Characterization of the near-Earth Asteroid 2002 NY40

In August 2002, the near-Earth Asteroid 2002 NY₄₀, made its closest approach to the Earth. This provided an opportunity to study a near-Earth asteroid with a variety of instruments. Several of the telescopes at the Maui Space Surveillance System were trained at the asteroid and collected adaptive optics images, photometry and spectroscopy. Analysis of the imagery reveals the asteroid is triangular shaped with significant self-shadowing. The photometry reveals a 20-h period and the spectroscopy shows that the asteroid is a Q-type.     

Governing epidemics in an age of complexity: Narratives,politics and pathways to sustainability

This paper elaborates a ‘pathways approach’ to addressing the governance challenges posed by the dynamics of complex, coupled, multi-scale systems, while incorporating explicit concern for equity, social justice and the wellbeing of poor and marginalised groups. It illustrates the approach in relation to current policy challenges of dealing with epidemics and so-called ‘emerging infectious diseases’ such as avian influenza and haemorrhagic fevers, which involve highly dynamic, cross-scale, often-surprising viral–social–political–ecological interactions. Amidst complexity, we show how different actors in the epidemics field produce particular narratives which frame systems and their dynamics in different ways, promote particular goals and values, and justify particular pathways of disease response. These range from ‘outbreak narratives’ emphasising threat to global populations, to alternative but often marginalised narratives variously emphasising long-term structural, land use and environmental change, local knowledge and livelihood goals. We highlight tendencies – supported by cognitive, institutional and political pressures – for powerful actors and institutions to ‘close down’ around narratives that emphasise stability, underplaying longer term, less controllable dynamics. Arguing that governance approaches need to ‘open up’ to embrace strategies for resilience and robustness in relation to epidemics, we outline what some of the routes towards this might involve, and what the resulting governance models might look like. Key are practices and arrangements that involve flexibility, diversity, adaptation, learning and reflexivity, as well as highlighting and supporting alternative pathways within a progressive politics of sustainability.     

Tectonic controls of Mississippi Valley-type lead–zinc mineralization in orogenic forelands

Most of the world's Mississippi Valley-type (MVT) zinc–lead deposits occur in orogenic forelands. We examine tectonic aspects of foreland evolution as part of a broader study of why some forelands are rich in MVT deposits, whereas others are barren. The type of orogenic foreland (collisional versus Andean-type versus inversion-type) is not a first-order control, because each has MVT deposits (e.g., Northern Arkansas, Pine Point, and Cevennes, respectively). In some MVT districts (e.g., Tri-State and Central Tennessee), mineralization took place atop an orogenic forebulge, a low-amplitude (a few hundred meters), long-wavelength (100–200 km) swell formed by vertical loading of the foreland plate. In the foreland of the active Banda Arc collision zone, a discontinuous forebulge reveals some of the physiographic and geologic complexities of the forebulge environment, and the importance of sea level in determining whether or not a forebulge will emerge and thus be subject to erosion. In addition to those on extant forebulges, some MVT deposits occur immediately below unconformities that originated at a forebulge, only to be subsequently carried toward the orogen by the plate-tectonic conveyor (e.g., Daniel's Harbour and East Tennessee). Likewise, some deposits are located along syn-collisional, flexure-induced normal and strike-slip faults in collisional forelands (e.g., Northern Arkansas, Daniel's Harbour, and Tri-State districts). These findings reveal the importance of lithospheric flexure, and suggest a conceptual tectonic model that accounts for an important subset of MVT deposits—those in the forelands of collisional orogens. The MVT deposits occur both in flat-lying and in thrust-faulted strata; in the latter group, mineralization postdated thrusting in some instances (e.g., Picos de Europa) but may have predated thrusting in other cases (e.g., East Tennessee).     

APPLICATION OF THE FIVE-MODE METHOD TO THREE GIT-IWG ROCK REFERENCE SAMPLES

The "Five-Mode Method" for evaluation of compiled data has been applied to three well-established GIT-IWG rock reference samples: Anorthosite AN-G, Basalt BE-N and Granite MA-N. Results are compared to the accepted values, and where the two values are not in accord, a new procedure, the Graphical Moving Mode, is introduced. It is used to provide a clearer picture of the nature of the distribution of the raw data for each constituent, and, possibly to demonstrate the advantages of using the modal approach.     

Skewed Occurrence Frequency of Water Temperature and Salinity in the Subarctic Regions

In a previous paper (Oguma and Nagata, 2002), it was shown that frequency distributions of temperature and salinity in the sea off Sanriku Coast, Japan are skewed, and sometimes observed values exceed m + 5σ (m = mean, σ = standard deviation). This means that, if we apply a 3σ criterion for a range check, many real data would be lost. We have expanded our analysis to the subarctic North Pacific, the subarctic North Atlantic and their surrounding areas, by computing the distributions of skewness and kurtosis. It is found that the region of high positive skewness extends in an east-north-east direction in the Mixed Water Region from off Sanriku, and reaches to about 155°E. A high negative skewness zone is recognized along the southern margin of the Kuroshio Extension. These are thought to be generated by the breaking of the meander of the Kuroshio Extension and subsequent ejection of warm and cold eddies to the north and south, respectively. Other high positive skewness areas are found to the south of Kuril Islands and in the Japan Sea. These are generated due to very sharp vertical gradients of temperature and salinity. The situation in the North Atlantic is very similar to the North Pacific, though the detailed nature is changed due to differences of oceanographic condition. The effect of grid size on the skewed nature of the distribution is also discussed. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.