Discriminating cool-water from warm-water carbonates and their diagenetic environments using element geochemistry: the Oligocene Tikorangi Formation (Taranaki Basin) and the dolomite effect

Fields portrayed within bivariate element plots have been used to distinguish between carbonates formed in warm- (tropical) water and cool- (temperate) water depositional settings. Here, element concentrations (Ca, Mg, Sr, Na, Fe, and Mn) have been determined for the carbonate fraction of bulk samples from the late Oligocene Tikorangi Formation, a subsurface, mixed dolomite-calcite, cool-water limestone sequence in Taranaki Basin, New Zealand. While the occurrence of dolomite is rare in New Zealand Cenozoic carbonates, and in cool-water carbonates more generally, the dolomite in the Tikorangi carbonates is shown to have a dramatic effect on the "traditional" positioning of cool-water limestone fields within bivariate element plots. Rare undolomitised, wholly calcitic carbonate samples in the Tikorangi Formation have the following average composition: Mg 2800 ppm; Ca 319 100 ppm; Na 800 ppm; Fe 6300 ppm; Sr 2400 ppm; and Mn 300 ppm. Tikorangi Formation dolomite-rich samples (>15% dolomite) have average values of: Mg 53 400 ppm; Ca 290 400 ppm; Na 4700 ppm; Fe 28 100 ppm; Sr 5400 ppm; and Mn 500 ppm. Element-element plots for dolomite-bearing samples show elevated Mg, Na, and Sr values compared with most other low-Mg calcite New Zealand Cenozoic limestones. The increased trace element contents are directly attributable to the trace element-enriched nature of the burial-derived dolomites, termed here the "dolomite effect". Fe levels in the Tikorangi Formation carbonates far exceed both modern and ancient cool-water and warm-water analogues, while Sr values are also higher than those in modern Tasmanian cool-water carbonates, and approach modern Bahaman warm-water carbonate values. Trace element data used in conjunction with more traditional petrographic data have aided in the diagenetic interpretation of the carbonate-dominated Tikorangi sequence. The geochemical results have been particularly useful for providing more definitive evidence for deep burial dolomitisation of the deposits under the influence of marine-modified pore fluids

Columbus Scholar House: Innovative Housing for Student Parents

Almost one-quarter of the U.S. college students are also parents. Many student parents are single parents, grew up in households with limited financials resources, or are the first in their families to attend college. Stable, quality, affordable housing is a critical foundation for student parents to be successful but there are limited housing options for this student subgroup. Supporting high-quality early learning opportunities for children of student parents is also a priority based on evidence from two-generation approaches to breaking the cycle of poverty.https://fuse.franklin.edu/ss2016/1019/thumbnail.jp

Solar stormwatch: tracking solar eruptions

The Solar Stormwatch team reviews progress and prospects for this highly effective citizen-science project focused on the Sun

Petrogenesis of diachronous mixed siliciclastic-carbonate megafacies in the cool-water Oligocene Tikorangi Formation, Taranaki Basin, New Zealand

The Oligocene (Whaingaroan-Waitakian) Tikorangi Formation is a totally subsurface, lithostratigraphically complex, mixed siliciclastic-limestone-rich sequence forming an important fracture reservoir within Taranaki Basin, New Zealand. Petrographically the formation comprises a spectrum of interbedded rock types ranging from calcareous mudstone to wackestone to packstone to clean sparry grainstone. Skeletal and textural varieties within these rock types have aided in the identification of three environmentally distinctive megafacies for the Tikorangi Formation rocks-shelfal, foredeep, and basinal. Data from these megafacies have been used to detail previous conclusions on the petrogenesis and to further refine depositional paleoenvironmental models for the Tikorangi Formation in the central eastern Taranaki Basin margin.Shelfal Megafacies 1 rocks (reference well Hu Road-1A) are latest Oligocene (early Waitakian) in age and formed on or proximal to the Patea-Tongaporutu-Herangi basement high. They are characterised by coarse, skeletal-rich, pure sparry grainstone comprising shallow water, high energy taxa (bryozoans, barnacles, red algae) and admixtures of coarse well-rounded lithic sand derived from Mesozoic basement greywacke. This facies type has previously gone unrecorded in the Tikorangi Formation. Megafacies 2 is a latest Oligocene (early Waitakian) foredeep megafacies (formerly named shelfal facies) formed immediately basinward and west of the shelfal basement platform. It accumulated relatively rapidly (>20 cm/ka) from redeposition of shelfal megafacies biota that became intermixed with bathyal taxa to produce a spectrum of typically mudstone through to sparry grainstone. The resulting skeletal mix (bivalve, echinoderm, planktic and benthic foraminiferal, red algal, bryozoan, nannofossil) is unlike that in any of the age-equivalent limestone units in neighbouring onland King Country Basin. Megafacies 3 is an Oligocene (Whaingaroan-Waitakian) offshore basinal megafacies (formerly termed bathyal facies) of planktic foraminiferal-nannofossil-siliciclastic wackestone and mudstone formed away from redepositional influences. The siliciclastic input in this distal basinal setting (sedimentation rates <7 mm/ka) was probably sourced mainly from oceanic currents carrying suspended sediment from South Island provenances exposed at this time.Tikorangi Formation rocks record the Taranaki Basin’s only period of carbonate-dominated sedimentation across a full range of shelfal, foredeep, and basinal settings. Depositional controls on the three contrasting megafacies were fundamentally the interplay of an evolving and complex plate tectonic setting, including development of a carbonate foredeep, changes in relative sea level within an overall transgressive regime, and changing availability, sources, and modes of deposition of both bioclastic and siliciclastic sediments. The mixed siliciclastic-carbonate nature of the formation, and its skeletal assemblages, low-Mg calcite mineralogy, and delayed deep burial diagenetic history, are features consistent with formation in temperate-latitude cool waters

Early social experience affects the development of eye gaze processing

Eye gaze is a key channel of non-verbal communication in humans [1-3]. Eye contact with others is present from birth [4], and eye gaze processing is crucial for social learning and adult-infant communication [5-7]. However, little is known about the effect of selectively different experience of eye contact and gaze communication on early social and communicative development. To directly address this question, 14 sighted infants of blind parents (SIBP) were assessed longitudinally at 6-10 and 12-16 months. Face scanning [8] and gaze following [7, 9] were assessed using eye tracking. In addition, naturalistic observations were made when the infants were interacting with their blind parent and with an unfamiliar sighted adult. Established measures of emergent autistic-like behaviours [10] and standardized tests of cognitive, motor and linguistic development [11] were also collected. These data were then compared with those obtained from a group of infants of sighted parents. Despite showing typical social skills development overall, infants of blind parents allocated less attention to adult eye movements and gaze direction, an effect which increased between 6-10 and 12-16 months of age. The results suggest that infants adjust their use of adult's eye gaze depending on gaze communication experience from early in life. The results highlight that human functional brain development shows selective experience-dependent plasticity adaptive to the individual's specific social environment

Tracking CMEs using data from the Solar Stormwatch project; observing deflections and other properties

With increasing technological dependence, society is becoming ever more affected by changes in the near-Earth space environment caused by space weather. The primary driver of these hazards are coronal mass ejections (CMEs). Solar Stormwatch is a citizen science project in which volunteers participated in several activities which characterised CMEs in the remote sensing images from the SECCHI instrument package on the twin STEREO spacecraft. Here, we analyse the results of the 'Track-it-back' activity, in which CMEs were tracked back through the COR2, COR1 and EUVI images. Analysis of the COR1, COR2 and EUVI data together allows CMEs to be studied consistently throughout the whole field-of-view spanned by these instruments (out to 15 solar radii). 4783 volunteers took part in this activity, creating a dataset containing 23,801 estimates of CME timing, location and size. We used this data to produce a catalogue of 41 CMEs, which is the first to consistently track CMEs through each of these instruments. We assess how the CME speeds, propagation directions and widths vary as the CMEs propagate through the fields of view of the different imagers. In particular, we compare the observed CME deflections between the COR1 and COR2 fields of view to the separation between the CME source region and the heliospheric current sheet (HCS), demonstrating that, in general, these CMEs appear to deflect towards the HCS, consistent with other modelling studies of CME propagation

Differences between the CME fronts tracked by an expert, an automated algorithm, and the Solar Stormwatch project

Observations from the Heliospheric Imager (HI) instruments aboard the twin STEREO spacecraft have enabled the compilation of several catalogues of coronal mass ejections (CMEs), each characterizing the propagation of CMEs through the inner heliosphere. Three such catalogues are the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL)-HI event list, the Solar Stormwatch CME catalogue, and, presented here, the J-tracker catalogue. Each catalogue uses a different method to characterize the location of CME fronts in the HI images: manual identification by an expert, the statistical reduction of the manual identifications of many citizen scientists, and an automated algorithm. We provide a quantitative comparison of the differences between these catalogues and techniques, using 51 CMEs common to each catalogue. The time-elongation profiles of these CME fronts are compared, as are the estimates of the CME kinematics derived from application of three widely used single-spacecraft-fitting techniques. The J-tracker and RAL-HI profiles are most similar, while the Solar Stormwatch profiles display a small systematic offset. Evidence is presented that these differences arise because the RAL-HI and J-tracker profiles follow the sunward edge of CME density enhancements, while Solar Stormwatch profiles track closer to the antisunward (leading) edge. We demonstrate that the method used to produce the time-elongation profile typically introduces more variability into the kinematic estimates than differences between the various single-spacecraft-fitting techniques. This has implications for the repeatability and robustness of these types of analyses, arguably especially so in the context of space weather forecasting, where it could make the results strongly dependent on the methods used by the forecaster

Validation of a priori CME arrival predictions made using real-time heliospheric imager observations

Between December 2010 and March 2013, volunteers for the Solar Stormwatch (SSW) Citizen Science project have identified and analyzed coronal mass ejections (CMEs) in the near real-time Solar Terrestrial Relations Observatory Heliospheric Imager observations, in order to make “Fearless Forecasts” of CME arrival times and speeds at Earth. Of the 60 predictions of Earth-directed CMEs, 20 resulted in an identifiable Interplanetary CME (ICME) at Earth within 1.5–6 days, with an average error in predicted transit time of 22 h, and average transit time of 82.3 h. The average error in predicting arrival speed is 151 km s−1, with an average arrival speed of 425km s−1. In the same time period, there were 44 CMEs for which there are no corresponding SSW predictions, and there were 600 days on which there was neither a CME predicted nor observed. A number of metrics show that the SSW predictions do have useful forecast skill; however, there is still much room for improvement. We investigate potential improvements by using SSW inputs in three models of ICME propagation: two of constant acceleration and one of aerodynamic drag. We find that taking account of interplanetary acceleration can improve the average errors of transit time to 19 h and arrival speed to 77 km s−1

Evaluating the Skill of Forecasts of the Near-Earth Solar Wind using a Space Weather Monitor at L5

Forecasting space weather is an essential activity for increasing the resilience of modern technological infrastructure to hazards from the Sun. To provide an accurate forecast, space weather monitors positioned at L5 are proposed that carry in‐situ plasma detectors. Here, we use data from the STEREO and ACE missions to investigate how well it is possible to predict the solar wind when there are two spacecraft located with the same longitudinal separation as from L5 to Earth. There are four intervals when this is the case; STEREO‐to‐STEREO both on Earth's side and the far side of the Sun, STEREO‐B to ACE and ACE to STEREO‐A. We forecast the solar wind by mapping the observed solar wind at the first spacecraft to the second using a time delay calculated using the spacecraft's heliographic longitudinal separation and the difference in radial distance from the Sun, allowing for the solar wind speed. Using forecasting skill scores, we find that the predicted and observed solar wind data are, in general, in very good agreement for each of the four periods, including observed co‐rotating interaction regions (CIRs). However, there are some notable exceptions when CIRs have been missed by the forecast. The skill improves further for all time periods when removing coronal mass ejections which cannot be predicted in this method. We suggest that an L5 monitor should be located at the same heliographic latitude as Earth to optimise the forecasting ability of the monitor and to reduce the chance of missing important events

Association between school policies and built environment, and youth's participation in various types of physical activities

Abstract: Background: School environmental characteristics may be associated with youth’s participation in different types of physical activities (PA). This study aimed to identify which school policies and built environmental characteristics were associated with participation in organized, non-organized, individual and group-based activities. Methods: This cross-sectional analysis included 776 Grade 5 and 6 students from 16 schools. The school environment was assessed through school-based questionnaires completed by school representatives. Types of PA and attainment of PA recommendations were obtained using self-administered student questionnaires. Associations between environment and student PA were examined using multilevel logistic regressions. Results: Schools with favorable active commuting environments were positively associated with girls’ participation in organized (OR=1.34, CI=1.04, 1.74) and group-based PA (OR=1.54, CI=1.19, 1.99) and with boys’ odds of participating in individual activities (OR=1.45, CI=1.04, 2.04). There was also a positive relationship between having a school environment favorable to active commuting and boys’ odds of meeting PA recommendations (OR=2.19, CI=1.43, 3.37). School policies supporting PA were positively associated with girls’ odds of participating in non-organized activities (OR=1.18, CI=1.00, 1.40). Conclusions: School environments which favor active commuting may encourage participation in different types of PA. School policies promoting PA may also encourage girls to participate in organized activities