Pliocene clays from Aegina (Greece): Reference material for chemical provenance studies on bronze age pottery from the Island

Normally, the use of clays as reference materials in chemical provenance studies of ancient ceramics is complicated due to the original clay paste processing. The primary mixing and/or refining of raw materials during pottery production makes a straightforward comparison of archaeological ceramics with extant geological materials difficult if not impossible in many cases. However, in the case of Pliocene clays from Aegina (Greece), which were examined chemically and mineralogically and compared with Bronze Age pottery produced on the island, a successful exception can be presented. The chemical composition of a large group of Aeginetan pottery resembles the chemical composition of clays from a deposit in close vicinity to the main Bronze Age settlement of the island. Clays from specific outcrops exhibit considerable chemical and mineralogical homogeneity, and the suitability of those clays for pottery production apparently made substantial clay paste processing unnecessary. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Meteorite impacts in the ocean: the danger of tsunamis on the coast of Buenos Aires Province,Argentina

Natural Hazards - Comets, meteorites, or asteroids impacting against the Earth are not unusual events. Such impacts on the ocean could produce tsunamis which can reach coastal areas. This paper...     

Fast numerics for the spin orbit equation with realistic tidal dissipation and constant eccentricity

We present an algorithm for the rapid numerical integration of a time-periodic ODE with a small dissipation term that is \(C^1\) in the velocity. Such an ODE arises as a model of spin–orbit coupling in a star/planet system, and the motivation for devising a fast algorithm for its solution comes from the desire to estimate probability of capture in various solutions, via Monte Carlo simulation: the integration times are very long, since we are interested in phenomena occurring on timescales of the order of \(10^6\)–\(10^7\) years. The proposed algorithm is based on the high-order Euler method which was described in Bartuccelli et al. (Celest Mech Dyn Astron 121(3):233–260, 2015), and it requires computer algebra to set up the code for its implementation. The payoff is an overall increase in speed by a factor of about 7.5 compared to standard numerical methods. Means for accelerating the purely numerical computation are also discussed.