Late Neoproterozoic passive margin of East Gondwana: geochemical constraints from the Anakie Inlier, central Queensland, Australia

Development of the East Gondwana passive margin and when it occurred are constrained by the composition of low grade mafic schists and U-Pb ages of detrital zircons in psammitic schists from the Bathampton Metamorphics in the Anakie Inlier of central Queensland. These rocks show considerable variation in light lithophile elements due to post-magmatic processes. They have flat heavy rare earth element patterns, low-TiO2 (\u3c2 wt%) contents and their immobile element Ti, V, Y, La, Nb, Th and Zr values, indicate that they have an NMORB- like magmatic affinity. However, they differ from N-MORB in that they show light rare earth depleted patterns and lower incompatible trace element contents. Their relative low abundance and association with metasediments suggest they formed in a magma-poor rifted margin setting. They are associated with psammitic rocks with detrital zircon ages indicating probable deposition in the late Neoproterozoic at ca 600 Ma. A magma-poor rifted margin in northeastern Australia differs from the volcanic passive setting that occurred in southeastern Australia at this time. These findings support development of the East Gondwana margin at 600 Ma that may have been related to rifting of a microcontinent off East Gondwana well after the breakup of Rodinia at ca 750 Ma

Capacity investigation of brine-bearing sands of the Frio Formation for geologic sequestration of CO2

The capacity of fluvial brine-bearing formations to sequester CO2 is investigated using numerical simulations of CO2 injection and storage. Capacity is defined as the volume fraction of the subsurface available for CO2 storage and is conceptualized as a product of factors that account for two-phase flow and transport processes, formation geometry, formation heterogeneity, and formation porosity. The space and time domains used to define capacity must be chosen with care to obtain meaningful results, especially when comparing different authors’ work. Physical factors that impact capacity include permeability anisotropy and relative permeability to CO2, brine/CO2 density and viscosity ratios, the shape of the trapping structure, formation porosity and the presence of low permeability layering.National Energy Technology LaboratoryBureau of Economic Geolog

Interstellar Turbulence: II. Energy Spectra of Molecular Regions in the Outer Galaxy

The multivariate tool of Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is applied to 23 fields in the FCRAO CO Survey of the Outer Galaxy. PCA enables the identification of line profile differences which are assumed to be generated from fluctuations within a turbulent velocity field. The variation of these velocity differences with spatial scale within a molecular region is described by a singular power law, delta v= c L^alpha which can be used as a powerful diagnostic to turbulent motions. For the ensemble of 23 fields, we find a mean value alpha = 0.62 +- 0.11. From a recent calibration of this method using fractal Brownian motion simulations (Brunt & Heyer 2001), the measured velocity difference-size relationship corresponds to an energy spectrum, E(k), which varies as k^-beta, where beta = 2.17 +- 0.31. We compare our results to both decaying and forced hydrodynamic simulations of turbulence. We conclude that energy must be continually injected into the regions to replenish that lost by dissipative processes such as shocks. The absence of large, widely distributed shocks within the targeted fields suggests that the energy is injected at spatial scales less than several pc.Comment: 24 pages, 10 figures, accepted by Ap

Attention and motor profiles in children with developmental coordination disorder: A neuropsychological and neuroimaging investigation

AIM: This study aimed to (1) quantify attention and executive functioning in children with developmental coordination disorder (DCD), (2) assess whether some children with DCD are more likely to show attention difficulties, and (3) characterize brain correlates of motor and attention deficits. METHOD: Fifty-three children (36 with DCD and 17 without) aged 8 to 10 years underwent T1-weighted and diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging, and standardized attention and motor assessments. Parents completed questionnaires of executive functioning and symptoms of inattention and hyperactivity. We assessed regional cortical thickness and surface area, and cerebellar, callosal, and primary motor tract structure. RESULTS: Analyses of covariance and one-sample t-tests identified impaired attention, non-motor processing speed, and executive functioning in children with DCD, yet partial Spearman's rank correlation coefficients revealed these were unrelated to one another or the type or severity of the motor deficit. Robust regression analyses revealed that cortical morphology in the posterior cingulate was associated with both gross motor skills and inattentive symptoms in children with DCD, while gross motor skills were also associated with left corticospinal tract (CST) morphology. INTERPRETATION: Children with DCD may benefit from routine attention and hyperactivity assessments. Alterations in the posterior cingulate and CST may be linked to impaired forward modelling during movements in children with DCD. Overall, alterations in these regions may explain the high rate of non-motor impairments in children with DCD

Costs and Treatment Pathways for Type 2 Diabetes in the UK:A Mastermind Cohort Study

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Verlag via the DOI in this record.INTRODUCTION: Medication therapy for type 2 diabetes has become increasingly complex, and there are few reliable data on the current state of clinical practice. We report treatment pathways and associated costs of medication therapy for people with type 2 diabetes in the UK, their variability and changes over time. METHODS: Prescription and biomarker data for 7159 people with type 2 diabetes were extracted from the GoDARTS cohort study, covering the period 1989-2013. Average follow-up was 10 years. Individuals were prescribed on average 2.4 (SD: 1.2) drugs with average annual costs of £241. We calculated summary statistics for first- and second-line therapies. Linear regression models were used to estimate associations between therapy characteristics and baseline patient characteristics. RESULTS: Average time from diagnosis to first prescription was 3 years (SD: 4.0 years). Almost all first-line therapy (98%) was monotherapy, with average annual cost of £83 (SD: £204) for 3.8 (SD: 3.5) years. Second-line therapy was initiated in 73% of all individuals, at an average annual cost of £219 (SD: £305). Therapies involving insulin were markedly more expensive than other common therapies. Baseline HbA1c was unrelated to future therapy costs, but higher average HbA1c levels over time were associated with higher costs. CONCLUSIONS: Medication therapy has undergone substantial changes during the period covered in this study. For example, therapy is initiated earlier and is less expensive than in the past. The data provided in this study will prove useful for future modelling studies, e.g. of stratified treatment approaches.The authors gratefully acknowledge funding by the Medical Research Council (MRC) and the Association of the British Pharma Industry (ABPI) for “Mastermind” (MRC APBI STratification and Extreme Response Mechanism IN Diabetes–MASTERMIND. Grant Ref.: MRIK005707/1). ERP holds Wellcome Trust New Investigator award 102820/Z/13/Z. GoDARTS was funded by the Wellcome Trust as the Wellcome Trust Type 2 diabetes case control study

Evaluation of brine-bearing sands of the Frio Formation, Upper Texas Gulf Coast for geologic sequestration of CO2

Bureau of Economic Geolog

The FIRST-Optical-VLA Survey for Lensed Radio Lobes

We present results from a survey for gravitationally lensed radio lobes. Lensed lobes are a potentially richer source of information about galaxy mass distributions than lensed point sources, which have been the exclusive focus of other recent surveys. Our approach is to identify radio lobes in the FIRST catalog and then search optical catalogs for coincident foreground galaxies, which are candidate lensing galaxies. We then obtain higher-resolution images of these targets at both optical and radio wavelengths, and obtain optical spectra for the most promising candidates. We present maps of several radio lobes that are nearly coincident with galaxies. We have not found any new and unambiguous cases of gravitational lensing. One radio lobe in particular, FOV J0743+1553, has two hot spots that could be multiple images produced by a z=0.19 spiral galaxy, but the lensing interpretation is problematic.Comment: 38 pages, 18 figures, aastex, accepted to A

XBootes: An X-Ray Survey of the NDWFS Bootes Field - Paper I Overview and Initial Results

We obtained a 5 ksec deep Chandra X-ray Observatory ACIS-I map of the 9.3 square degree Bootes field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey. Here we describe the data acquisition and analysis strategies leading to a catalog of 4642 (3293) point sources with 2 or more (4 or more) counts, corresponding to a limiting flux of roughly 4(8)x10^{-15} erg cm^{-2}s^{-1} in the 0.5-7 keV band. These Chandra XBootes data are unique in that they consitute the widest contiguous X-ray field yet observed to such a faint flux limit. Because of the extraordinarily low background of the ACIS, we expect only 14% (0.7%) of the sources to be spurious. We also detected 43 extended sources in this survey. The distribution of the point sources among the 126 pointings (ACIS-I has a 16 x 16 arcminute field of view) is consistent with Poisson fluctuations about the mean of 36.8 sources per pointing. While a smoothed image of the point source distribution is clumpy, there is no statistically significant evidence of large scale filamentary structure. We do find however, that for theta>1 arcminute, the angular correlation function of these sources is consistent with previous measurements, following a power law in angle with slope -0.7. In a 1.4 deg^{2} sample of the survey, approximately 87% of the sources with 4 or more counts have an optical counterpart to R ~26 mag. As part of a larger program of optical spectroscopy of the NDWFS Bootes area, spectra have been obtained for \~900 of the X-ray sources, most of which are QSOs or AGN.Comment: 18 Pages, 10 figures (AASTex Preprint format

Airborne Visible/Infrared Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS): Recent improvements to the sensor

AVIRIS is a NASA-sponsored Earth-looking imaging spectrometer designed, built and operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Spectral, radiometric and geometric characteristics of the data acquired by AVIRIS are given in Table 1. AVIRIS has been operational since 1989, however in each year since 1989 major improvements have been completed in most of the subsystems of the sensor. As a consequence of these efforts, the capabilities of AVIRIS to acquire and deliver calibrated imaging spectrometer data of high quality have improved significantly over those in 1989. Improvements to AVIRIS prior to 1992 have been described previously (Porter et al., 1990, Chrien et al., 1991, & Chrien et al., 1992). In the following sections of this paper we describe recent and planned improvements to AVIRIS in the sensor task

The Chandra XBootes Survey - III: Optical and Near-IR Counterparts

The XBootes Survey is a 5-ks Chandra survey of the Bootes Field of the NOAO Deep Wide-Field Survey (NDWFS). This survey is unique in that it is the largest (9.3 deg^2), contiguous region imaged in X-ray with complementary deep optical and near-IR observations. We present a catalog of the optical counterparts to the 3,213 X-ray point sources detected in the XBootes survey. Using a Bayesian identification scheme, we successfully identified optical counterparts for 98% of the X-ray point sources. The optical colors suggest that the optically detected galaxies are a combination of z<1 massive early-type galaxies and bluer star-forming galaxies whose optical AGN emission is faint or obscured, whereas the majority of the optically detected point sources are likely quasars over a large redshift range. Our large area, X-ray bright, optically deep survey enables us to select a large sub-sample of sources (773) with high X-ray to optical flux ratios (f_x/f_o>10). These objects are likely high redshift and/or dust obscured AGN. These sources have generally harder X-ray spectra than sources with 0.1<f_x/f_o<10. Of the 73 X-ray sources with no optical counterpart in the NDWFS catalog, 47 are truly optically blank down to R~25.5 (the average 50% completeness limit of the NDWFS R-band catalogs). These sources are also likely to be high redshift and/or dust obscured AGN.Comment: 19 pages, 13 figures, ApJ accepted. Catalog can be found at: http://www.noao.edu/noao/noaodeep or ftp://archive.noao.edu/pub/catalogs/xbootes