296 research outputs found
Geochemical-geophysical investigations, Fairbanks district
Trace element distribution in a subarctic valley in the Cleary Hill area of the Fairbanks gold district has been studied.
Zinc and arsenic have been found excellent pathfinder elements for auriferous deposits. Methods of analysis for copper, lead, zinc, molybdenum, silver and arsenic as well as heavy metals are discussed. The University of Alaska method #2 has been improved, Terrain, slope, and frozen ground have little effect upon the distribution of trace elements associated with the Cleary H i l l vein. A new method for the determination of zinc using dilute acid is proposed. Analysis of geochemical data by trend surface procedures proved effective for localization of anomalies
HEXTE Studies of Sco X-1 Spectra: Detections of Hard X-Ray Tails Beyond 200 keV
Using the HEXTE experiment on-board the RXTE satellite, we performed a search
for hard X-ray tails in Sco X-1 spectra. We found strong evidence for the
presence of such a non-thermal component on several occasions. Using the
PCA/RXTE we were able to track the position of the source along the Z diagram,
and we observed that the presence of the hard X-ray tail is not confined to a
particular region. However, we found a correlation between the power law index
of the non-thermal component and the position of the source in the Z diagram,
suggesting that the hard X-ray spectrum (i.e., E > 50 keV) becomes flatter as
the mass accretion rate increases. We were also able to study the temporal
variation of the appearance/absence of the hard X-ray component. With our
derived luminosities, we were also able to test the idea that X-ray
luminosities can be used to distinguish between X-ray binary systems containing
neutron stars and black holes.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures; Presented at the 33rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly
(Warsaw, Poland, 2000 July); Accepted for publication in Advances in Space
Researc
Environmental drivers of variation in bleaching severity of Acropora species during an extreme thermal anomaly
High sea surface temperatures caused global coral bleaching during 2015–2016. During this thermal stress event, we quantified within- and among-species variability in bleaching severity for critical habitat-forming Acropora corals. The objective of this study was to understand the drivers of spatial and species-specific variation in the bleaching susceptibility of these corals, and to evaluate whether bleaching susceptibility under extreme thermal stress was consistent with that observed during less severe bleaching events. We surveyed and mapped Acropora corals at 10 sites (N = 596) around the Lizard Island group on the northern Great Barrier Reef. For each colony, bleaching severity was quantified using a new image analysis technique, and we assessed whether small-scale environmental variables (depth, microhabitat, competition intensity) and species traits (colony morphology, colony size, known symbiont clade association) explained variation in bleaching. Results showed that during severe thermal stress, bleaching of branching corals was linked to microhabitat features, and was more severe at reef edge compared with lagoonal sites. Bleaching severity worsened over a very short time-frame (∼1 week), but did not differ systematically with water depth, competition intensity, or colony size. At our study location, within- and among-species variation in bleaching severity was relatively low compared to the level of variation reported in the literature. More broadly, our results indicate that variability in bleaching susceptibility during extreme thermal stress is not consistent with that observed during previous bleaching events that have ranged in severity among globally dispersed sites, with fewer species escaping bleaching during severe thermal stress. In addition, shaded microhabitats can provide a refuge from bleaching which provides further evidence of the importance of topographic complexity for maintaining the biodiversity and ecosystem functioning of coral reefs
Can forest management based on natural disturbances maintain ecological resilience?
Given the increasingly global stresses on forests, many ecologists argue that managers must maintain ecological resilience: the capacity of ecosystems to absorb disturbances without undergoing fundamental change. In this review we ask: Can the emerging paradigm of natural-disturbance-based management (NDBM) maintain ecological resilience in managed forests? Applying resilience theory requires careful articulation of the ecosystem state under consideration, the disturbances and stresses that affect the persistence of possible alternative states, and the spatial and temporal scales of management relevance. Implementing NDBM while maintaining resilience means recognizing that (i) biodiversity is important for long-term ecosystem persistence, (ii) natural disturbances play a critical role as a generator of structural and compositional heterogeneity at multiple scales, and (iii) traditional management tends to produce forests more homogeneous than those disturbed naturally and increases the likelihood of unexpected catastrophic change by constraining variation of key environmental processes. NDBM may maintain resilience if silvicultural strategies retain the structures and processes that perpetuate desired states while reducing those that enhance resilience of undesirable states. Such strategies require an understanding of harvesting impacts on slow ecosystem processes, such as seed-bank or nutrient dynamics, which in the long term can lead to ecological surprises by altering the forest's capacity to reorganize after disturbance
The luminosities of protostars in the spitzer c2d and gould belt legacy clouds
Journal ArticlePublished version available online at the Astronomical Journal, Volume 145, Number 4, Article 94; doi: doi: 10.1088/0004-6256/145/4/94Motivated by the long-standing "luminosity problem" in low-mass star formation whereby protostars are underluminous compared to theoretical expectations, we identify 230 protostars in 18 molecular clouds observed by two Spitzer Space Telescope Legacy surveys of nearby star-forming regions. We compile complete spectral energy distributions, calculate L bol for each source, and study the protostellar luminosity distribution. This distribution extends over three orders of magnitude, from 0.01 L ȯ to 69 L ȯ, and has a mean and median of 4.3 L ȯ and 1.3 L ȯ, respectively. The distributions are very similar for Class 0 and Class I sources except for an excess of low luminosity (L bol ≲ 0.5 L) Class I sources compared to Class 0. 100 out of the 230 protostars (43%) lack any available data in the far-infrared and submillimeter (70 μm <λ < 850 μm) and have L bol underestimated by factors of 2.5 on average, and up to factors of 8-10 in extreme cases. Correcting these underestimates for each source individually once additional data becomes available will likely increase both the mean and median of the sample by 35%-40%. We discuss and compare our results to several recent theoretical studies of protostellar luminosities and show that our new results do not invalidate the conclusions of any of these studies. As these studies demonstrate that there is more than one plausible accretion scenario that can match observations, future attention is clearly needed. The better statistics provided by our increased data set should aid such future work. © 2013. The American Astronomical Society. All rights reserved..National Science FoundationNational Aeronautics and Space AdministrationJet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technolog
Search for the Proton Decay Mode proton to neutrino K+ in Soudan 2
We have searched for the proton decay mode proton to neutrino K+ using the
one-kiloton Soudan 2 high resolution calorimeter. Contained events obtained
from a 3.56 kiloton-year fiducial exposure through June 1997 are examined for
occurrence of a visible K+ track which decays at rest into mu+ nu or pi+ pi0.
We found one candidate event consistent with background, yielding a limit,
tau/B > 4.3 10^{31} years at 90% CL with no background subtraction.Comment: 13 pages, Latex, 3 tables and 3 figures, Accepted by Physics Letters
Pion and Kaon Production in and Collisions at Next-to-Leading Order
We present new sets of fragmentation functions for charged pions and kaons,
both at leading and next-to-leading order. They are fitted to data on inclusive
charged-hadron production in annihilation taken by TPC at PEP (~GeV) and to similar data by ALEPH at LEP, who discriminated between
events with charm, bottom, and light- flavour fragmentation in their
charged-hadron sample. We treat all partons independently and to properly
incorporate the charm and bottom thresholds. Due to the sizeable energy gap
between PEP and LEP, we are sensitive to the scaling violation in the
fragmentation process, which allows us to extract a value for the asymptotic
scale parameter of QCD, . Recent data on inclusive charged-hadron
production in tagged three-jet events by OPAL and similar data for longitudinal
electron polarization by ALEPH allow us to pin down the gluon fragmentation
functions. Our new fragmentation functions lead to an excellent description of
a multitude of other data on inclusive charged-hadron production,
ranging from ~GeV to LEP energy. In addition, they agree nicely
with the transverse-momentum spectra of single charged hadrons measured by H1
and ZEUS in photoproduction at the collider HERA, which represents a
nontrivial check of the factorization theorem of the QCD-improved parton model.Comment: 22 pages, latex, 13 compressed ps figures in separate fil
Threshold Electrodisintegration of ^3He
Cross sections were measured for the near-threshold electrodisintegration of
^3He at momentum transfer values of q=2.4, 4.4, and 4.7 fm^{-1}. From these and
prior measurements the transverse and longitudinal response functions R_T and
R_L were deduced. Comparisons are made against previously published and new
non-relativistic A=3 calculations using the best available NN potentials. In
general, for q<2 fm^{-1} these calculations accurately predict the threshold
electrodisintegration of ^3He. Agreement at increasing q demands consideration
of two-body terms, but discrepancies still appear at the highest momentum
transfers probed, perhaps due to the neglect of relativistic dynamics, or to
the underestimation of high-momentum wave-function components.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, 1 table, REVTEX4, submitted to Physical Review
Low- and high-mass components of the photon distribution functions
The structure of the general solution of the inhomogeneous evolution
equations allows the separation of a photon structure function into
perturbative (``anomalous") and non-perturbative contributions. The former part
is fully calculable, and can be identified with the high-mass contributions to
the dispersion integral in the photon mass. Properly normalized ``state"
distributions can be defined, where the \gamma\to\qqbar splitting probability
is factored out. These state distributions are shown to be useful in the
description of the hadronic event properties, and necessary for a proper
eikonalization of jet cross sections. Convenient parametrizations are provided
both for the state and for the full anomalous parton distributions. The
non-perturbative parts of the parton distribution functions of the photon are
identified with the low-mass contributions to the dispersion integral. Their
normalizations, as well as the value of the scale at which the
perturbative parts vanish, are fixed by approximating the low-mass
contributions by a discrete, finite sum of vector mesons. The shapes of these
hadronic distributions are fitted to the available data on .
Parametrizations are provided for GeV and GeV, both in the
DIS and the factorization schemes. The full
parametrizations are extended towards virtual photons. Finally, the often-used
``FKP-plus-TPC/" solution for is commented upon.Comment: 33 pages, Latex, 6 Z-compressed and uuencoded figure
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