Irradiated benzene ice provides clues to meteoritic organic chemistry     

Michael P. Callahan  Perry A. Gerakines  Mildred G. Martin  Zan Peeters  Reggie L. Hudson 《Icarus》2013

Aromatic hydrocarbons account for a significant portion of the organic matter in carbonaceous chondrite meteorites, as a component of both the low molecular weight, solvent-extractable compounds and the insoluble organic macromolecular material. Previous work has suggested that the aromatic compounds in carbonaceous chondrites may have originated in the radiation-processed icy mantles of interstellar dust grains. Here we report new studies of the organic residue made from benzene irradiated at 19 K by 0.8 MeV protons. Polyphenyls with up to four rings were unambiguously identified in the residue by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry. Atmospheric pressure photoionization Fourier transform mass spectrometry was used to determine molecular composition, and accurate mass measurements suggested the presence of polyphenyls, partially hydrogenated polyphenyls, and other complex aromatic compounds. The profile of low molecular weight compounds in the residue compared well with extracts from the Murchison and Orgueil meteorites. These results are consistent with the possibility that solid phase radiation chemistry of benzene produced some of the complex aromatics found in meteorites.  相似文献   

Combining historical and new hydrographic data     

Richard B. Perry  Stephen P. Matula 《Marine Geodesy》2013,36(2-3):199-209

The NOAA National Ocean Service hydrographic surveys run between 1930 and 1965 have been digitized from the paper smooth sheets. The surveys since 1965 have been collected, processed, and stored in digital form. The new multibeam systems have been used since 1984 to cover over 100,000 square nautical miles of the Exclusive Economic Zone with overlapping swaths of digital soundings. Each of these multibeam surveys may contain millions of soundings. None of the above data has been assigned quality control tags by NOS, but they are stored by survey number, with indexes showing what younger data are available to supersede older data in any area.

Large digital databases, such as the Master Seaftoor Digital Database, are planned in connection with the Defense Hydrographic Initiative. It will be necessary to assign quality control ratings to the soundings in the databases. The detailed survey data may be indexed in the master database but maintained in distributed databases. The databases could supply historical sounding data in digital form for the planning, collection, processing, and evaluation of new survey data.

During the compilation of some bathymetric maps and nautical charts, it is necessary to junction and combine the newer multibeam surveys having total bottom coverage, with the more widely spaced historical data. Precedence is given to the newer hydrographic data, with some older data being removed as needed in order to provide a smooth transition between data sets. In applying multibeam data to nautical charts, it is necessary that actual soundings be positioned properly with respect to bottom contours, which may have been drawn using gridded values. The junctioning of historical and newer data sets is expected to be aided by the use of interactive cartographic workstations.  相似文献   

The role of suprathermal particle measurements in CrossScale studies of collisionless plasma processes     

Mike Hapgood  Chris Perry  Mick Denton 《Planetary and Space Science》2011,59(7):618-629

The CrossScale mission will advance our understanding of fundamental plasma processes in collisionless plasmas. It will exploit the excellent natural plasma laboratory provided by the Earth’s magnetosphere and the near-Earth solar wind and, in particular, carry out multi-scale studies that will strongly complement plasma studies in ground-based laboratories. Previous studies of collisionless plasmas in space environments across the solar system have shown the ubiquitous nature of suprathermal particles and that these particles exhibit a power-law energy spectrum. In this paper we discuss the great significance of these suprathermal particles for CrossScale studies. We show that the presence of these particles is a natural consequence of the collisionless regime as they can propagate across the heliosphere with little spectral change and are not thermalised by collisions. They are a key indicator of the non-equilibrium nature of collisionless plasmas and an important source of free energy that can drive plasma processes. We discuss how these suprathermal particles influence the overall properties of the plasma. In particular, the energy distribution of particles follows a Kappa, rather than Maxwellian, distribution and thus the plasma does not have a single thermodynamic temperature. We also discuss the importance of the suprathermal tail as a tool to diagnose the processes responsible for particle energisation in collisionless plasmas. Such energisation is a common feature in collisionless plasmas, especially in terms of the primary science targets for CrossScale: reconnection, shocks and turbulence. Finally we also touch on the value of using CrossScale studies to provide ground truth measurements for a number of astrophysical techniques that exploit the effects of energetic electrons in the distant universe. Throughout the paper, we stress that suprathermal (30 keV-1 MeV) measurements are essential to fully characterise particle distributions. We show that such measurements will benefit greatly from the improved spatial and temporal resolution (compared to Cluster) that is proposed for the HEP instrument on CrossScale.  相似文献   

Where They Lived: Studies in Local, Regional and Social History     

Peter Perry 《New Zealand geographer》2000,56(1):59-59

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Mass-Transfer Limitations for Macroscale Bioremediation Modeling and Implications on Aquifer Clogging   总被引：3，自引：0，他引：3  

Thomas R. MacDonald  Peter K. Kitanidis  Perry L. McCarty  Paul V. Roberts 《Ground water》1999,37(4):523-531

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Biofilm-related calcification,sediment trapping and constructive micrite envelopes: a criterion for the recognition of ancient grass-bed environments?   总被引：4，自引：0，他引：4  

Christopher T. Perry 《Sedimentology》1999,46(1):33-45

Micrite envelopes are a common feature in carbonate sediments and are typically associated with the micrite filling of borings produced by microendolithic organisms. These are referred to as 'destructive micrite envelopes' and have long been recognized as reflecting an important early diagenetic process. Recent analysis of sediments collected from back-reef environments at Discovery Bay, north Jamaica, however, has demonstrated 'envelope' formation on the surfaces of carbonate grains, clearly distinct from the micrite filling of microborings. Such constructive envelopes occur almost exclusively in sediments from grass-bed environments and are always intimately associated with 'biofilms' comprising abundant mucilage, cyanobacteria, bacteria and diatoms. It is suggested that these envelopes represent a product of both biologically mediated micrite precipitation (occurring within the biofilm mucilage and around the biofilm components, i.e. cyanobacteria and diatoms) and associated trapping of carbonate mud and fine-grained sediment. Their recognition only within grass-bed sediments may enable their use as a diagnostic feature of grass-bed environments or vegetation-stabilized substrates in the rock record.  相似文献   

Richard C. J. Somerville, The Forgiving Air. Understanding Environmental Change     

John S. Perry 《Climatic change》1999,42(3):623-625

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DTM resolution controls the accuracy of estimating surface runoff indicators in flat,lowland landscapes     

Peter Schaap  Ype van der Velde  Perry de Louw  Harm Bartholomeus 《水文研究》2024,38(5):e15173

Surface runoff plays an important role in contaminant transport, nutrient loss, soil erosion and peak discharges in streams and rivers. Because it is the result of a variety of complex hydrological processes, estimating surface runoff using physically based hydrological models is challenging. Upscaling of physical soil properties is necessary to cope with the limits of computational power in surface runoff modelling. In flat landscapes, the (micro)topographic surface controls the onset and progression of surface runoff on saturated soils during rain events. Therefore, its proper representation is crucial when attempting to model and predict surface runoff. In this study, the influence of microtopography (centimetre scale) on estimations of maximum depression storage (MDS), random roughness (RR) and the connectivity threshold (CT) is explored. These properties are selected because they often serve as surface runoff indicators in hydrological modelling. To characterize microtopography, a terrestrial laser scanner (TLS) is used to generate a digital terrain model (DTM) of the study site with a horizontal spatial resolution of 5 cm. MDS, RR and CT are then calculated and compared to the values generated from the publicly available Dutch national DTM dataset with a resolution of 50 cm. Our results show considerable differences in MDS, RR and CT when calculated for the different input resolution datasets. Using DTMs that do not sufficiently capture microtopography leads to underestimation of MDS and RR, and to overestimation of CT. Our findings indicate that surface runoff indicators, and thereby the surface runoff response of a saturated surface to rainfall events, are defined at scales smaller than the scales of typically available DTMs. Understanding surface runoff through modelling studies therefore requires a framework that accounts for this lack of information arising from using coarser resolution DTMs. We demonstrate a linear relationship between MDS values generated from the different resolution DTMs. This opens the possibility of using empirical scaling relationships between high- and lower-resolution DTMs to account for microtopography. Repetition of our measurements on similar surfaces would contribute to establishing such empirical scaling relationships. Our results should be seen as indicative of flat landscapes and surfaces where centimetre scale microtopography is relevant.  相似文献