The Infrared Spectral Energy Distribution And Polarization Of Comet C/1995 O1 (Hale–Bopp) During 1997

Comets, such as C/1995 O1 (Hale-Bopp), are important to studies of the origins of the solar system because they are believed to be frozen reservoirs of the most primitive pre-solar dust grains and ices. Here, we report 1.2–18.5 μm infrared (IR) spectrophotometric and polarimetric observations of comet Hale-Bopp. Our measurements of the spectral energy distribution (SED) and IR polarization near perhelion passage suggest that emission from the coma was dominated by scattering and thermal emission from sub-micron sized dust grains. Hale-Bopp's surprising brightness may have been largely a result of the properties of its coma grains rather than the size of its nucleus. The thermal emission continuum from the grains had a superheat of S = T_color/T_BB ≥ 1.7, the peak of the 10 μm silicate emission feature was 1.7 mags above the carbon grain continuum, and the albedo (reflectivity) of the grains was ≥ 0.4 at a scattering angles, θ ≥ 135° This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

U-Pb and Pb-Pb apatite ages for Antarctic achondrite Graves Nunataks 06129

The Antarctic achondrite Graves Nunataks 06128 (GRA 06128) and Graves Nunataks 06129 (GRA 06129) represent a unique high-temperature, nonbasaltic magmatism in the early solar system. These objects have been interpreted as products of low-degree partial melting of volatile-rich chondritic material, which may have been the asteroid parent bodies of brachinite. Previous studies have investigated their crystallization and metamorphic history with various isotope systematics. Here, we report the U-Pb intercept age of 4466 ± 29 Ma and the weighted-average ²⁰⁷Pb-²⁰⁶Pb age of 4460 ± 30 Ma for the Cl-apatite grains from GRA 06129. Our apatite ages are obviously younger than that of the ²⁶Al-²⁶Mg model age (4565.9 ± 0.3 Ma; Shearer et al. 2010a ), but are the same as the ⁴⁰Ar-³⁹Ar age obtained via step-heating of the bulk rock (4460 ± 28 Ma; Fernandes and Shearer 2010 ; Shearer et al. 2010a ). Based on petrographic observations, merrillites are usually rimmed by apatite and exist as inclusions in apatite. Therefore, the apatite U-Pb age from GRA 06129 probably records a metamorphic event of replacing merrillite with apatite, caused by Cl-rich melts or fluids on their parent body. A collisional event has provided the impact heating for this metamorphic event. Increasing amounts of geochronologic evidence show that the giant impact of the Moon-forming event has affected the asteroid belt at 4450–4470 Ma (Bogard and Garrison 2009 ; Popova et al. 2013 ; Yin et al. 2014 ; Zhang et al. 2016 ). Considering the contemporary metamorphic events for GRA 06129 (4460 ± 30 Ma), it is likely that the asteroid parent body of GRA 06129 was also affected by the same giant impact as the Moon-forming event.     

Evolution of Cold-Air-Pooling Processes in Complex Terrain

Elucidating cold-air-pooling processes forms part of the longstanding problem of parametrizing the effects of complex terrain in larger-scale numerical models. The Weather Research and Forecasting model has been set-up and run at high resolution over an idealized alpine-valley domain with a width of order 10 km, to investigate the four-dimensional variation of key cold-air-pooling forcing mechanisms, under decoupled stable conditions. Results of the simulation indicated that the total average valley-atmosphere cooling is driven by a complex balance/interplay between radiation and dynamical effects. Three fairly distinct regimes in the evolution of cold-air-pooling processes have been identified. Starting about 1 h before sunset, there is an initial 30-min period when the downslope flows are initiated and the total average valley-atmosphere instantaneous cooling is dominated by radiative heat loss. A period of instability follows, when there is a competition between radiation and dynamical effects, lasting some 90 min. Finally, there is a gradual reduction of the contribution of radiative cooling from 75 to 37 %. The maximum cold-air-pool intensity corresponds to the time of minimum radiative cooling, within the period of instability. Although, once the flow is established, the valley atmosphere cools at broadly similar rates by radiation and dynamical effects, overall, radiation effects dominate the total average valley-atmosphere cooling. Some of the intricacies of the valley mixing have been revealed. There are places where the dynamics dominate the cooling and radiation effects are minor. Characteristics of internal gravity waves propagating away from the slopes are discussed.     

Active sensing using impedance‐based ARX models and extreme value statistics for damage detection

In this paper, the applicability of an auto‐regressive model with exogenous inputs (ARX) in the frequency domain to structural health monitoring (SHM) is established. Damage sensitive features that explicitly consider non‐linear system input/output relationships are extracted from the ARX model. Furthermore, because of the non‐Gaussian nature of the extracted features, Extreme Value Statistics (EVS) is employed to develop a robust damage classifier. EVS provides superior performance to standard statistical methods because the data of interest are in the tails (extremes) of the damage sensitive feature distribution. The suitability of the ARX model, combined with EVS, to non‐linear damage detection is demonstrated using vibration data obtained from a laboratory experiment of a three‐story building model. It is found that the vibration‐based method, while able to discern when damage is present in the structure, is unable to localize the damage to a particular joint. An impedance‐based active sensing method using piezoelectric (PZT) material as both an actuator and a sensor is then investigated as an alternative solution to the problem of damage localization. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Survey of Rural Wells in Missouri for Pesticides and Nitrate

Two hundred and one rural wells were sampled in eight agricultural areas of Missouri. Samples were analyzed for 25 pesticides and nitrate. Forty-three percent of the wells sampled had at least one pesticide detection. Thirteen percent of the wells had at least one detection ≧ 1 ppb and these concentrations were confirmed. Only one well exceeded U.S. EPA Health Advisory levels. Twenty-two percent of the wells exceeded the U.S. EPA Drinking Water Standard for nitrate. Pesticide detections were most strongly correlated to well depth. Nitrate levels were primarily related to well depth, well construction methods, and well siting.     

The Effect of the Great Barrier Reef on the Propagation of the 2007 Solomon Islands Tsunami Recorded in Northeastern Australia

The effect of offshore coral reefs on the impact from a tsunami remains controversial. For example, field surveys after the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami indicate that the energy of the tsunami was reduced by natural coral reef barriers in Sri Lanka, but there was no indication that coral reefs off Banda Aceh, Indonesia had any effect on the tsunami. In this paper, we investigate whether the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) offshore Queensland, Australia, may have weakened the tsunami impact from the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake. The fault slip distribution of the 2007 Solomon Islands earthquake was firstly obtained by teleseismic inversion. The tsunami was then propagated to shallow water just offshore the coast by solving the linear shallow water equations using a staggered grid finite-difference method. We used a relatively high resolution (approximately 250 m) bathymetric grid for the region just off the coast containing the reef. The tsunami waveforms recorded at tide gauge stations along the Australian coast were then compared to the results from the tsunami simulation when using both the realistic 250 m resolution bathymetry and with two grids having fictitious bathymetry: One in which the the GBR has been replaced by a smooth interpolation from depths outside the GBR to the coast (the “No GBR” grid), and one in which the GBR has been replaced by a flat plane at a depth equal to the mean water depth of the GBR (the “Average GBR” grid). From the comparison between the synthetic waveforms both with and without the Great Barrier Reef, we found that the Great Barrier Reef significantly weakened the tsunami impact. According to our model, the coral reefs delayed the tsunami arrival time by 5–10 minutes, decreased the amplitude of the first tsunami pulse to half or less, and lengthened the period of the tsunami.     

The appearance of Ulva laetevirens (Ulvophyceae,Chlorophyta) in the northeast coast of the United States of America

Introduced species may outcompete or hybridize with native species, resulting in the loss of native biodiversity or even alteration of ecosystem processes. In this study, we reported an alien distromatic Ulva species, which was found in an embayment (Holly Pond) connected with Long Island Sound, USA. The morphological and anatomical observations in combination with molecular data were used for its identification to species. Anatomy of collected specimens showed that the cell shape in rhizoidal and basal regions was round and the marginal teeth along the basal and median region were not found. These characteristics were primarily identical to the diagnostic characteristics of Ulva laetevirens Areschoug (Chlorophyta). The plastid-encoding tufA and nucleusencoding ITS1 were used for its molecular identification. Phylogenetic analysis for the tufA gene placed the specimens from Holly Pond in a well-supported clade along with published sequences of U. laetevirens identified early without any sequence divergence. In ITS tree, the sample also formed well-supported clades with the sequences of U. laetevirens with an estimated sequence divergence among the taxa in these clades as low as 1%. These findings confirmed the morpho-anatomical conclusion. Native to Australia, this species was reported in several countries along the Mediterranean coast after the late of 1990s. This is the first time that U. laetevirens is found in the northeast coast of United States and the second record for Atlantic North America.     

Astrobiology—What Can We Do on the Moon?

The Moon does not seem to be a place for a biologist. However, it offers the possibility of unravelling a better understanding of the conditions for habitability on the Earth and the conditions for life on the early Earth. It will be a place where much of the life sciences technologies required to establish a permanent human presence in space can be tested to complete reliability. Specifically, a long-term life sciences laboratory on the Moon can be used to investigate three areas of science that are currently poorly understood: (1) the linearity or non-linearity of the effects of different magnitudes of space environmental stresses on organisms, particularly gravity; (2) the effects of cumulative environmental effects both in individual organisms and across generations, (3) the synergistic effects of different space environmental parameters on organisms. The close proximity and scientific importance of the Moon makes it a useful permanent location and staging post for the human expansion into space.     

Vertical cloud structure of Jupiter's Equitorial Plumes

A model for the vertical cloud structure of Jupiter's Equitorial Plumes is deduced based on an analysis of Voyager images of the equitorial region in the 6190Å methane band and the 6000-Å continuum, and ground-based 8900-Å methane band images of Jupiter. A computer code that represents scattering and absorption from aerosol and gas layers was applied to a heirarchy of increasingly complex model aerosol structures to match the observations in the three wavelengths. The observations are consistent with a model for the vertical cloud structure of the equitorial region that consists of four aerosol layers. A high-altitude haze layer (HAL) with optical depth τ = 1 uniformly blankets the equitorial region at an altitude between 100 and 250 mbar. Below that, a middle-level cloud layer between 400 and 800 mbar contains the well-known Equatorial Plumes. The Plume clouds are optically thick (τ ≥ 12), bright clouds with single scattering albedo $\text{ω}\text{= 0.997}$. They are probably composed of ammonia ice. The darker ($\text{ω}\text{= 0.990}$) interplume regions contain optically thinner clouds (2 ≤ τ ≤ 5) at the same altitude as the Plumes. An opaque cloud deck between 4000 and 6000 mbar, which is probably composed of water, forms the lowest model layer. In addition to these three layers, a thin forward scattering haze layer above 100 mbar was included in the models for consistency with previous work (Tomasko et al., 1978). We conclude that the vertical structure of the Equatorial Plume clouds is consistent with the hypothesis (Hunt et al., 1981) that the Plumes are caused by upwelling at the ammonia condensation level produced by bouyancy due to latent heat release from the condensation of water clouds nearly three scale heights below the Plumes.     

Formal definition and dating of the GSSP (Global Stratotype Section and Point) for the base of the Holocene using the Greenland NGRIP ice core,and selected auxiliary records

The Greenland ice core from NorthGRIP (NGRIP) contains a proxy climate record across the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary of unprecedented clarity and resolution. Analysis of an array of physical and chemical parameters within the ice enables the base of the Holocene, as reflected in the first signs of climatic warming at the end of the Younger Dryas/Greenland Stadial 1 cold phase, to be located with a high degree of precision. This climatic event is most clearly reflected in an abrupt shift in deuterium excess values, accompanied by more gradual changes in δ¹⁸O, dust concentration, a range of chemical species, and annual layer thickness. A timescale based on multi‐parameter annual layer counting provides an age of 11 700 calendar yr b2 k (before AD 2000) for the base of the Holocene, with a maximum counting error of 99 yr. A proposal that an archived core from this unique sequence should constitute the Global Stratotype Section and Point (GSSP) for the base of the Holocene Series/Epoch (Quaternary System/Period) has been ratified by the International Union of Geological Sciences. Five auxiliary stratotypes for the Pleistocene–Holocene boundary have also been recognised. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.