Evidence for a mid‐Pleistocene shift of ice‐drift pattern in the Nordic seas

Sediment proxy records from a continuous, 1.5 million year long deep‐sea sediment core from a site in the western Norwegian Sea were used to obtain new insights into the nature of palaeoceanographic change in the northern North Atlantic (Nordic seas) during the climatic shift of the Mid‐Pleistocene Revolution (MPR). Red‐green sediment colour and magnetic susceptibility records both reveal significant differences in their mean values when comparing the intervals older than 700 000 yr (700 ka) with those from the past 500 kyr. The timing and duration of these changes indicates that the MPR in the Nordic seas is characterised by a gradual transition lasting about 200 kyr. Together with further sedimentological evidence this suggests that the mid‐Pleistocene climate shift was accompanied by a general change in ice‐drift pattern. It is further proposed that prior to the onset of the major late Pleistocene glaciations in the Northern Hemisphere a significant proportion of the ice in the eastern Nordic seas originated from a southern provenance, whereas later it dominantly came from the surrounding landmasses. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

调频式电涡传感器微机实现的探讨

分析了分频和ＣＴＣ计数采样中误读数的原因和解决方法，并利用微机软件实现非线性校正。此传感器用于位移测量系统中，具有０．０１ｍｍ的分辨率及优于１％的精度，可在－２０～６０℃温度范围内工作。     

Design of a high update-rate star sensor for arcsec-level attitude determination from balloon-borne X/γ astronomy platforms

This paper describes the design of a star sensor based upon a high dynamic range CCD in order to reach an arcsec-level attitude determination in balloon-borne missions. A custom star identification software was developed and laboratory-tested on a prototype assembled using commercial components. A set of numerical simulations have been carried out to study the dependence on the pointing precision of the centroid position accuracy, the number of detected stars and the effect of the image focusing. Moreover, the role of the electronic noise and the discrete pixel structure on the light signals is identified by the analysis of numerical simulations. Laboratory tests confirm that the arcsec pointing accuracy with a 1 Hz update rate can be achieved with our combination of custom-developed software and selected hardware components.     

可移动中继节点在传感器网络中的节能应用

介绍了一种新颖的静态传感器网络实现方法，它利用可移动的中继节点来收集静态传感器网络的数据，有效的节约各传感器节点的能源，延长整个传感器网络的有效工作时间。也可以对该方法进行适当的改进，应用到某些实时性要求较高的场合中去。然后介绍了应用该原理实现的一个通讯协议。     

Abandoned bodies and spaces of sacrifice: Pesticide drift activism and the contestation of neoliberal environmental politics in California

Recent research suggests that many key strands of California’s agrofood activism appear to accommodate, rather than confront, the neoliberalization of environmental governance, and that such accommodations might problematically constrain the transformative potential of activists’ work. In this paper, I examine the case of pesticide drift activism in California, which, as an exception to this trend, provides a provocative and useful case study for interrogating the influence of neoliberalization on social/environmental activism. I argue that California’s pesticide drift activism can be understood as a reaction to the spaces of sacrifice created and exacerbated by the failure of unionization-based pesticide reform efforts, a promising but compromised regulatory apparatus, longstanding farmworker powerlessness, neoliberal regulatory rollback, and neoliberalized pesticide politics – a mosaic of factors that have worked together to produce a regulatory structure that has always been better at registering pesticides than at reducing pollution. I show that pesticide drift activists’ reliance on confrontational practice, collective action, and strategic alliances have been crucial to the movement’s success with bringing visibility to this issue and with gaining traction in the political arena. Thus, at the same time that neoliberalization can exacerbate physical spaces of sacrifice, this case study illustrates that it can also, unexpectedly perhaps, generate new, non-neoliberal political spaces for social change.     

Pervasive wetland flooding in the glacial drift prairie of North Dakota (USA)

This article describes a unique flood hazard, produced by the dramatic expansion of wetlands in Nelson County, located within the North American Prairie Pothole Region of North Dakota, USA. There has been an unprecedented increase in the number, average size, and permanence of prairie wetlands, and a significant increase in the size of a closed lake (Stump Lake) due to a decade-long wet spell that began in 1993 following a prolonged drying trend. Base-line land cover information from the 1992 USGS National Land Cover Characterization dataset, and a Landsat TM scene acquired 9 July 2001 are used to assess the growth of the closed lake and wetland pond surface areas, and to analyze the type and area of various land cover classes inundated between 1992 and 2001. The open water profile in Nelson County changed from one marked by relatively comparable coverage of closed lake and wetland pond areas in 1992, to one in which wetland open water accounted for the vast majority of total open water in 2001. The bulk of the wetland pond area expansion occurred by displacing existing wetland vegetation and agricultural cropland. Producers responded to the flood hazard by filing Federal Crop Insurance Corporation (FCIC) claims and enrolling cropland in the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP), a federal land retirement program. Land taken out of agricultural production has had an enormous impact upon the agricultural sector that forms the economic base of the rural economy. In 2001 the land taken out of production due to CRP enrollment and preventive planting claims represented nearly 42% of Nelson County’s 205.2 K ha base agricultural land. The patterns obtained from this detailed study of Nelson County are likely to be the representative of the more publicized flood disaster occurring within the Devils Lake Basin of North Dakota.     

Monitoring Large-Scale Tests for Nuclear Waste Disposal

Two large-scale “in situ” demonstration experiments and their instrumentation are described. The first test (FEBEX Experiment) involves the hydration of a compacted bentonite barrier under the combined effect of an inner source of heat and an outer water flow from the confining saturated granite rock. In the second case, the progressive de-saturation of Opalinus clay induced by maintained ventilation of an unlined tunnel is analyzed. The paper shows the performance of different sensors (capacitive cells, psychrometers, TDR’s) and a comparison of fill behaviour with modelling results. The long term performance of some instruments could also be evaluated specially in the case of FEBEX test. Capacitive sensors provide relative humidity data during long transient periods characterised by very large variations of suction within the bentonite.     

Field Measurement of Suction, Water Content, and Water Permeability

This paper presents a review of techniques for field measurement of suction, water content, and water hydraulic conductivity (permeability). Main problems in the use of field tensiometers are addressed and hints on how to improve tensiometer performance are given. Advantages and limitations of instruments for indirect measurement of suction including electrical conductivity sensors, thermal conductivity sensors, dielectric permittivity sensors, filter paper, and psychrometer are discussed. Techniques for water content measurement based on dielectric methods are then presented. These include time and amplitude domain reflectometry and capacitance. Finally, a brief overview of methods for measurement of water permeability in the field is presented.     

Numerical study of the motions and drift force of a floating OWC device

The motion and the drift force of a floating OWC (oscillating water column) wave energy device in regular waves are studied taking account of the oscillating surface-pressure due to the pressure drop across the duct of the air chamber. The potential problem inside the chamber is formulated by making use of the Green integral equation associated with the Rankine-type Green function while the outer problem with the Kelvin-type Green function. The added mass, wave damping and excitation coefficients as well as the motion and drift force of the OWC device are calculated for various values of parameter related to the pressure drop.     

一种新型测向传感器——磁通门罗盘

本文对磁通门罗盘的基本工作原理、实验线路以及主要技术指标和一些测量数据作简要介绍,最后对仪器的误差进行简单分析并提出一些减小误差的改进措施。