Anchors for the cosmic distance scale: the Cepheid QZ Normae in the open cluster NGC 6067     

D. Majaess  L. Sturch  C. Moni Bidin  M. Soto  W. Gieren  R. Cohen  F. Mauro  D. Geisler  C. Bonatto  J. Borissova  D. Minniti  D. Turner  D. Lane  B. Madore  G. Carraro  L. Berdnikov 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2013,347(1):61-70

Cepheids are key to establishing the cosmic distance scale. Therefore it’s important to assess the viability of QZ Nor, V340 Nor, and GU Nor as calibrators for Leavitt’s law via their purported membership in the open cluster NGC 6067. The following suite of evidence confirms that QZ Nor and V340 Nor are members of NGC 6067, whereas GU Nor likely lies in the foreground: (i) existing radial velocities for QZ Nor and V340 Nor agree with that established for the cluster ( $-39.4\pm0.2(\sigma_{\bar {x}}) \pm1.2 (\sigma)~\mbox{km/s}$ ) to within 1 km/s, whereas GU Nor exhibits a markedly smaller value; (ii) a steep velocity-distance gradient characterizes the sight-line toward NGC 6067, thus implying that objects sharing common velocities are nearly equidistant; (iii) a radial profile constructed for NGC 6067 indicates that QZ Nor is within the cluster bounds, despite being 20′ from the cluster center; (iv) new BVJH photometry for NGC 6067 confirms the cluster lies d=1.75±0.10 kpc distant, a result that matches Wesenheit distances computed for QZ Nor/V340 Nor using the Benedict et al. (Astron. J. 133:1810, 2007, HST parallaxes) calibration. QZ Nor is a cluster Cepheid that should be employed as a calibrator for the cosmic distance scale.  相似文献   

Reproductive traits of Euterpina acutifrons in a coastal area of Southeastern Brazil     

Mauro de Melo Júnior  Leonardo K. Miyashita  Naira J. Silva  Salvador A. Gaeta  Rubens M. Lopes 《Marine Ecology》2013,34(3):363-372

We investigated the reproductive biology of the planktonic harpacticoid copepod Euterpina acutifrons, including morphometric data, egg production rates (EPR) and viability, and weight‐specific egg production. Experiments were carried out during 1 year in an inner‐shelf area off Ubatuba (SE Brazil), a site seasonally influenced by bottom intrusions of the relatively cold and nutrient‐rich South Atlantic Central Water (SACW). We hypothesized that E. acutifrons attain higher reproductive rates when SACW penetrates in this region. Live females were incubated individually in cell culture plates during two periods of 24 h each, under controlled temperature and light conditions. Euterpina acutifrons carried on average 16.9 ± 6.9 eggs·sac^?1, ranging between 10.8 ± 5.7 and 30.8 ± 7.4 eggs·sac^?1. Estimated EPRs ranged from 6.3 ± 3.4 to 13.6 ± 4.2 eggs·female^?1·day^?1, with mean weight‐specific egg production rates of 0.06 ± 0.04 and 0.17 ± 0.08 per day. Euterpina acutifrons was not directly influenced by SACW intrusions, but body length and clutch size were positively related to temperature and chlorophyll content. Egg hatching time was clearly dependent on water temperature, as a 2 °C increase resulted in a decrease of 15 h in egg hatching time. This shows that even a small variation in temperature may considerably affect E. acutifrons population dynamics. Reproductive traits of this pelagic harpacticoid seem, therefore, to be controlled by the trade‐offs between increased food supply and the metabolic demands at low temperatures associated with SACW bottom intrusions toward this coastal area.  相似文献   

Anatomy of a late Pleistocene clinoformal sedimentary body (Le Castella,Calabria, southern Italy): A case of prograding spit system?     

Massimo Zecchin  Mauro Caffau  Dario Civile  Cesare Roda 《Sedimentary Geology》2010,223(3-4):291-309

The Le Castella marine terrace is the smallest and youngest terrace of the Crotone area (southern Italy), and formed after a rapid marine ingression due to a glacio-eustatic rise outpacing the regional uplift of the area. The most prominent feature of the terrace deposits is a seaward-accreting clinoform about 10 m thick, inferred to be formed during forced regressive conditions. This prograding body is mostly composed of bioclastic material, and shows an internal complexity consisting of alternating oblique and sigmoid elementary units inferred to be produced mainly by changes of accommodation development. Foreset avalancing was due to sediment accumulation by gravity-flow processes, while topsets were characterized by the migration of medium- to large-scale dunes showing a unimodal palaeocurrent pattern, oblique with respect to the dip direction of the large-scale clinoform foresets. The Le Castella clinoform starts to develop from a topographic step on the basement due to tectonics, which also controlled the palaeoshoreline trend.The recognized stratigraphic and facies architectures, the palaeocurrent pattern, and the inferred palaeogeographic setting during deposition, all suggest that the Le Castella clinoform is an example of spit system attached to the mainland and accreted due to longshore transport. The present example contributes to establish criteria allowing the recognition of ancient spit systems, which still are poorly known and rarely documented in the pre-Quaternary geological record.  相似文献   

Origin and evolution of a salty gypsum/anhydrite karst spring: the case of Poiano (Northern Apennines, Italy)     

Mauro Chiesi  Jo De Waele  Paolo Forti 《Hydrogeology Journal》2010,18(5):1111-1124

Poiano is the largest karst spring of the Emilia Romagna region (northern Italy). It drains an aquifer of unique properties composed of anhydrite with halite lenses at depth and gypsum at the surface (both with high NaCl content). Hydrogeological research has been undertaken using automatically recorded hourly data on temperature, electrical conductivity, and water level. Water feeding the Poiano spring is restricted within the gypsum/anhydrite outcrop between the Lucola, Sologno and Secchia rivers. Karstification in the Upper Secchia Valley only concerns the gypsum rocks mainly present along the border and in the shallower parts of the sulfate outcrop and does not appear to occur at depth. Data strongly support the hypothesis that the salt content in the spring water derives from active halokinetic movements. For the first time, the fundamental hydrogeological importance of the anhydrite part inside the sulfate rocks is demonstrated. If gypsum prevails over anhydrite the karst drainage network can extend deep into the rocks following a network of fractures and fissures. Instead, if in the deep parts of the aquifer anhydrite prevails over gypsum, the karst evolution cannot take place at depth and the structure of the underground drainage paths only follows near-surface paths in gypsum.  相似文献   

Rapid estimation of ground-shaking maps for seismic emergency management in the Campania Region of southern Italy   总被引：1，自引：1，他引：0  

Vincenzo Convertito  Raffaella De Matteis  Luciana Cantore  Aldo Zollo  Giovanni Iannaccone  Mauro Caccavale 《Natural Hazards》2010,52(1):97-115

Strong ground-shaking mapping soon after a moderate-to-large earthquake is crucial to recognize the areas that have suffered the largest damage and losses. These maps have a fundamental role for emergency services, loss estimation and planning of emergency actions by the Civil Protection Authorities. This is particularly important for areas with high seismic risk levels, such as the Campania-Lucania Region in southern Italy. Taking advantage of the Irpinia Seismic Network (ISNet), a recently installed dense and wide dynamic seismic network, we have developed a procedure for rapid estimation of ground-shaking maps after moderate-to-large earthquakes (GRSmap). This uses an optimal data gridding scheme designed to account for bi-dimensional features of strong ground-motion fields, such as directivity, radiation patterns and focal mechanisms, to which most damage can be correlated. The basis of the mapping technique is a triangulation procedure to locally correct predicted data at the triangle barycentres where their vertices correspond to seismic stations. The method has been tested off-line using a simulated M 6.6 earthquake located at the centre of ISNet and applied to data of the 23 November 1980 Irpina M 6.9 earthquake recorded by a sparse network. This has highlighted its ability to predict peak ground-motion parameters of large magnitude earthquakes with respect to the attenuation relationships.  相似文献   

Observations of near-inertial oscillations along the Brazilian continental shelf break     

de Freitas  Pedro Paulo  Amorim  Felipe de Luca Lopes  Mill  Guilherme Nogueira  da Costa  Vladimir Santos  Gabioux  Mariela  Cirano  Mauro  Paiva  Afonso de Moraes 《Ocean Dynamics》2019,69(10):1203-1215

Ocean Dynamics - Near-inertial oscillations (NIO) are intermittent motions with a frequency close to the inertial frequency and represent an important fraction of the energy to the currents in the...  相似文献   

Uniform fragility spectra for the performance‐based seismic design of structures considering variabilities in structural properties          下载免费PDF全文

Mauro Niño  Gustavo Ayala  Saúl López 《地震工程与结构动力学》2018,47(8):1742-1754

This paper presents a new methodology based on structural performance to determine uniform fragility design spectra, i.e., spectra with the same probability of exceedance of a performance level for a given seismic intensity. The design spectra calculated with this methodology provide directly the lateral strength, in terms of yield‐ pseudo‐accelerations, associated with the rate of exceedance of a specific ductility characterizing the performance level for which the structures will be designed. This procedure involves the assessment of the seismic hazard using a large enough number of seismic records of several magnitudes; these records are simulated with an improved empirical Green function method. The statistics of the performance of a single degree of freedom system are obtained using Monte Carlo simulation considering the seismic demand, the fundamental period, and the strength of the structure as uncertain variables. With these results, the conditional probability that a structure exceeds a specific performance level is obtained. The authors consider that the proposed procedure is a significant improvement to others considered in the literature and a useful research tool for the further development of uniform fragility spectra that can be used for the performance‐based seismic design and retrofit of structures.  相似文献   

Evaluation of liquefaction potential in an intermountain Quaternary lacustrine basin (Fucino basin,central Italy)     

Paolo Boncio  Sara Amoroso  Giovanna Vessia  Marco Francescone  Mauro Nardone  Paola Monaco  Daniela Famiani  Deborah Di Naccio  Alessia Mercuri  Maria Rosaria Manuel  Fabrizio Galadini  Giuliano Milana 《Bulletin of Earthquake Engineering》2018,16(1):91-111

In this study, we analyse the susceptibility to liquefaction of the Pozzone site, which is located on the northern side of the Fucino lacustrine basin in central Italy. In 1915, this region was struck by a M 7.0 earthquake, which produced widespread coseismic surface effects that were interpreted to be liquefaction-related. However, the interpretation of these phenomena at the Pozzone site is not straightforward. Furthermore, the site is characterized by an abundance of fine-grained sediments, which are not typically found in liquefiable soils. Therefore, in this study, we perform a number of detailed stratigraphic and geotechnical investigations (including continuous-coring borehole, CPTu, SDMT, SPT, and geotechnical laboratory tests) to better interpret these 1915 phenomena and to evaluate the liquefaction potential of a lacustrine environment dominated by fine-grained sedimentation. The upper 18.5 m of the stratigraphic succession comprises fine-grained sediments, including four strata of coarser sediments formed by interbedded layers of sand, silty sand and sandy silt. These strata, which are interpreted to represent the frontal lobes of an alluvial fan system within a lacustrine succession, are highly susceptible to liquefaction. We also find evidence of paleo-liquefaction, dated between 12.1–10.8 and 9.43–9.13 kyrs ago, occurring at depths of 2.1–2.3 m. These data, along with the aforementioned geotechnical analyses, indicate that this site would indeed be liquefiable in a 1915-like earthquake. Although we found a broad agreement among CPTu, DMT and shear wave velocity “simplified procedures” in detecting the liquefaction potential of the Pozzone soil, our results suggest that the use and comparison of different in situ techniques are highly recommended for reliable estimates of the cyclic liquefaction resistance in lacustrine sites characterized by high content of fine-grained soils. In geologic environments similar to the one analysed in this work, where it is difficult to detect liquefiable layers, one can identify sites that are susceptible to liquefaction only by using detailed stratigraphic reconstructions, in situ characterization, and laboratory analyses. This has implications for basic (Level 1) seismic microzonation mapping, which typically relies on the use of empirical evaluations based on geologic maps and pre-existing sub-surface data (i.e., age and type of deposits, prevailing grain size, with particular attention paid to clean sands, and depth of the water table).  相似文献   

Land use changes due to energy policy as a determining factor for morphological processes in fluvial systems in São Paulo State,Brazil          下载免费PDF全文

Cenira Maria Lupinacci  Fabiano Tomazini da Conceição  Adriano Luis Heck Simon  Archimedes Perez Filho 《地球表面变化过程与地形》2017,42(14):2402-2413

The number of hydroelectric dams used for energy production and the cultivation of sugar cane crops for ethanol production have increased significantly in the southeastern region of Brazil. These land use/land cover changes (LULCC) associated with energy policy can affect landscape changes over a range of temporal and spatial scales. This article focuses on how human–landscape interactions have influenced geomorphological dynamics in the lower course of the Piracicaba River for two different scenarios that represent pre‐dam and post‐dam conditions in 1962 and 2007, respectively, and the expansion of sugar cane crops after 1975. This assessment was performed by mapping land use and geomorphological changes in the study area in the 1962 and 2007 scenarios, in addition to quantifying the sedimentation rates upstream from the Barra Bonita Reservoir using ²¹⁰Pb. The main land uses identified for the 1962 scenario were pastures, meadows, annual crops and forests. However, the main land use change was the expansion of sugar cane cropland from 4 to 39%. In the 1962 scenario, the lower course of the Piracicaba River had a predominantly meandering pattern, and there were pronounced alluvial plains in the region. In the 2007 scenario, oxbow lakes were not mapped, and the river terraces were reduced in area due to construction of the Barra Bonita Reservoir. The changes in the sedimentation rates indicate an association between the construction of the Barra Bonita Reservoir and the expansion of sugar cane crops. It was therefore not possible to assess the specific influences of each anthropogenic change on the sedimentation processes, reinforcing that the human–landscape systems in São Paulo State associated with energy policy are complex. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.  相似文献