OSL dating of the Middle Palaeolithic Hotel California site,Sierra de Atapuerca,north‐central Spain     

Lee J. Arnold  Martina Demuro  Marta Navazo  Alfonso Benito‐Calvo  Alfredo Pérez‐González 《Boreas: An International Journal of Quaternary Research》2013,42(2):285-305

In this study we present optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating results obtained at one of the most important open‐air Middle Palaeolithic sites in the Sierra de Atapuerca foothills – Hotel California. We also assess the possibility of obtaining extended‐range OSL chronologies for a nearby Middle Pleistocene fluvial deposit using several novel methods, namely OSL dating of individual quartz ‘supergrains’, multi‐grain aliquot thermally transferred OSL (TT‐OSL) dating and the first application of a single‐grain TT‐OSL dating procedure. Four single‐grain OSL ages constrain the Middle Palaeolithic occupation of Hotel California to between 71±6 and 48±3 ka. The Hotel California single‐grain equivalent dose (D_e) distributions are highly overdispersed and contain several dose populations, which are probably attributable to post‐depositional sediment mixing, partial bleaching and intrinsic scatter. The reliability of multi‐grain aliquot OSL dating is compromised by the complex underlying D_e dispersion affecting these samples, as well as by biasing multi‐grain averaging effects. Extended‐range OSL and TT‐OSL chronologies for the nearby Pico River terrace are consistent with each other and with broad independent age control. These experimental approaches yield a weighted average age of 348±16 ka for terrace T_A9 of the Arlanzón River sequence. Our results highlight the benefits of comparing ages obtained using several OSL methodologies to improve the robustness of luminescence chronologies. They also demonstrate the potential that single‐grain OSL techniques offer for establishing improved age constraints on the many other Middle Palaeolithic sites found at Atapuerca and elsewhere across north‐central Spain.  相似文献   

The Cretaceous sediment-hosted copper deposits of San Marcos (Coahuila,Northeastern Mexico): An approach to ore-forming processes     

Donají García-Alonso  Carles Canet  Eduardo González-Partida  Ruth Esther Villanueva-Estrada  Rosa María Prol-Ledesma  Pura Alfonso  Juan Antonio Caballero-Martínez  Rufino Lozano-Santa Cruz 《Journal of South American Earth Sciences》2011,31(4):432-443

In the San Marcos ranges of Cuatrociénegas, NE Mexico, several sediment-hosted copper deposits occur within the boundary between the Coahuila Block, a basement high mostly granitic in composition and Late Paleozoic to Triassic in age, and the Mesozoic Sabinas rift basin. This boundary is outlined by the regional-scale synsedimentary San Marcos Fault. At the basin scale, the copper mineralization occurs at the top of a ～1000 m thick red-bed succession (San Marcos Formation, Berrisian), a few meters below a conformable, transitional contact with micritic limestones (Cupido Formation, Hauterivian to Aptian). It consists of successive decimeter-thick roughly stratiform copper-rich horizons placed just above the red-beds, in a transitional unit of carbonaceous grey-beds grading to micritic limestones. The host rocks are fine- to medium-grained arkoses, with poorly sorted and subangular to subrounded grains. The detrital grains are cemented by quartz and minor calcite; besides, late iron oxide grain-coating cement occurs at the footwall unmineralized red-beds. The source area of the sediments, indicated by their modal composition, is an uplifted basement. The contents of SiO₂ (40.70–87.50 wt.%), Al₂O₃ (5.91–22.00 wt.%), K₂O (3.68–12.50 wt.%), Na₂O (0.03–2.03 wt.%) and CaO (0.09–3.78 wt.%) are within the ranges expected for arkoses. Major oxide ratios indicate that the sedimentary-tectonic setting was a passive margin.The outcropping copper mineralization essentially consists in a supergene assemblage of chrysocolla, malachite and azurite. All that remains of the primary mineralization are micron-sized chalcocite grains shielded by quartz cement. In addition, pyrite subhedral grains occur scattered throughout the copper-mineralized horizons. In these weathered orebodies copper contents range between 4.24 and 7.72 wt.%, silver between 5 and 92 ppm, and cobalt from 8 to 91 ppm. Microthermometric measurements of fluid inclusions in quartz and calcite crystals from footwall barren veinlets gave temperatures of homogenization between 98 °C and 165 °C, and ice-melting temperatures between ?42.5 °C and ?26.1 °C.The primary copper mineralization formed during the early diagenesis, contemporary with the active life of the Sabinas Basin. The mineralizing fluids were dense, near neutral, moderately oxidized brines that originally formed from seawater that, driven by gravity, infiltrated to the deepest parts of the basin and dissolved evaporites. As a result, they became hydrothermal fluids of moderate temperature capable of leaching high amounts of copper. The source of this metal could be mafic detrital grains and iron oxides of the underlying Jurassic and Lower Cretaceous red-beds. Copper precipitation took place when the brines passed through the redox boundary marked by the transition from red- to grey-beds. The upward movement of the brines was promoted by a high heat flow that allowed their convective circulation and their ascent along the synsedimentary San Marcos Fault.  相似文献   

On classical iterative subdomain methods for the Stokes–Darcy problem     

Alfonso Caiazzo  Volker John  Ulrich Wilbrandt 《Computational Geosciences》2014,18(5):711-728

Within classical iterative subdomain methods, the problems in the subdomains are solved alternately by only using data on the interface provided from the other subdomains. Methods of this type for the Stokes–Darcy problem that use Robin boundary conditions on the interface are reviewed. Their common underlying structure and their main differences are identified. In particular, it is clarified that there are different updating strategies for the interface conditions. For small values of fluid viscosity and hydraulic permeability, which are relevant in applications from geosciences, it is shown in numerical studies that only one of these updating strategies leads to an efficient numerical method, if it is used with appropriate parameters in the Robin conditions.  相似文献   

Tracing the warm–hot intergalactic medium in the local Universe     

M. Viel  E. Branchini  R. Cen  J. P. Ostriker  S. Matarrese  P. Mazzotta  B. Tully 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2005,360(3):1110-1122

We present a simple method for tracing the spatial distribution and predicting the physical properties of the Warm–Hot Intergalactic Medium (WHIM), from the map of galaxy light in the Local Universe. Under the assumption that biasing is local and monotonic we map the  ∼2 h ⁻¹ Mpc  smoothed density field of galaxy light into the mass-density field, from which we infer the spatial distribution of the WHIM in the Local Supercluster. Taking into account the scatter in the WHIM density–temperature and density–metallicity relation, extracted from the z = 0 outputs of high-resolution and large-box-size hydrodynamical cosmological simulations, we are able to quantify the probability of detecting WHIM signatures in the form of absorption features in the X-ray spectra, along arbitrary directions in the sky. To illustrate the usefulness of this semi-analytical method we focus on the WHIM properties in the Virgo cluster region.  相似文献   

On the effect of decreasing CO2 concentration in the atmosphere     

Isabella Bordi  Klaus Fraedrich  Alfonso Sutera  Xiuhua Zhu 《Climate Dynamics》2013,40(3-4):651-662

In the present paper the effect of an abrupt change of the atmospheric radiative forcing is investigated by means of a global climate model that includes a mixed layer ocean. In assessing if, under such a change, the model response has a bifurcation point, the steady solution is studied for a sudden decrease of CO₂ concentration from its actual value. It is found that there is a critical threshold for CO₂ content below which the model ends up to a snowball Earth. It occurs for a few percentage changes of CO₂ concentration around the threshold because the model strongly depends on the relationship among atmospheric temperature, water vapor content and the sudden ice-albedo feedback activation, even in the subtropical regions. Moreover, results suggest that the transition to ice-covered Earth is clearly favoured when Q-flux corrections (i.e. the parameterization of ocean heat transports) are removed.  相似文献   

The build-up of the colour–magnitude relation in galaxy clusters since z∼ 0.8     

Gabriella De Lucia  Bianca M. Poggianti  Alfonso Aragón-Salamanca  Simon D. M. White  Dennis Zaritsky  Douglas Clowe  Claire Halliday  Pascale Jablonka  Anja von der Linden  Bo Milvang-Jensen  Roser Pelló  Gregory Rudnick  Roberto P. Saglia  Luc Simard 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2007,374(3):809-822

  相似文献   

Reconstruction of the early Universe as a convex optimization problem   总被引：1，自引：0，他引：1  

Y. Brenier  U. Frisch  M. Hénon  G. Loeper  S. Matarrese  R. Mohayaee  A. Sobolevski 《Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society》2003,346(2):501-524

We show that the deterministic past history of the Universe can be uniquely reconstructed from knowledge of the present mass density field, the latter being inferred from the three-dimensional distribution of luminous matter, assumed to be tracing the distribution of dark matter up to a known bias. Reconstruction ceases to be unique below those scales – a few Mpc – where multistreaming becomes significant. Above 6 h ⁻¹ Mpc we propose and implement an effective Monge–Ampère–Kantorovich method of unique reconstruction. At such scales the Zel'dovich approximation is well satisfied and reconstruction becomes an instance of optimal mass transportation, a problem which goes back to Monge. After discretization into N point masses one obtains an assignment problem that can be handled by effective algorithms with not more than O ( N ³) time complexity and reasonable CPU time requirements. Testing against N -body cosmological simulations gives over 60 per cent of exactly reconstructed points.
We apply several interrelated tools from optimization theory that were not used in cosmological reconstruction before, such as the Monge–Ampère equation, its relation to the mass transportation problem, the Kantorovich duality and the auction algorithm for optimal assignment. A self-contained discussion of relevant notions and techniques is provided.  相似文献   

Cosmic Background Bose Condensation (CBBC)     

A. Alfonso-Faus  M. J. Fullana i Alfonso 《Astrophysics and Space Science》2013,347(1):193-196

Degeneracy effects for bosons are more important for smaller particle mass, smaller temperature and higher number density. Bose condensation requires that particles be in the same lowest energy quantum state. We propose a cosmic background Bose condensation, present everywhere, with its particles having the lowest quantum energy state, ?c/λ, with λ about the size of the visible universe, and therefore unlocalized. This we identify with the quantum of the self gravitational potential energy of any particle, and with the bit of information of minimum energy. The entropy of the universe (～10¹²² bits) has the highest number density (～10³⁶ bits/cm³) of particles inside the visible universe, the smallest mass, ～10^?66 g, and the smallest temperature, ～10^?29 K. Therefore it is the best candidate for a Cosmic Background Bose Condensation (CBBC), a completely calmed fluid, with no viscosity, in a superfluidity state, and possibly responsible for the expansion of the universe.  相似文献   

Uninhabited habitats on Mars     

Charles S. Cockell  Matt Balme  John C. Bridges  Alfonso Davila  Susanne P. Schwenzer 《Icarus》2012,217(1):184-193

Investigations of Mars as a potential location for life often make the assumption that where there are habitats, they will contain organisms. However, the observation of the ubiquitous distribution of life in habitable environments on the Earth does not imply the presence of life in martian habitats. Although uninhabited habitats are extremely rare on the Earth, a lack of a productive photosynthetic biosphere on Mars to generate organic carbon and oxygen, thus providing a rapidly available redox couple for energy acquisition by life and/or a lack of connectivity between habitats potentially increases the scope and abundance of uninhabited habitats for much of the geological history of the planet. Uninhabited habitats could have existed on Mars from the Noachian to the present-day in impact hydrothermal systems, megaflood systems, lacustrine environments, transient melted permafrost, gullies and local regions of volcanic activity; and there may be evidence for them in martian meteorites. Uninhabited habitats would provide control habitats to investigate the role of biology in planetary-scale geochemical processes on the Earth and they would provide new constraints on the habitability of Mars. Future robotic craft and samples returned from Mars will be able to directly show if uninhabited habitats exist or existed on Mars.  相似文献   

Assessing Groundwater Depletion and Dynamics Using GRACE and InSAR: Potential and Limitations          下载免费PDF全文

Pascal Castellazzi  Richard Martel  Devin L. Galloway  Laurent Longuevergne  Alfonso Rivera 《Ground water》2016,54(6):768-780

In the last decade, remote sensing of the temporal variation of ground level and gravity has improved our understanding of groundwater dynamics and storage. Mass changes are measured by GRACE (Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment) satellites, whereas ground deformation is measured by processing synthetic aperture radar satellites data using the InSAR (Interferometry of Synthetic Aperture Radar) techniques. Both methods are complementary and offer different sensitivities to aquifer system processes. GRACE is sensitive to mass changes over large spatial scales (more than 100,000 km²). As such, it fails in providing groundwater storage change estimates at local or regional scales relevant to most aquifer systems, and at which most groundwater management schemes are applied. However, InSAR measures ground displacement due to aquifer response to fluid‐pressure changes. InSAR applications to groundwater depletion assessments are limited to aquifer systems susceptible to measurable deformation. Furthermore, the inversion of InSAR‐derived displacement maps into volume of depleted groundwater storage (both reversible and largely irreversible) is confounded by vertical and horizontal variability of sediment compressibility. During the last decade, both techniques have shown increasing interest in the scientific community to complement available in situ observations where they are insufficient. In this review, we present the theoretical and conceptual bases of each method, and present idealized scenarios to highlight the potential benefits and challenges of combining these techniques to remotely assess groundwater storage changes and other aspects of the dynamics of aquifer systems.  相似文献