IODP Proposal 626: "Cenozoic Equatorial Age Transect – Following the Palaeo-equator"

As the largest ocean, the Pacific is intricately linked to major changes in the global climate system that took place during the Cenozoic. Throughout the Cenozoic the Pacific plate has had a northward component. Thus, the Pacific is unique, in that the thick sediment bulge of biogenic rich deposits from the currently narrowly focused zone of equatorial upwelling is slowly moving away from the equator. Hence, older sections are not deeply buried and can be recovered by drilling. Previous ODP Legs 138 and 199 were designed as transects across the paleo-equator in order to study the changing patterns of sediment deposition across equatorial regions, while this proposal aims to recover an orthogonal “age-transect” along the paleo-equator. Both previous legs were remarkably successful in giving us new insights into the workings of the climate and carbon system, productivity changes across the zone of divergence, time dependent calcium carbonate dissolution, bio- and magnetostratigraphy, the location of the ITCZ, and evolutionary patterns for times of climatic change and upheaval. Together with older DSDP drilling in the eastern equatorial Pacific, both Legs also helped to delineate the position of the paleo-equator and variations in sediment thickness from approximately 150°W to 110°W. As we have gained more information about the past movement of plates, and where in time “critical” climate events are located, we now propose to drill an age-transect (“flow-line”) along the position of the paleo-equator in the Pacific, targeting selected time-slices of interest where calcareous sediments have been preserved best. Leg 199 enhanced our understanding of extreme changes of the calcium carbonate compensation depth across major geological boundaries during the last 55 million years. A very shallow CCD during most of the Paleogene makes it difficult to obtain well preserved sediments, but we believe our siting strategy will allow us to drill the most promising sites and to obtain a unique sedimentary biogenic carbonate archive for time periods just after the Paleocene- Eocene boundary event, the Eocene cooling, the Eocene/Oligocene transition, the “one cold pole” Oligocene, the Oligocene-Miocene transition, and the Miocene, contributing to the objectives of the IODP Extreme Climates Initiative, and providing material that the previous legs were not able to recover

Gravitation Physics at BGPL

We report progress on a program of gravitational physics experiments using cryogenic torsion pendula undergoing large-amplitude torsion oscillation. This program includes tests of the gravitational inverse square law and of the weak equivalence principle. Here we describe our ongoing search for inverse-square-law violation at a strength down to $10^{-5}$ of standard gravity. The low-vibration environment provided by the Battelle Gravitation Physics Laboratory (BGPL) is uniquely suited to this study.Comment: To be published in The Proceedings of the Francesco Melchiorri Memorial Conference as a special issue of New Astronomy Review

A note on the convergence of parametrised non-resonant invariant manifolds

Truncated Taylor series representations of invariant manifolds are abundant in numerical computations. We present an aposteriori method to compute the convergence radii and error estimates of analytic parametrisations of non-resonant local invariant manifolds of a saddle of an analytic vector field, from such a truncated series. This enables us to obtain local enclosures, as well as existence results, for the invariant manifolds

Bowhead whales, and not right whales, were the primary target of 16th- to 17th-century Basque Whalers in the Western North Atlantic

During the 16th and 17th centuries, Basque whalers travelled annually to the Strait of Belle Isle and Gulf of St. Lawrence to hunt whales. The hunting that occurred during this period is of primary significance for the North Atlantic right whale, Eubalaena glacialis (Müller, 1776), because it has been interpreted as the largest human-induced reduction of the western North Atlantic population, with ~12250–21 000 whales killed. It has been frequently reported that the Basques targeted two species in this region: the North Atlantic right whale and the bowhead whale, Balaena mysticetus L., 1758. To evaluate this hypothesis and the relative impact of this period of whaling on both species, we collected samples from 364 whale bones during a comprehensive search of Basque whaling ports from the 16th to the 17th century in the Strait of Belle Isle and Gulf of St. Lawrence. Bones were found and sampled at 10 of the 20 sites investigated. DNA was extracted from a subset (n = 218) of these samples. Analysis of the mitochondrial cytochrome b region identified five whale species. The identification of only a single right whale bone and 203 bowhead whale bones from at least 72 individuals indicates that the bowhead whale was likely the principal target of the hunt. These results imply that this whaling had a much greater impact (in terms of numbers of whales removed) on the bowhead whale population than on the western North Atlantic right whale population.Aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles, les baleiniers basques se rendaient tous les ans au détroit de Belle Isle et au golfe du Saint- Laurent pour faire la chasse aux baleines. La chasse qui s’est effectuée pendant cette période revêt une grande importance pour la baleine franche ou baleine noire de l’Atlantique Nord, Eubalaena glacialis (Müller, 1776), car cette activité serait interprétée comme la plus grande réduction de la population de baleines franches de l’Atlantique Nord causée par l’être humain, au rythme d’environ 12 250 à 21 000 baleines tuées. On a souvent signalé que les Basques visaient deux espèces dans cette région, soit la baleine franche de l’Atlantique Nord et la baleine boréale, Balaena mysticetus L., 1758. Pour évaluer cette hypothèse et l’incidence relative de cette période de pêche aux baleines sur ces deux espèces, nous avons recueilli des échantillons provenant de 364 ossements de baleines dans le cadre d’une recherche approfondie de ports basques de chasse à la baleine remontant aux XVIe et XVIIe siècles dans le détroit de Belle Isle et le golfe du Saint-Laurent. Des ossements ont été trouvés et échantillonnés à 10 des 20 sites ayant fait l’objet de notre recherche. De l’ADN a été extrait d’un sous-ensemble (n = 218) de ces échantillons. L’analyse mitochondriale cytochrome b de la région a permis d’identifier cinq espèces de baleines. L’identification d’un seul os de baleine franche et de 203 os de baleines boréales provenant d’au moins 72 individus laisse croire que la baleine boréale était probablement la cible principale des chasseurs. Ces résultats impliquent que la chasse à la baleine a eu des incidences beaucoup plus grandes (en termes de nombres de baleines éliminées) sur la population de baleines boréales que sur la population de baleines franches de l’ouest de l’Atlantique Nord

Superdeformed rotational bands in the Mercury region; A Cranked Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov study

A study of rotational properties of the ground superdeformed bands in \Hg{0}, \Hg{2}, \Hg{4}, and \Pb{4} is presented. We use the cranked Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method with the {\skm} parametrization of the Skyrme force in the particle-hole channel and a seniority interaction in the pairing channel. An approximate particle number projection is performed by means of the Lipkin-Nogami prescription. We analyze the proton and neutron quasiparticle routhians in connection with the present information on about thirty presently observed superdeformed bands in nuclei close neighbours of \Hg{2}.Comment: 26 LaTeX pages, 14 uuencoded postscript figures included, Preprint IPN-TH 93-6

Structures for Interacting Composite Fermions: Stripes, Bubbles, and Fractional Quantum Hall Effect

Much of the present day qualitative phenomenology of the fractional quantum Hall effect can be understood by neglecting the interactions between composite fermions altogether. For example the fractional quantum Hall effect at $\nu=n/(2pn\pm 1)$ corresponds to filled composite-fermion Landau levels,and the compressible state at $\nu=1/2p$ to the Fermi sea of composite fermions. Away from these filling factors, the residual interactions between composite fermions will determine the nature of the ground state. In this article, a model is constructed for the residual interaction between composite fermions, and various possible states are considered in a variational approach. Our study suggests formation of composite-fermion stripes, bubble crystals, as well as fractional quantum Hall states for appropriate situations.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Solar Wakes of Dark Matter Flows

We analyze the effect of the Sun's gravitational field on a flow of cold dark matter (CDM) through the solar system in the limit where the velocity dispersion of the flow vanishes. The exact density and velocity distributions are derived in the case where the Sun is a point mass. The results are extended to the more realistic case where the Sun has a finite size spherically symmetric mass distribution. We find that regions of infinite density, called caustics, appear. One such region is a line caustic on the axis of symmetry, downstream from the Sun, where the flow trajectories cross. Another is a cone-shaped caustic surface near the trajectories of maximum scattering angle. The trajectories forming the conical caustic pass through the Sun's interior and probe the solar mass distribution, raising the possibility that the solar mass distribution may some day be measured by a dark matter detector on Earth. We generalize our results to the case of flows with continuous velocity distributions, such as that predicted by the isothermal model of the Milky Way halo.Comment: 30 pages, 8 figure

Theory of output coupling for trapped fermionic atoms

We develop a dynamic theory of output coupling, for fermionic atoms initially confined in a magnetic trap. We consider an exactly soluble one-dimensional model, with a spatially localized delta-type coupling between the atoms in the trap and a continuum of free-particle external modes. Two important special cases are considered for the confinement potential: the infinite box and the harmonic oscillator. We establish that in both cases a bound state of the coupled system appears for any value of the coupling constant, implying that the trap population does not vanish in the infinite-time limit. For weak coupling, the energy spectrum of the outgoing beam exhibits peaks corresponding to the initially occupied energy levels in the trap; the height of these peaks increases with the energy. As the coupling gets stronger, the energy spectrum is displaced towards dressed energies of the fermions in the trap. The corresponding dressed states result from the coupling between the unperturbed fermionic states in the trap, mediated by the coupling between these states and the continuum. In the strong-coupling limit, there is a reinforcement of the lowest-energy dressed mode, which contributes to the energy spectrum of the outgoing beam more strongly than the other modes. This effect is especially pronounced for the one-dimensional box, which indicates that the efficiency of the mode-reinforcement mechanism depends on the steepness of the confinement potential. In this case, a quasi-monochromatic anti-bunched atomic beam is obtained. Results for a bosonic sample are also shown for comparison.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures, added discussion on time-dependent spectral distribution and corresponding figur

Grain coarsening behaviour of solution annealed Alloy 625 between 600–800°C

As with all alloys, the grain structure of the nickel-base superalloy 625 has a significant impact on its mechanical properties. Predictability of the grain structure evolution in this material is particularly pertinent because it is prone to inter-metallic precipitate formation both during manufacture and long term or high temperature service. To this end, analysis has been performed on the grain structure of Alloy 625 aged isothermally at temperatures between 600 and 800 °C for times up to 3000 h. Fits made according to the classical Arrhenius equation describing normal grain growth yield an average value for the activation energy of a somewhat inhomogeneous grain structure above 700 °C of 108.3±6.6 kJ mol−1 and 46.6±12.2 kJ mol−1 below 650 °C. Linear extrapolation between 650 and 700 °C produces a significantly higher value of 527.7±23.1 kJ mol−1. This result is ultimately a consequence of a high driving force, solute-impeded grain boundary migration process operating within the alloy. Comparison of the high and low temperature values with the activation energy for volume self-diffusion and grain boundary diffusion identifies the latter as the principle governing mechanism for grain growth in both instances. A decrease in the value of the time exponent (n) at higher temperatures despite a reduction in solute drag is attributable to the Zener pinning imposed by grain boundary M6C and M23C6 particles identified from Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) and Energy Dispersive X-ray Spectroscopy (EDXS) analysis. Vickers hardness results show the dominance of intermetallic intragranular precipitates in the governance of the mechanical properties of the material with grain coarsening being accompanied by a significant increase in hardness. Furthermore, the lack of any correlation with grain growth behaviour indicates these phases have no significant effect on the grain evolution of the material