2,810 research outputs found
Evaporites and the salinity of the ocean during the Phanerozoic: Implications for climate, ocean circulation and life
A compilation of data on volumes and masses of evaporite deposits is used as the basis for reconstruction of the salinity of the ocean in the past. Chloride is tracked as the only ion essentially restricted to the ocean, and past salinities are calculated from reconstructed chlorine content of the ocean. Models for ocean salinity through the Phanerozoic are developed using maximal and minimal estimates of the volumes of existing evaporite deposits, and using constant and declining volumes of ocean water through the Phanerozoic. We conclude that there have been significant changes in the mean salinity of the ocean accompanying a general decline throughout the Phanerozoic. The greatest changes are related to major extractions of salt into the young ocean basins which developed during the Mesozoic as Pangaea broke apart. Unfortunately, the sizes of these salt deposits are also the least well known. The last major extractions of salt from the ocean occurred during the Miocene, shortly after the large scale extraction of water from the ocean to form the ice cap of Antarctica. However, these two modifications of the masses of H2O and salt in the ocean followed in sequence and did not cancel each other out. Accordingly, salinities during the Early Miocene were between 37‰ and 39‰. The Mesozoic was a time of generally declining salinity associated with the deep sea salt extractions of the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico (Middle to Late Jurassic) and South Atlantic (Early Cretaceous). The earliest of the major extractions of the Phanerozoic occurred during the Permian. There were few large extractions of salt during the earlier Palaeozoic. The models suggest that this was a time of relatively stable but slowly increasing salinities ranging through the upper 40‰'s into the lower 50‰'s.
Higher salinities for the world ocean have profound consequences for the thermohaline circulation of the ocean in the past. In the modern ocean, with an average salinity of about 34.7‰, the density of water is only very slightly affected by cooling as it approaches the freezing point. Consequently, salinization through sea-ice formation or evaporation is usually required to make water dense enough to sink into the ocean interior. At salinities above about 40‰ water continues to become more dense as it approaches the freezing point, and salinization is not required. The energy-consuming phase changes involved in sea-ice formation and evaporation would not be required for vertical circulation in the ocean.
The hypothesized major declines in salinity correspond closely to the evolution of both planktonic foraminifera and calcareous nannoplankton. Both groups were restricted to shelf regions in the Jurassic and early Cretaceous, but spread into the open ocean in the mid-Cretaceous. Their availability to inhabit the open ocean may be directly related to the decline in salinity. The Permian extraction may have created stress for marine organisms and may have been a factor contributing to the end-Permian extinction. The modeling also suggests that there was a major salinity decline from the Late Precambrian to the Cambrian, and it is tempting to speculate that this may have been a factor in the Cambrian explosion of life
Canonical density matrix perturbation theory
Density matrix perturbation theory [Niklasson and Challacombe, Phys. Rev.
Lett. 92, 193001 (2004)] is generalized to canonical (NVT) free energy
ensembles in tight-binding, Hartree-Fock or Kohn-Sham density functional
theory. The canonical density matrix perturbation theory can be used to
calculate temperature dependent response properties from the coupled perturbed
self-consistent field equations as in density functional perturbation theory.
The method is well suited to take advantage of sparse matrix algebra to achieve
linear scaling complexity in the computational cost as a function of system
size for sufficiently large non-metallic materials and metals at high
temperatures.Comment: 21 pages, 3 figure
Hadron Masses and Screening from AdS Wilson Loops
We show that in strongly coupled N=4 SYM the binding energy of a heavy and a
light quark is independent of the strength of the coupling constant. As a
consequence we are able to show that in the presence of light quarks the analog
of the QCD string can snap and color charges are screened. The resulting
neutral mesons interact with each other only via pion exchange and we estimate
the massesComment: 4 pages, revte
U-duality in three and four dimensions
Using generalised geometry we study the action of U-duality acting in three
and four dimensions on the bosonic fields of eleven dimensional supergravity.
We compare the U-duality symmetry with the T-duality symmetry of double field
theory and see how the and SL(5) U-duality groups reduce
to the SO(2,2) and SO(3,3) T-duality symmetry groups of the type IIA theory. As
examples we dualise M2-branes, both black and extreme. We find that uncharged
black M2-branes become charged under U-duality, generalising the Harrison
transformation, while extreme M2-branes will become new extreme M2-branes. The
resulting tension and charges are quantised appropriately if we use the
discrete U-duality group .Comment: v1: 35 pages; v2: minor corrections in section 4.1.2, many references
added; v3: further discussion added on the conformal factor of the
generalised metric in section 2 and on the Wick-rotation used to construct
examples in section
Tensors Mesons in AdS/QCD
We explore tensor mesons in AdS/QCD focusing on f2 (1270), the lightest
spin-two resonance in QCD. We find that the f2 mass and the partial width for
f2 -> gamma gamma are in very good agreement with data. In fact, the
dimensionless ratio of these two quantities comes out within the current
experimental bound. The result for this ratio depends only on Nc and Nf, and
the quark and glueball content of the operator responsible for the f2; more
importantly, it does not depend on chiral symmetry breaking and so is both
independent of much of the arbitrariness of AdS/QCD and completely out of reach
of chiral perturbation theory. For comparison, we also explore f2 -> pi pi,
which because of its sensitivity to the UV corrections has much more
uncertainty. We also calculate the masses of the higher spin resonances on the
Regge trajectory of the f2, and find they compare favorably with experiment.Comment: 21 pages, 1 figure; Li's correcte
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Why do Large Animals Never Actuate Their Jumps with Latch-Mediated Springs? Because They can Jump Higher Without Them.
As animals get smaller, their ability to generate usable work from muscle contraction is decreased by the muscle's force-velocity properties, thereby reducing their effective jump height. Very small animals use a spring-actuated system, which prevents velocity effects from reducing available energy. Since force-velocity properties reduce the usable work in even larger animals, why don't larger animals use spring-actuated jumping systems as well? We will show that muscle length-tension properties limit spring-actuated systems to generating a maximum one-third of the possible work that a muscle could produce-greatly restricting the jumping height of spring-actuated jumpers. Thus a spring-actuated jumping animal has a jumping height that is one-third of the maximum possible jump height achievable were 100% of the possible muscle work available. Larger animals, which could theoretically use all of the available muscle energy, have a maximum jumping height that asymptotically approaches a value that is about three times higher than that of spring-actuated jumpers. Furthermore, a size related "crossover point" is evident for these two jumping mechanisms: animals smaller than this point can jump higher with a spring-actuated mechanism, while animals larger than this point can jump higher with a muscle-actuated mechanism. We demonstrate how this limit on energy storage is a consequence of the interaction between length-tension properties of muscles and spring stiffness. We indicate where this crossover point occurs based on modeling and then use jumping data from the literature to validate that larger jumping animals generate greater jump heights with muscle-actuated systems than spring-actuated systems
A Non-Renormalization Theorem for the d=1, N=8 Vector Multiplet
Sigma models describing low energy effective actions on D0-brane probes with
N=8 supercharges are studied in detail using a manifestly d=1, N=4 super-space
formalism. Two 0+1 dimensional N=4 multiplets together with their general
actions are constructed. We derive the condition for these actions to be N=8
supersymmetric and apply these techniques to various D-brane configurations. We
find that if in addition to N=8 supersymmetry the action must also have Spin(5)
invariance, the form of the sigma model metric is uniquely determined by the
one-loop result and is not renormalized perturbatively or non-perturbatively.Comment: Uses harvmac, 16 pages. We correct an error pointed out by E. Witte
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