The crustal and lithospheric thicknesses of the Philippine Sea as compared to the Pacific

Results from 12 new two-ship seismic refraction profiles in the Philippine Sea detail regions of crustal thickness significantly less than average for the Pacific. A comparison of layer 3 and mantle intercept times shows that layer 3 in the West Philippine basin is 1–2 km thinner than for similarly aged crust in the Pacific. In the Parece Vela basin layer 3 is on average 0.5 km thinner than its Pacific counterpart but varies considerably across the basin. Layer 2 parameters are also quite variable between profiles but its thicknesses are in the mean 0.5–1.0 km less in the West Philippine basin than for either the Parece Vela basin or for any of the 7 Pacific age groups. In the northeastern sector of the West Philippine basin layer 2 and 3 are both particularly thin which results in a total crustal thickness of as little as 3–4 km.Pacific and Philippine depth versus age data from DSDP holes are corrected for these variations in crustal thicknesses. The resultant compensated mantle depths can only be fitted by theoretical conductive cooling curves which are depressed for the Philippine basins by an additional 1 km from those that would match Pacific depths. Given such an offset, Philippine Sea depth and heat flow values are consistent with thermal models in which the lithosphere may remain thinner than it is in the Pacific, but still must reach a minimum thickness of at least 50–75 km.     

Violent volcanism,stagnant oceans and some inferences regarding petroleum,strata-bound ores and mass extinctions

Past changes from a well-mixed aerated ocean to a stratified stagnant ocean are indicated by decreasing δ¹³C of limestone (opposite to prior conclusions) as well as by increasing δ³⁴S of marine sulfates. The proposed stagnant ocean model includes a warm CO₂-enriched atmosphere and a bathyal to abyssal marine system dominated by bacterial components in the food web and by consequent ‘light’ carbon in organic material and biogenic carbonates. Culminations of prolonged stagnant episodes correspond with marine faunal extinctions of Late Permian and Late Cretaceous time, and the protracted changes and correlations provide evidence against any hypothesis of mass extinction by sudden worldwide catastrophe, including the asteroid impact hypothesis. The Cretaceous stagnant ocean, taken as the prime example, is attributed to climatic warming triggered by volcanic CO₂ (greenhouse effect) and several feedbacks, including decreased Earth albedo and increased sinking of warm evaporite brines instead of aerated polar waters. Marine extinctions are attributed to upward expansion of the oxygen minimum zone and to catastrophic mixing of surface waters with poisonous sulfidic waters of the deeps. The stagnant ocean provided a counterbalance between deep reduction and shallow oxidation, conditions that favored maximal formation of black sulfidic shales, protopetroleum and sedimentary sulfide ores and shallow to mid-depth barite, phosphorite, iron ore, cherty iron formation, and sulfate-bearing red-beds. Trace elements concentrated in stagnant ocean sediments include chalcophile and Pt-group metals, negating claims that Ir provides a unique ‘fingerprint’ of meteorite impact and cosmic accretion.     

Noble-gas-rich separates from ordinary chondrites

Acid-resistant residues were prepared by HCl-HF demineralization of three H-type ordinary chondrites: Brownfield 1937 (H3), Dimmitt (H3,4), and Estacado (H6). These residues were found to contain a large proportion of the planetary-type trapped Ar, Kr, and Xe in the meteorites. The similarity of these acid residues to those from carbonaceous chondrites and LL-type ordinary chondrites suggests that the same phase carries the trapped noble gases in all these diverse meteorite types. Because the H group represents a large fraction of all meteorites, this result indicates that the gas-rich carrier phase is as universal as the trapped noble-gas component itself. When treated with an oxidizing etchant, the acid residues lost almost all their complement of noble gases. In addition, the Xe in at least one oxidized residue, from Dimmitt, displayed isotopic anomalies of the type known as CCFX or DME-Xe, which is characterized by simultaneous excesses of both the lightest and heaviest isotopes. The anomaly in the Dimmitt sample differs from that observed in carbonaceous-chondrite samples, however, in the relative proportions of the light- and heavy-isotope excesses.The results of this study do not show an inverse correlation between trapped ${}^{20}\text{Ne}{}^{36}\text{Ar}$ and trapped ³⁶Ar abundance, as has been reported for acid-resistant residues from LL-chondrites. The results of this work therefore fail to support the hypothesis that meteoritic trapped noble gas abundances were established at the time of condensation.     

Polymerization of silicate and aluminate tetrahedra in glasses,melts, and aqueous solutions—III. Local silicon environments and internal nucleation in silicate glasses

The local, up to second nearest neighbor, around Si atoms in alkali and alkaline earth-silicate glasses has been characterized by SiKβ X-ray emission spectroscopy. Principally two types of Si atoms can be distinguished. These are Si atoms with only other Si atoms as second nearest neighbours, and those with one or more alkali or alkaline earth atoms in their second coordination sphere. The spectroscopic results indicate that the lower molecular weight alkali and alkaline earth-silicate glasses tend towards a bimodal distribution of local Si environments, which is designated Q₄-Q₀ following the assignment by Engelhardtet al. (1975) for silica species in aqueous solutions. From a different perspective the outcome of these experiments suggests that, though the concentration of bridging oxygens (O(br)) and non-bridging oxygens (O(nbr)) is fixed by the stoichiometry of the glass, the distribution of O(nbr) in the glass varies according to the kind of alkali or alkaline earth atom present. From observed nucleation data on R₂O-SiO₂ (R = Li, Na, K) glasses it is inferred that a bimodal Q distribution and in particular the presence of Q₀ species dominates the internal nucleation process in the alkali and alkaline earth-silicate glasses studied. Using this inference rationalizations can readily be found to explain the observed resistance to thermal shock and devitrification rates of these glasses.     

A Second-Order Closure for Neutrally Stratified Vegetative Canopy Flows

An existing second-order closure model is modified to include the effects on mean and turbulent motions of form and viscous drag in vegetative canopies. The additional physical mechanisms represented by the closure are viscous and pressure drag on canopy elements, their role in momentum absorption, in the creation of fine scale turbulent eddies and in enhancing the total viscous dissipation in the canopy airspace. Viscous dissipation is split into a standard 'isotropic contribution associated with the spectral eddy cascade and a foliage contribution associated with work against pressure and viscous drag on the foliage. Changes in the turbulent time scale that result from these mechanisms are included in the standard parameterisations of third moments and of the eddy cascade contribution to dissipation. The model is tested against a wind- tunnel 'wheat canopy, a corn canopy and a eucalypt canopy, a height range from 50 mm to 12.6 m. Model results show that the parameterisations of foliage interaction used in the closure are sufficiently robust to reproduce second-moment profiles within and above vegetative canopies to a high degree of accuracy without resorting to 'tuning of the model constants. The model also shows the natural emergence of two length scales, one associated with the familiar eddy cascade isotropic contribution to total dissipation and the other associated with the length scales of the canopy elements.     

Dynamic interaction of seismic and volcanic activity of the Nazca plate edges

Cumulative seismic strain release, during the period from 1964 through 1972, along the East Pacific and Chile rise edges of the Nazca plate is related to cumulative strain release of shallow earthquakes along the South American sinking edge: periods of high strain release along the rises alternated systematically with periods of high strain release along the sink.Volcanic activity (number of volcanoes in eruption per year between 1900 and 1968) migrates from Central to South America at some 900 km/year. High volcanic activity in Central America usually precedes large-magnitude earthquakes in Chile by several years, and would appear to be dynamically interrelated with the alternating strain release along the Nazca plate edges.     

Area-based policies for crime prevention

The new emphasis upon crime prevention which has appeared in recent years has led to realignments in policing policy in both the United Kingdom and the United States. Although by no means leading to the abandonment of the more traditional forms of policing, schemes such as Neighbourhood Watch and the wider concept of community policing involve far greater levels of interaction between the police and the public. Area-based policies have appeared in numerous forms and have proved convenient ways for crime control resources to be organized. Early experiments in policing practice have not produced clear answers on the effectiveness of various strategies and there are wider issues of crime identification and control to be considered. A number of schemes of different kinds, ranging from target-hardening projects which increase physical security in particular areas, to attempts to involve communities in more effective social control are reviewed, and it is argued that the established methodologies of urban geography have much to offer in the monitoring and evaluation of crime prevention schemes of this kind.     

New concepts in ecological risk assessment: where do we go from here?

Through the use of safety factors, the use of single-species test data has been adequate for use in protective hazard assessments and criteria setting but, because hazard quotients do not consider the presence of multiple species each with a particular sensitivity or the interactions that can occur between these species in a functioning community, they are ill-suited to environmental risk assessment. Significant functional redundancy occurs in most ecosystems but this is poorly considered in single-species tests conducted under laboratory conditions. A significant advance in effects assessment was the use of the microcosm as a unit within which to test interacting populations of organisms. The microcosm has allowed the measurement of the environmental effect measures such as the NOAEC(community) under laboratory or field conditions and the application of this and other similarly derived measures to ecological risk assessment (ERA). More recently, distributions of single-species laboratory test data have been used for criteria setting and, combined with distributions of exposure concentrations, for risk assessment. Distributions of species sensitivity values have been used in an a priori way for setting environmental quality criteria such as the final acute value (FAV) derived for water quality criteria. Similar distributional approaches have been combined with modeled or measured concentrations to produce estimates of the joint probability of a single species being affected or that a proportion of organisms in a community will be impacted in a posteriori risk assessments. These techniques have not been widely applied for risk assessment of dredged materials, however, with appropriate consideration of bioavailability and spatial and nature of the data these techniques can be applied to soils and sediments.