Freeze corer No. 3 for lake sediments

Freezing of sediment in situ at the lake bottom using a freeze corer has become an important method for taking samples of soft sediments aimed for detailed stratigraphic analyses. Over the past decades a variety of freeze corers have been designed, from very simple metal tubes filled with dry ice that are dropped into the sediment to high-tech samplers using electric pumps, hydraulics and liquid nitrogen. The freeze corer described here is a compromise of getting good samples without a too complicated technique. It is designed for coring from lake ice, using a steel wire with a stopper on the ice to keep the corer in fixed position during freezing. It consists of a thermos connected to a thin freeze wedge (width 15 cm, length 100 cm, max thickness 6 cm). The dry ice is kept in the thermos until the freeze wedge has been lowered into the sediment to avoid water freezing on the wedge during descent through the water column; a wet steel-wedge surface disturbs the sediment stratigraphy less than a wedge on which rapid freezing occurs. The dry ice is kept in the thermos by a trapdoor that is opened by a messenger. When the trapdoor is opened the dry ice begins to drop into the wedge, which is filled with ethanol. This process continues concurrently with the consumption of ice in the wedge until the thermos is empty. Using 6–8 kg of dry ice and 4 l of ethanol (95%), a 3-cm-thick and up to 80-cm-long crust of frozen sediment is obtained in 20–25 min on each side of the wedge. The crust is easily detached intact from the wedge using a small volume of hot water, poured inside the wedge.     

Biochemical biomarkers in adult female perch (Perca fluviatilis) in a chronically polluted gradient in the Stockholm recipient (Sweden)

A battery of biochemical biomarkers and the SigmaPCB concentration in adult female perch (Perca fluviatilis) verified an aquatic pollution gradient with the city of Stockholm (Sweden) as a point source of anthropogenic substances. The investigation included both an upstream gradient, 46 km westwards through Lake M?laren, and a downstream gradient, 84 km eastwards through the Stockholm archipelago. Besides the main gradient from Stockholm, there were strong indications of pollution coming from the Baltic Sea. The results indicated a severe pollution situation in central Stockholm, with poor health status of the perch, characterised by increased specific EROD activity in the liver, increased liver EROD somatic index, decreased AChE activity in the muscle, increased amount of DNA adducts in the liver, and a high concentration of biliary 1-pyrenol. In addition, laboratory exposure to common EROD inducers elicited an abnormal response, suggestive of chronic intoxication.     

Strategic assessment of fuel taxation in energy conservation and CO2 reduction for road transportation: a case study from China

Road transportation has attracted extensive attention throughout the world because of its high energy demands and numerous externalities. Sustainable road transportation has thus become a great challenge for politicians and decision-makers all over the world. There have been a series of studies indicating that appropriate pricing of fuel can be both effective and efficient for reducing overconsumption of transport fuel. However, relatively little research has been done on fuel price approaches in developing country contexts. For a country like China, where road traffic today is growing more than in other countries, there is a strategic interest to do more economic analyses of fair and efficient pricing of fuel. In this study, we present a strategic assessment of fuel pricing in energy conservation and CO₂ reduction from road transportation in China, both in a retrospective and a prospective perspective. First of all, the correlation between fuel price and road transport gasoline demand, based upon data from 1995 to 2007, was examined with an econometric model. Secondly, on basis of the elasticity model, the potential reductions with respect to fuel demand and Green House Gas (GHG) emissions as a consequence of a strategic fuel tax implementation in China were examined up to 2030. The results indicate that such strategic fuel taxation can play a considerable role in steering the growth of road transport gasoline demand, and thus also Chinese GHG emissions.     

Stomach contents in Baltic fourhorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus quadricornis L.) with normal and deformed spinal vertebrae

In the northern part of the Baltic Sea, the Gulf of Bothnia, fourhorn sculpin (Myoxocephalus quadricornis) is one of the dominant fish species. A considerable proportion of the population (up to 54% of fish in gill net catches) have been reported to have spinal deformations, with a higher frequency in polluted than in clean areas. The stomach content of sculpins with normal and with severely deformed backbone were compared, but no statistically significant differences were revealed. The diet was generally dominated by the isopod Mesidotea entomon and three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus).     

Applicability of existing models to predict the behavior of replicas of natural fractures of welded tuff under different boundary conditions

Assessing the shear behavior of intact rock and rock fractures is an important issue in the design of a potential nuclear waste repository at Yucca Mountain, Nevada. Cyclic direct shear experiments were conducted on replicas of three natural fractures and a laboratory-developed tensile fracture of welded tuff. The tests were carried out under constant normal loads or constant normal stiffnesses with different initial normal load levels. Each test consisted of five cycles of forward and reverse shear motion. In this paper, the results of the constant normal load shear experiments are analyzed using several constitutive models proposed in the rock mechanics literature for joint shear strength, dilatancy, and joint surface damage. It is shown that some of the existing models have limitations. New constitutive models are proposed and are included in a mathematical analysis tool that can be used to predict joint behavior under various boundary conditions. © Rapid Science Ltd. 1998     

A new mixed finite element method for poro‐elasticity

Development of robust numerical solutions for poro‐elasticity is an important and timely issue in modern computational geomechanics. Recently, research in this area has seen a surge in activity, not only because of increased interest in coupled problems relevant to the petroleum industry, but also due to emerging applications of poro‐elasticity for modelling problems in biomedical engineering and materials science. In this paper, an original mixed least‐squares method for solving Biot consolidation problems is developed. The solution is obtained via minimization of a least‐squares functional, based upon the equations of equilibrium, the equations of continuity and weak forms of the constitutive relationships for elasticity and Darcy flow. The formulation involves four separate categories of unknowns: displacements, stresses, fluid pressures and velocities. Each of these unknowns is approximated by linear continuous functions. The mathematical formulation is implemented in an original computer program, written from scratch and using object‐oriented logic. The performance of the method is tested on one‐ and two‐dimensional classical problems in poro‐elasticity. The numerical experiments suggest the same rates of convergence for all four types of variables, when the same interpolation spaces are used. The continuous linear triangles show the same rates of convergence for both compressible and entirely incompressible elastic solids. This mixed formulation results in non‐oscillating fluid pressures over entire domain for different moments of time. The method appears to be naturally stable, without any need of additional stabilization terms with mesh‐dependent parameters. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Surface Tension Effects of Humic-Like Substances in the Aqueous Extract of Tropospheric Fine Aerosol

Organic aerosol constituents can influence the surface tension of nucleating cloud droplets and thereby modify the critical supersaturation necessary to activate aerosol particles. Model calculations, based on experiments carried out with different surrogates, led to contradictory conclusions on the effect of organic components on activation, indicating that the results depend very much on the surrogate selected. In order to reduce this uncertainty surface tension measurements were performed on real atmospheric aerosol components. Humic-like substances (HULIS) that accounted for 60% of the water-soluble organic carbon present in rural aerosol were isolated from 32 samples covering different seasons. The isolated organic matter present in a concentration of about 1 g L^–1, decreased the surface tension of the aqueous solutions by 25–42% as compared to pure water. This effect was further enhanced when humic-like substances were mixed with ammonium sulphate. In order to support model calculations Szyskowski functions were fitted to the data to formulate the surface tension effect as a function of concentration.Finally, natural humic substances (fulvic and humic acids) were investigated under the same conditions. The experiments revealed that the surface tension decreasing effect of atmospheric humic-like substances differed from that of the studied terrestrial and aquatic humic substances: the latter substances decreased the surface tension of the aqueous solution to a lesser extent (7–23%) than atmospheric HULIS. This deviation can be explained with the different composition (e.g. the ratio of aromatic to aliphatic moieties) of the substances investigated.