element are obtained by changing the numbers of neurons in a middle layer from 1 to 10 and sample data used for training from 3 to 12, and finally one output is selected based on the estimation precision of the network which is restricted near the target point. After constructing a geologic distribution model from the geological column classified into 25 rock codes, three-dimensional distributions of Cu, Pb, and Zn contents are estimated over the study area. The content models are considered to be valid because high-content zones are located on the known mine sites and the margins of ancient volcanoes or calderas. Some zones are distributed along strikes of major deep-seated fractures in the district.     

Satellite Navigation and Geospatial Awareness: Long-Term Effects of Using Navigation Tools on Wayfinding and Spatial Orientation

This article examined long-term effects of using navigation tools on wayfinding and spatial orientation, through a survey analysis of the experience of using navigation tools and spatial aptitudes, and a behavioral experiment of real-world navigation. Experience of tool use was measured in terms of regular use (time length and frequency) and accumulated experience (time length multiplied by frequency). The survey analysis showed that frequent users of pedestrian navigation systems tended to be low on sense of direction and mental rotation. In contrast, longtime users of maps tended to be high on sense of direction and favor survey navigation strategies. The behavioral experiment showed that people who had more accumulated experience of using in-car navigation systems traveled less efficiently and learned the configurations of traveled routes less accurately with a mobile tool and a paper map. The analysis of long-term effects through structural equation modeling showed that spatial aptitudes and accumulated experience of tool use independently affect wayfinding and spatial orientation and that the negative effects of accumulated experience were larger than the positive effects of spatial aptitudes. The results and implications are discussed in relation to existing studies of short-term effects and spatial thinking.     

Applying the adjoint-free 4dVar assimilation to modeling the Kuroshio south of Japan

Ocean Dynamics - Operational ocean nowcast/forecast systems require real-time sampling of oceanic data for representing realistic oceanic conditions. Satellite altimetry plays a key role in...     

Characterization of sulfate mineral deposits in central Thailand

In this paper we present petrographic and geochemical data of sulfate mineral deposits in northeast Nakhon Sawan, central Thailand, and provide new constraints on their age. The deposits are made up mainly of strongly deformed nodular and massive gypsum in the upper part, and less deformed layered anhydrite in the lower part. They are intruded by andesitic dikes that contain Middle Triassic zircons (ca 240 Ma). These dikes are probably part of the regional magmatic activity of the Sukhothai Arc during the Early to Middle Triassic. Sulfur (δ³⁴S) and strontium (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) isotopic compositions of the sulfates range from 15.86 ‰ to 16.26 ‰ and from 0.70810 to 0.70817, respectively. Comparisons with the Phanerozoic seawater isotopic evolution curve indicate that those values are best explained by precipitation of the sulfates from Carboniferous seawater, in particular seawater of late Mississippian age (ca 326 Ma), and this would be consistent with previous studies of calcareous fossils in the limestones that crop out around this site. Our interpretation is that evaporitic gypsum was originally precipitated from hypersaline seawater on a shallow lagoon or shelf on the Khao Khwang Platform during the Serpukhovian, and that this gypsum changed to anhydrite during early burial. The anhydrite was then cut by andesitic dikes during the Middle Triassic, and more recently the upper part of which was rehydrated during exhumation to form secondary gypsum near the surface.     

Public acceptance of the oceanic carbon sequestration

CO₂ ocean sequestration may be an effective option for mitigating global warming. There are risks associated with this process, particularly the local impact on deep-sea environments. Public acceptance is required for the implementation of this technology, even though the impacts have been proven to be trivial. In this study, a questionnaire survey was conducted to find the correlation between public acceptance of CO₂ sequestration and influential factors by covariance structure analysis. In addition, risk communication via the Internet was carried out. These analyses revealed that careful investigation of the target oceanic site and field experiments are important in gaining public acceptance of CO₂ sequestration.     

Surface current and vertical thermal structure on the continental slope in Tosa Bay

In order to specify a vertical thermal structure related to surface current variation on the continental slope in Tosa Bay, Japan, we analyzed monthly regular hydrographic measurements in the years 1991–2004. Subsurface temperature below 200 m on the slope was found to vary synchronously with the vertical displacement of the main thermocline around 200 m. It is shown that the vertical-averaged temperature below 200 m is significantly correlated with an along-isobath/southwestward surface current velocity on the slope. This correlation indicates that when a strong (weak) southwestward surface current is observed, temperature below 200 m decreases (increases) simultaneously, that is, isotherms below the 200 m are displaced upward (downward) together with the main thermocline. Moreover, when the strong southwestward flow is detected, across-isobath isotherms around 200 m slope upward toward the offshore direction. Furthermore, it is suggested that as the Kuroshio axis moves offshore south of the bay, the southwestward flow tends to be weakened by the combined effect of other Kuroshio parameters such as transport and stream width as well as the Kuroshio axis position. As a result, it is inferred that the correlation between the surface current and subsurface temperature can be interpreted in terms of the formation and decay of an anticlockwise circulation interacting with a cold eddy.     

Evaluation of the non-hydrostatic stress produced in a multi-anvil high pressure apparatus

Olivine single crystals have been deformed under high confining pressure (P=5?GPa) and temperature (T=1400?°C) conditions in a multi-anvil high pressure apparatus. NaCl, diamond and NaCl+diamond (2:1 by volume) powders were encapsulated along with the olivine single crystals in order to produce a range of stress states. The change of the non-hydrostatic stress transmitted to the olivine samples, enclosed within these three different media, during heating has been evaluated by observation of dislocation microstructure and density. A higher differential stress can be generated with diamond powder (0.1?GPa) than with NaCl powder (0.02?GPa). Although an intermediate differential stress between 0.1?GPa and 0.02?GPa had been expected to be generated using NaCl+diamond powder, the generation of non-hydrostatic stress in the olivine sample was unsuccessful. This may be caused by the fact that compaction (or sintering) proceeded in the capsule throughout the experiments. The most important finding of these experiments is that a constant non-hydrostatic stress can be applied to a sample under very high pressure and temperature conditions within the multi-anvil high pressure apparatus for the duration of the experiment. This approach is therefore suitable for investigating the steady-state rheological properties of mantle minerals at near-mantle conditions.