Bioaccumulation of nitroarenes in bivalves at Osaka Bay, Japan

This paper reports for the first time the detection and occurrence of nitroarenes (NPAHs) in marine organisms. Mussels and oysters collected from Osaka Bay, Japan, had total NPAHs concentrations that ranged from 2380 to 24,688 pg/g dry and 2672 to 25,961 pg/g dry, respectively. Relatively higher concentrations were detected in sampling sites located near the central district and suburbs of Osaka City implying that the most probable sources of NPAHs in the two bivalves are exhaust gases and smokes emitted by automobiles and industrial plants. Bivalves had relatively higher residues of 1-nitronaphthalene, 2-nitronaphthalene, 3-nitrophenanthrene, and 9-nitrophenanthrenes. Residues of 2-nitrofluorene, 1-nitropyrene, 4-nitropyrenes, and 6-nitrochrysene were much lower compared to nitronaphthalenes and nitrophenanthrenes. Inter-species differences was only observed for 2-nitronaphthalene with oysters exhibiting significantly higher residues than mussels.     

Early diagenesis of fatty acids in lacustrine sediments—I. Identification and distribution of fatty acids in recent sediment from a freshwater lake

Fatty acids have been isolated and quantitatively determined from a 1.5 m sediment core of Lake Suwa, a eutrophic lake in the central districts of Japan.The fatty acids identified by combined gas chromatography-mass spectrometry were straight-chain saturated (C₁₂ to C₃₄), monounsaturated with even carbon number (C₁₆ to C₂₄) and branched-chain (iso, anteiso, 10-methyloctadecanoic) acids. The concentrations of the higher molecular weight (? C₂₀) saturated fatty acids remained nearly constant throughout the core, suggesting a high degree of preservation of those acids, whereas the monounsaturated and the lower molecular weight saturated fatty acids indicated a great decrease in concentration with depth to an approximately 20cm level. It is suggested that the microbial activity in sediments causes a significant reconstruction of the fatty acid distribution during early diagenesis.     

Earthquake source time-function from coherent and incoherent rupture

Theoretical study has been made investigating the seismic source spectrum generated from a coherent and incoherent rupture. An earthquake is modeled by a finite propagating rupture on a fault plane where fault heterogeneities, fault patches, are randomly distributed. The dislocation velocity of such a fracture is assumed to be approximated by a stochastic process of random impacts of particles obeying Brownian motion. The parameters of the present stochastic source are seismic moment, fault dimension, fault patch intensity, and patch fracture time. The model predicts two corner frequencies; one originates from the fault finiteness and the other from the fracturing of fault patches. The seismic source spectrum from the model consequently shows distinct frequency dependence of ω⁰ − ω⁻² − ω^−γ − ω⁻² with increasing angular frequency ω, where γ is about 1.0. The seismic moment is controlled by an average dislocation on the fault and by the fault dimension. The short-period spectrum, which is much more abundant than that of the ordinary deterministic models, is controlled by the product of the fault patch intensity and the square root of their total number. The ω⁻² high frequency asymptote of the theoretical spectrum is in conformity with the white acceleration spectrum usually found in the literature, and it guarantees the finite total energy of the rupture process.     

Magnetic pulsation Pi2 as a sensitive indicator of magnetospheric substorm

The identification of substorm onset is quite important in studying the mechanism of excitation of substorm disturbances. At present, one of the most practical methods to identify accurately the onset of substorms is to use low-latitude Pi2, which is sensitively related to the plasma instability in the magnetosphere, that triggers the substorm disturbances. This method is applied to examine the onset times of three substorm events which were already defined by various methods other than the low-latitude Pi2 method. Preceding the onset times, other evident substorm onsets are clearly determined with Pi2 onsets for all the three events by examining only the H-component of rapid-run magnetogram from a single low-latitude station in the dark hemisphere. Cooperative monitoring of Pi2 at three low-latitude stations on three well-separated meridians, therefore, is really effective in detecting most substorms.     

Recent insights into analytical precision and modelling of DDA and NMM for practical problems

This paper discussed the analytical precision on equations of motion in some practical studies that use 2-D DDA, 2D-Coupled analysis of NMM & DDA, and 3D-DDA. We point out the main reason for numerical instability in DDA is loss of the effective digits when superposing the global stiffness matrix under the variable conditions of large and the small blocks. Categories of analyses are distributed in 2D-DDA static masonry structures such as the Great Pyramid and the Pont du Gard, 2D-DDA dynamic rock fall problems and the sensitivity of its analysis on the velocity ratio and the penalty, earthquake response analysis of rock slopes, 2D-NMM, 2D-coupled analysis of DDA and NMM and 3D-DDA rock fall problem. The selected examples on the Great Pyramid, Pont du Gard and Bayon Temple at Angkor Thom are located in Egypt, France and Cambodia respectively as UNESCO world heritages sites. The authors evaluated the applicability of the methods and the reliability of the results by comparing different methods and site observations from the practical problems.     

Characterising and modelling the excavation damaged zone in crystalline rock in the context of radioactive waste disposal

This paper describes current knowledge about the nature of and potential for thermo–hydro–mechanical–chemical modelling of the excavation damaged zone (EDZ) around the excavations for an underground radioactive waste repository. In the first part of the paper, the disturbances associated with excavation are explained, together with reviews of Workshops that have been held on the subject. In the second part of the paper, the results of a DECOVALEX [DEmonstration of COupled models and their VALidation against EXperiment: research funded by an international consortium of radioactive waste regulators and implementers (http://www.decovalex.com)] research programme on modelling the EDZ are presented. Four research teams used four different models to simulate the complete stress–strain curve for Avro granite from the Swedish Äspö Hard Rock Laboratory. Subsequent research extended the work to computer simulation of the evolution of the repository using a ‘wall-block model’ and a ‘near-field model’. This included assessing the evolution of stress, failure and permeability and time-dependent effects during repository evolution. As discussed, all the computer models are well suited to sensitivity studies for evaluating the influence of their respective supporting parameters on the complete stress–strain curve for rock and for modelling the EDZ.     

1-Gbps VLBI, The First Detection of Fringes

We report on the detection of VLBI fringes from quasars by a new VLBI system operating at 1 Gbps (1024 Mbits-per-second). Newly developed 1024 Msps (mega sample-per-second) AD samplers and 1024 Mbps recorders were used for the observations. A correlator with external buffers was used for the 1024 Mbps correlation processing of the tapes data.Our new VLBI system enabled 1024 Mbps VLBI, and this allowed the sampling of a 512 MHz bandwidth from a radio telescope receiver. This is the highest sampling speed ever used for VLBI, and the widest bandwidth used for VLBI observation. Initial sensitivity as evaluated by SNR comparison with earlier VLBI systems produced results to matched the expanded bandwidth. In our first observations, simultaneous optical fibre linked real-time VLBI observations were made to check the validity of data and precisely detemine the clock offsets among the radio telescopes.     

Interannual Changes of the Winter to Early Spring Biomass and Composition of Mesozooplankton in the Kuroshio Region in Relation to Climatic Factors

Interannual variations of biomass of major mesozooplankton groups (Cnidaria, Chaetognatha, Copepoda, Crustacea other than copepods, Tunicata) in the January to March period were examined in the slope, Kuroshio and offshore waters off the Pacific coast of western Japan (western region) from 1971 to 1988 and off central Japan (central region) from 1971 to 1989. The mean biomass for each year of most of the mesozooplankton groups was high in the early 1970s and tended to decrease (in the western region) or to have dropped to a lower level (in the central region) after the mid-1970s. Stepwise multiple linear regression analyses of the mean biomass for each year of each mesozooplankton group in the Kuroshio in both regions against climatic factors revealed that the biomass was related positively to wind speed. It is therefore considered that the nutrient supply to the upper layers limits the production of many of the mesozooplankton groups examined in the Kuroshio, even in winter. Similar relationships were also found for the biomass of Copepoda, non-copepod Crustacea and Tunicata in the offshore water in the western region. The percentage of copepods in the biomass in the central region seemed to decrease under high water temperature conditions, while that of Chaetgnatha tended to increase. Climatic factors thus largely influenced the interannual variations of biomass and composition of mesozooplankton in and near the Kuroshio during the winter to early spring period. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.