Mafic alkaline metasomatism in the lithosphere underneath East Serbia: evidence from the study of xenoliths and the host alkali basalts

Effects of mafic alkaline metasomatism have been investigated by a combined study of the East Serbian mantle xenoliths and their host alkaline rocks. Fertile xenoliths and tiny mineral assemblages found in depleted xenoliths have been investigated. Fertile lithologies are represented by clinopyroxene (cpx)-rich lherzolite and spinel (sp)-rich olivine websterite containing Ti–Al-rich Cr-augite, Fe-rich olivine, Fe–Al-rich orthopyroxene and Al-rich spinel. Depleted xenoliths, which are the predominant lithology in the suite of East Serbian xenoliths, are harzburgite, cpx-poor lherzolite and rare Mg-rich dunite. They contain small-scale assemblages occurring as pocket-like, symplectitic or irregular, deformation-assisted accumulations of metasomatic phases, generally composed of Ti–Al- and incompatible element-rich Cr-diopside, Cr–Fe–Ti-rich spinel, altered glass, olivine, apatite, ilmenite, carbonate, feldspar, and a high-TiO2 (c. 11 wt%) phlogopite. The fertile xenoliths are too rich in Al, Ca and Fe to simply represent undepleted mantle. By contrast, their composition can be reproduced by the addition of 5–20 wt% of a basanitic melt to refractory mantle. However, textural relationships found in tiny mineral assemblages inside depleted xenoliths imply the following reaction: opx+sp1 (primary mantle Cr-spinel) ±phlogopite+Si-poor alkaline melt=Ti–Al-cpx+sp2 (metasomatic Ti-rich spinel)±ol±other minor phases. Inversion modelling, performed on the least contaminated and most isotopically uniform host basanites (87Sr/86Sr=c. 0.7031; 143Nd/144Nd=c. 0.5129), implies a source that was enriched in highly and moderately incompatible elements (c. 35–40× chondrite for U–Th–Nb–Ta, 2× chondrite for heavy rare earth elements (HREE), made up of clinopyroxene, carbonate (c. 5%), and traces of ilmenite (c. 1%) and apatite (c. 0.05%). A schematic model involves: first, percolation of CO2- and H2O-rich fluids and precipitation of metasomatic hydrous minerals; and, second, the subsequent breakdown of these hydrous minerals due to the further uplift of hot asthenospheric mantle. This model links intraplate alkaline magmatism to lithospheric mantle sources enriched by sublithospheric melts at some time in the past

WEFES - Web explorer of forest ecosystems services under climate change

PosterClimate change will change the dynamics of forest environmental services. All the change complexity involved is difficult to visualize under an easy and accessible information tool capable to integrate several services that forests can provide. A preliminary Web-Explorer of Forest Ecosystems Services was developed for New Zealand where forest managers and the general public can observe what are the predictions of the different forest environmental services under current and future climate for each location in the territory. Carbon storage, soil erosion, biodiversity, nitrate leaching, water balance are the preliminary forest environmental services envisaged. The tool uses a mix of programming languages and techniques (HTML, Javascript, PHP, and Ajax) as well as the GoogleMaps© application programming interface to interact with New Zealand online-stored geographical information to supply different models´ needs. A score system is calculated for the user reference where tradeoffs can be observed by changing the climate variables in the models. The tool (see link below) is under development and expecting “expressions of interest” for further improvement but already enabled a good interaction between different scientific background as well as interest from private forest organizations. Tool link: http://home.isa.utl.pt/~joaopalma/projects/tranzfor/wefesTRANZFOR - SCION - ISA/UTL - MORST - FFR - FCT/MCTE

Analysis and Modeling of Two Flare Loops Observed by AIA and EIS

We analyze and model an M1.0 flare observed by SDO/AIA and Hinode/EIS to investigate how flare loops are heated and evolve subsequently. The flare is composed of two distinctive loop systems observed in EUV images. The UV 1600 \AA emission at the feet of these loops exhibits a rapid rise, followed by enhanced emission in different EUV channels observed by AIA and EIS. Such behavior is indicative of impulsive energy deposit and the subsequent response in overlying coronal loops that evolve through different temperatures. Using the method we recently developed, we infer empirical heating functions from the rapid rise of the UV light curves for the two loop systems, respectively, treating them as two big loops of cross-sectional area 5\arcsec by 5\arcsec, and compute the plasma evolution in the loops using the EBTEL model (Klimchuk et al. 2008). We compute the synthetic EUV light curves, which, with the limitation of the model, reasonably agree with observed light curves obtained in multiple AIA channels and EIS lines: they show the same evolution trend and their magnitudes are comparable by within a factor of two. Furthermore, we also compare the computed mean enthalpy flow velocity with the Doppler shift measurements by EIS during the decay phase of the two loops. Our results suggest that the two different loops with different heating functions as inferred from their footpoint UV emission, combined with their different lengths as measured from imaging observations, give rise to different coronal plasma evolution patterns captured both in the model and observations.Comment: Accepted for publication in Ap

Supergravity loop contributions to brane world supersymmetry breaking

We compute the supergravity loop contributions to the visible sector scalar masses in the simplest 5D `brane-world' model. Supersymmetry is assumed to be broken away from the visible brane and the contributions are UV finite due to 5D locality. We perform the calculation with N = 1 supergraphs, using a formulation of 5D supergravity in terms of N = 1 superfields. We compute contributions to the 4D effective action that determine the visible scalar masses, and we find that the mass-squared terms are negative.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX 2

Economic evaluation of a task-shifting intervention for common mental disorders in India

OBJECTIVE: To carry out an economic evaluation of a task-shifting intervention for the treatment of depressive and anxiety disorders in primary-care settings in Goa, India. METHODS: Cost-utility and cost-effectiveness analyses based on generalized linear models were performed within a trial set in 24 public and private primary-care facilities. Subjects were randomly assigned to an intervention or a control arm. Eligible subjects in the intervention arm were given psycho-education, case management, interpersonal psychotherapy and/or antidepressants by lay health workers. Subjects in the control arm were treated by physicians. The use of health-care resources, the disability of each subject and degree of psychiatric morbidity, as measured by the Revised Clinical Interview Schedule, were determined at 2, 6 and 12 months. FINDINGS: Complete data, from all three follow-ups, were collected from 1243 (75.4%) and 938 (81.7%) of the subjects enrolled in the study facilities from the public and private sectors, respectively. Within the public facilities, subjects in the intervention arm showed greater improvement in all the health outcomes investigated than those in the control arm. Time costs were also significantly lower in the intervention arm than in the control arm, whereas health system costs in the two arms were similar. Within the private facilities, however, the effectiveness and costs recorded in the two arms were similar. CONCLUSION: Within public primary-care facilities in Goa, the use of lay health workers in the care of subjects with common mental disorders was not only cost-effective but also cost-saving

Technical and Economic Evaluation of Macroalgae Cultivation for Fuel Production (Draft)

The potential of macroalgae as sources of renewable liquid and gaseous fuels is evaluated. A series of options for production of macroalgae feedstock is considered. Because of their high carbohydrate content, the fuel products for which macroalgae are most suitable are methane and ethanol. Fuel product costs were compared with projected fuel costs in the year 1995

Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE) Multiple EUV Grating Spectrographs (MEGS): Radiometric Calibrations and Results

The NASA Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO), scheduled for launch in early 2010, incorporates a suite of instruments including the Extreme Ultraviolet Variability Experiment (EVE). EVE has multiple instruments including the Multiple Extreme ultraviolet Grating Spectrographs (MEGS) A, B, and P instruments, the Solar Aspect Monitor (SAM), and the Extreme ultraviolet SpectroPhotometer (ESP). The radiometric calibration of EVE, necessary to convert the instrument counts to physical units, was performed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Synchrotron Ultraviolet Radiation Facility (SURF III) located in Gaithersburg, Maryland. This paper presents the results and derived accuracy of this radiometric calibration for the MEGS A, B, P, and SAM instruments, while the calibration of the ESP instrument is addressed by Didkovsky et al. . In addition, solar measurements that were taken on 14 April 2008, during the NASA 36.240 sounding-rocket flight, are shown for the prototype EVE instruments

Entropy-Based Metrics for Occupancy Detection Using Energy Demand

Smart Meters provide detailed energy consumption data and rich contextual information that can be utilized to assist electricity providers and consumers in understanding and managing energy use. The detection of human activity in residential households is a valuable extension for applications, such as home automation, demand side management, or non-intrusive load monitoring, but it usually requires the installation of dedicated sensors. In this paper, we propose and evaluate two new metrics, namely the sliding window entropy and the interval entropy, inspired by Shannon’s entropy in order to obtain information regarding human activity from smart meter readings. We emphasise on the application of the entropy and analyse the effect of input parameters, in order to lay the foundation for future work. We compare our method to other methods, including the Page–Hinkley test and geometric moving average, which have been used for occupancy detection on the same dataset by other authors. Our experimental results, using the power measurements of the publicly available ECO dataset, indicate that the accuracy and area under the curve of our method can keep up with other well-known statistical methods, stressing the practical relevance of our approach.</jats:p