IMMOBILE TRACE ELEMENTS DISCRIMINATION DIAGRAMMS WITH ZEOLITIZED VOLCANICLASTICS FROM THE EVROS - THRACE - RHODOPE VOLCANIC TERRAIN

The Rhodope and Evros areas of the Thrace Region in north-eastern Greece and the adjusted areas in Bulgaria are characterized by wide spread volcanic formations of Upper Eocene to Miocene in age. The volcaniclastic materials associated with such formations have, in some cases, undergone inter alia a notable zeolitization process. The mineralogy of the altered volcaniclastics is often dominated by clinoptilolite -heulandite type of minerals. The Winchester and Floyd (1977) plots indicating rhyodacite/dacite to trachyandesite parent materials, while the similar diagram, as modified by Pearce (1986), indicate andesite to trachyandesite precursors. The alkalinity index (Nb/Y ratio) seems to coincide between the two types of diagrams, but, there is a notable difference of the differentiation index, i.e. the Zr/TiO2 ratio. The Th-Co diagram (Hastie et al., 2007) unfolds a clearer picture for the nature of the precursors and reveals a clear progression of a calc-alkaline to a high-K calc alkaline affinity of the parental volcanic materials

MAGMA GENERATION AND MIXING IN THE EARLIEST VOLCANIC CENTRE OF SANTORINI (AKROTIRI PENINSULA). MINERAL CHEMISTRY EVIDENCE FROM THE AKROTIRI PYROCLASTICS

Santorini is a dominant expression of magma generation and subsequent volcanism in the Meditereanean area, where a calk-alkaline, high-alumina, basalt-andesite-dacite type of volcanism was expressed from eight centres. The volcanics of the Akrotiri peninsula are considered to be the products of the earliest (Pliocene Pleistocene) volcanic centre. The present study has investigated the mineral chemistry of some major pyrogenic phenocrysts, such as plagioclase and Fe-Ti oxides, of the Akrotiri pyroclatics unit, which have undergone a notable zeolitization procedure. The results are compatible with magma mixing mechanism of a primitive mantle derived, saturated, of mafic composition component with silicic magma in shallow crustal depths

Velocity‐resolved laser‐induced desorption for kinetics on surface adsorbates

Most experimental methods for studying the kinetics of surface reactions – for example, temperature programmed desorption (TPD), molecular beam relaxation spectrometry (MBRS) and velocity-resolved kinetics (VRK) – employ detection schemes that require thermal desorption. However, many adsorbates – for example reaction intermediates – never leave the surface under reaction conditions. In this paper, we present a new method to measure adsorbate concentrations on catalytic surfaces and demonstrate its utility for studying thermal desorption kinetics. After a short-pulsed molecular beam deposits CO or NH3 on Pt (111), the surface is irradiated with an ultrashort laser pulse that induces desorption. Another tightly focused ultrashort laser pulse ionizes the gas-phase molecules by a non-resonant multiphoton process and the ions are detected. This two-laser signal is then recorded as a function of time after the dosing molecular beam pulse and decays exponentially. First-order thermal desorption rate constants are obtained over a range of temperatures and found to be in good agreement with past reports. Ion detection is done mass selectively with ion-imaging, dispersing the gas phase molecules by their velocities. Since laser-induced desorption (LID) produces hyperthermal gas phase molecules, they can be detected with little or no background. This approach is highly surface-specific and exhibits sensitivity below 10−4 ML coverage. Because the signals are linearly proportional to adsorbate concentration, the method can be employed at lower temperatures than VRK, whose signal is proportional to reaction rate

Genomes and Characterization of Phages Bcep22 and BcepIL02, Founders of a Novel Phage Type in Burkholderia cenocepacia

Within the Burkholderia cepacia complex, B. cenocepacia is the most common species associated with aggressive infections in the lungs of cystic fibrosis patients, causing disease that is often refractive to treatment by antibiotics. Phage therapy may be a potential alternative form of treatment for these infections. Here we describe the genome of the previously described therapeutic B. cenocepacia podophage BcepIL02 and its close relative, Bcep22. Phage Bcep22 was found to contain a circularly permuted genome of 63,882 bp containing 77 genes; BcepIL02 was found to be 62,714 bp and contains 76 predicted genes. Major virion-associated proteins were identified by proteomic analysis. We propose that these phages comprise the founding members of a novel podophage lineage, the Bcep22-like phages. Among the interesting features of these phages are a series of tandemly repeated putative tail fiber genes that are similar to each other and also to one or more such genes in the other phages. Both phages also contain an extremely large (ca. 4,600-amino-acid), virion-associated, multidomain protein that accounts for over 20% of the phages' coding capacity, is widely distributed among other bacterial and phage genomes, and may be involved in facilitating DNA entry in both phage and other mobile DNA elements. The phages, which were previously presumed to be virulent, show evidence of a temperate lifestyle but are apparently unable to form stable lysogens in their hosts. This ambiguity complicates determination of a phage lifestyle, a key consideration in the selection of therapeutic phages