Numerical modelling of the potential effects of a dam on a coastal aquifer in S. Spain

This study presents the results of a three‐dimensional variable‐density numerical modelling of the Motril‐Salobreña coastal aquifer and the possible effects of the entry into service in May 2005 of the Rules Dam, located just 17 km from the coast. Present parameters of the Motril‐Salobreña aquifer show that the system's conditions are very similar to a natural regime. The dam will substantially alter aquifer recharge, as the entry flow through the alluvial sediments of the Guadalfeo River will be entirely cut off or drastically reduced. Different scenarios reproducing the possible evolution of the aquifer under operation of the Rules Dam have been modelled. In most cases, results indicate that the conditions of the aquifer would worsen, with a general advance of the freshwater–saltwater interface. The area with most risk of saltwater intrusion is the old mouth of the Guadalfeo River, where the mixing zone could advance 1200 m inland. It is proposed that maintaining a 5–6 Mm³ year^?1 ‘ecological flow’ in the Guadalfeo River could prevent this saline advance. This application demonstrates that variable‐density models are potentially useful tools for estimating the effects of dams on the hydrodynamic and hydrochemical conditions of a coastal aquifer. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Exploring seven hundred years of transhumance,climate dynamic,fire and human activity through a historical mountain pass in central Spain

A high-altitude peat sequence from the heart of the Spanish Central System (Gredos range) was analysed through a multi-proxy approach to determine the sensitivity of high-mountain habitats to climate, fire and land use changes during the last seven hundred years, providing valuable insight into our understanding of the vegetation history and environmental changes in a mountain pass close to a traditional route of transhumance. The pollen data indicate that the vegetation was dominated by shrublands and grasslands with scattered pines in high-mountain areas, while in the valleys cereals, chestnut and olive trees were cultivated. Strong declines of high-mountain pines percentages are recorded at 1540, 1675, 1765, 1835 and 1925 cal AD, which may be related to increasing grazing activities and/or the occurrence of anthropogenic fires. The practice of mountain summer farming and transhumance deeply changed and redesigned the landscape of the high altitudes in central Spain (Gredos range) since the Middle Ages, although its dynamics was influenced in some way by climate variability of the past seven centuries.     

Species and plant community reorganization in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt under climate change conditions

This study analyzes six vegetation communities in relation to current climatic parameters and eight climate change scenarios along an elevation gradient extending from 2,710 m to 4,210m in the Trans-Mexican Volcanic Belt. The projected movements of 25 plant species with the current restricted or wide altitudinal distributions were also modeled. To relate climatic parameters to the species and communities, a Precipitation/Temperature(P/T)index was used both for the current and the different climate-change scenarios. The temperatures are expected to increase by 1.1°C to 1.7°C by 2020 and by2°C to 3°C by 2050. A decrease of 4% to 13% in the annual precipitation is expected for the 2020 horizon,and a reduction between 3% and 20% is expected for2050. The reductions in water availability were projected for all altitude levels and plant communities.The most marked reduction was under the HADLEYA2 scenario, in which the lower limit of the altitudinal range increased from 2,710 to 3,310 m(2050 horizon)with reductions in the P/T index between 36% and39% compared to the current climate. Most plant species tended to shift their distribution from 200 to300 m upward in the 2020 temporal horizon scenarios. The Pinus hartwegii, Alnus jorullensis and Pinus montezumae communities would have a shorter altitudinal range as they move upward and merge with the remaining species at the higher altitudinal range. For the 2050 temporal horizon,30% of the species, primarily those from the higher altitudinal range, would disappear because their P/Tindex values would be above the limit of plant survival(4,210 m).     

POLARIX: a pathfinder mission of X-ray polarimetry

Since the birth of X-ray astronomy, spectral, spatial and timing observation improved dramatically, procuring a wealth of information on the majority of the classes of the celestial sources. Polarimetry, instead, remained basically unprobed. X-ray polarimetry promises to provide additional information procuring two new observable quantities, the degree and the angle of polarization. Polarization from celestial X-ray sources may derive from emission mechanisms themselves such as cyclotron, synchrotron and non-thermal bremsstrahlung, from scattering in aspheric accreting plasmas, such as disks, blobs and columns and from the presence of extreme magnetic field by means of vacuum polarization and birefringence. Matter in strong gravity fields and Quantum Gravity effects can be studied by X-ray polarimetry, too. POLARIX is a mission dedicated to X-ray polarimetry. It exploits the polarimetric response of a Gas Pixel Detector, combined with position sensitivity, that, at the focus of a telescope, results in a huge increase of sensitivity. The heart of the detector is an Application-Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC) chip with 105,600 pixels each one containing a full complete electronic chain to image the track produced by the photoelectron. Three Gas Pixel Detectors are coupled with three X-ray optics which are the heritage of JET-X mission. A filter wheel hosting calibration sources unpolarized and polarized is dedicated to each detector for periodic on-ground and in-flight calibration. POLARIX will measure time resolved X-ray polarization with an angular resolution of about 20 arcsec in a field of view of 15 × 15 arcmin and with an energy resolution of 20% at 6 keV. The Minimum Detectable Polarization is 12% for a source having a flux of 1 mCrab and 10⁵ s of observing time. The satellite will be placed in an equatorial orbit of 505 km of altitude by a Vega launcher. The telemetry down-link station will be Malindi. The pointing of POLARIX satellite will be gyroless and it will perform a double pointing during the earth occultation of one source, so maximizing the scientific return. POLARIX data are for 75% open to the community while 25% + SVP (Science Verification Phase, 1 month of operation) is dedicated to a core program activity open to the contribution of associated scientists. The planned duration of the mission is one year plus three months of commissioning and SVP, suitable to perform most of the basic science within the reach of this instrument. A nice to have idea is to use the same existing mandrels to build two additional telescopes of iridium with carbon coating plus two more detectors. The effective area in this case would be almost doubled.     

Galaxy–QSO correlation induced by weak gravitational lensing arising from large-scale structure

Observational evidence shows that gravitational lensing induces an angular correlation between the distribution of galaxies and much more distant QSOs. We use weak gravitational lensing theory to calculate this angular correlation, updating previous calculations and presenting new results exploring the dependence of the correlation on the large-scale structure. We study the dependence of the predictions on a variety of cosmological models, such as cold dark matter models, mixed dark matter models and models based on quintessence. We also study the dependence on the assumptions made about the nature of the primordial fluctuation spectrum: adiabatic, isocurvature and power spectra motivated by the cosmic string scenario are investigated. Special attention is paid to the issue of galaxy biasing, which is fully incorporated. We show that different mass power spectra imply distinct predictions for the angular correlation, and therefore the angular correlation provides an extra source of information about cosmological parameters and mechanisms of structure formation. We compare our results with observational data and discuss their potential uses. In particular, it is suggested that the observational determination of the galaxy–QSO correlation may be used to give an independent measurement of the mass power spectrum.     

Quantitative perturbation theory by successive elimination of harmonics

We revisit some results of perturbation theories by a method of successive elimination of harmonics inspired by some ideas of Delaunay. On the one hand, we give a connection between the KAM theorem and the Nekhoroshev theorem. On the other hand, we support in a quantitative fashion a semi-numerical method of analysis of a perturbed system recently introduced by one of the authors.     

Correspondence between f(G) gravity and holographic dark energy via power-law solution

In this paper, we discuss cosmological application of holographic Dark Energy (HDE) in the framework of f(G) modified gravity. For this purpose, we construct f(G) model with the inclusion of HDE and a well-known power law form of the scale factor a(t). The reconstructed f(G) is found to satisfy a sufficient condition for a realistic modified gravity model. We find quintessence behavior of effective equation of state (EoS) parameter ω _DE through energy conditions in this context. Moreover, we observe that the squared speed of sound $v_{s}^{2}$ remains negative, which indicates the instability of HDE f(G) model.     

Radio Emission from Three-dimensional Relativistic Hydrodynamic Jets: Observational Evidence of Jet Stratification

High-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio, blue-violet spectra of three red giant branch tip stars in M15 have been obtained with the Keck I High-Resolution Echelle Spectrograph. These spectra have been analyzed to determine the abundances of several neutron-capture elements, including the radioactive chronometer element thorium. There are two principal results of this study. First, the abundances of the heavier (Z>/=56) elements for each of the three stars is well matched by a scaled solar system r-process abundance distribution. Second, a weighted mean-observed Th/Eu ratio for the stars implies an age for the neutron-capture material in M15 stars of 14+/-3 Gyr, in reasonable agreement with other recent age estimates for Galactic globular clusters.     

An observational study of coronal hole rotation over the sunspot cycle

An analysis of the rotation of coronal holes (CHs) spanning 18 years was done based on data from theCatalogue of Coronal Holes (Sanchez-Ibarra and Barraza-Paredes, 1992). A differential rotation of CHs is confirmed for the totality of CHs, but a different behavior was found when those were separated as equatorial or isolated, and polar hole extensions, such as in theCatalogue. Isolated CHs show a typical differential rotation, but polar hole extensions display two different types of behavior: a rotation rate below 40° ± 5° of heliographic latitude, increasing to the equator, and a rotation rate above the same heliographic latitude but increasing to the poles. Also discussed here is how this last result agrees with other studies that indicate the mostly rigid rotation of the corona at higher latitudes.