ALBERT

Description: To demonstrate the ability to assess long-term hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenocortical (HPA) axis activity in polar bears (Ursus maritimus), a pilot study was conducted in which cortisol concentration was analyzed in hair from 7 female (3-19 years) and 10 male (6-19 years) East Greenland polar bears sampled in 1994-2006. The hair was chosen as matrix as it is non-invasive, seasonally harmonized, and has been validated as an index of long-term changes in cortisol levels. The samples were categorized according to contamination: eight were clean (2 females, 6 males), 5 had been contaminated with bear blood (2 F, 3 M), and 4 with bear fat (3 F, 1 M). There was no significant difference in cortisol concentration between the three categories after external contamination was removed. However, contaminated hair samples should be cleaned before cortisol determination. Average hair cortisol concentration was 8.90 pg/mg (range: 5.5 to 16.4 pg/mg). There was no significant correlation between cortisol concentration and age (p = 0.81) or sampling year (p = 0.11). However, females had higher mean cortisol concentration than males (females mean: 11.0 pg/mg, males: 7.3 pg/mg; p = 0.01). The study showed that polar bear hair contains measurable amounts of cortisol and that cortisol in hair may be used in studies of long-term stress in polar bears.

Description: Herschel Island in the southern Beaufort Sea is a push moraine at the northwestern-most limit of the Laurentide Ice Sheet. Stable water isotope (d18O, dD) and hydrochemical studies were applied to two tabular massive ground ice bodies to unravel their genetic origin. Buried glacier ice or basal regelation ice was encountered beneath an ice-rich diamicton with strong glaciotectonic deformation structures. The massive ice isotopic composition was highly depleted in heavy isotopes (mean d18O: -33 per mil; mean dD: -258 per mil), suggesting full-glacial conditions during ice formation. Other massive ice of unknown origin with a very large d18O range (from -39 to -21 per mil) was found adjacent to large, striated boulders. A clear freezing slope was present with progressive depletion in heavy isotopes towards the centre of the ice body. Fractionation must have taken place during closed-system freezing, possibly of a glacial meltwater pond. Both massive ground ice bodies exhibited a mixed ion composition suggestive of terrestrial waters with a marine influence. Hydrochemical signatures resemble the Herschel Island sediments that are derived from nearshore marine deposits upthrust by the Laurentide ice. A prolonged contact between water feeding the ice bodies and the surrounding sediment is therefore inferred.

Description: Financing Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) projects is highly dependent on plant performance. Yields of CSP plants depend strongly on site-specific meteorological conditions. Meteorological parameters that can influence the performance of CSP plants are Direct Normal Irradiance (DNI), wind, ambient air temperature, and humidity. The sensitivity study shows that DNI is the parameter with highest influence on energy yield of CSP plants. However, the annual sum or average of DNI is often thought as the value giving already a good indicator for Annual Energy Production (AEP) of CSP plants. This thesis is proven wrong, as the study finds that for years with same DNI annual averages AEP could vary as much as ± 9 % due to differences in DNI frequency distribution. Further the beneficial effect of lower latitudes is not expressed in the long-term average of DNI. For parabolic trough plants it is found that with a 10° increase in latitude, decrease in the ratio of AEP to DNI could be around 10 % for the Northern Hemisphere. Due to less favourable irradiance during winter the effect is even stronger for the Southern Hemisphere and is around 14 % per 10° of latitude, which often is counterbalanced by higher DNI annual averages compared to the Northern hemisphere. Keywords: Concentrating Solar Power (CSP), solar resource, Direct Normal Irradiance, DNI frequency distribution, plant performance, influence, latitude-effect, ambient meteorological conditions.

Description: SUMMARY We present forward and adjoint spectral-element simulations of coupled acoustic and (an)elastic seismic wave propagation on fully unstructured hexahedral meshes. Simulations benefit from recent advances in hexahedral meshing, load balancing and software optimization. Meshing may be accomplished using a mesh generation tool kit such as CUBIT, and load balancing is facilitated by graph partitioning based on the SCOTCH library. Coupling between fluid and solid regions is incorporated in a straightforward fashion using domain decomposition. Topography, bathymetry and Moho undulations may be readily included in the mesh, and physical dispersion and attenuation associated with anelasticity are accounted for using a series of standard linear solids. Finite-frequency Fréchet derivatives are calculated using adjoint methods in both fluid and solid domains. The software is benchmarked for a layercake model. We present various examples of fully unstructured meshes, snapshots of wavefields and finite-frequency kernels generated by Version 2.0 ‘Sesame’ of our widely used open source spectral-element package SPECFEM3D.

Description: The superfamily Conoidea constitutes one of the most diverse and taxonomically challenging groups among marine molluscs. Classifications based on shell or radular characters are highly contradictory and disputed. Whereas the monophyly of the Conidae and Terebridae has not been challenged, the other constituents of the superfamily are placed in a ‘trash’ group, the turrids, the non-monophyly of which has been demonstrated by anatomical and molecular evidence. We present here a new molecular phylogeny based on a total of 102 conoidean genera (87 ‘turrids’, 5 cones and 10 terebrids) and three mitochondrial genes [cytochrome oxidase I (COI), 12S rRNA and 16S rRNA]. The resulting tree recognizes 14 clades. When the Conidae ( Conus s.l .) and Terebridae are ranked as families for consistency of usage, the ‘turrids’ must be split into 12 families of comparable rank. A new genus-level classification of the Conoidea is published in an accompanying paper.

Description: SUMMARY A new compilation of Bouguer gravity data stemming from airborne, shipborne and terrestrial data set in the entire Dead Sea Basin (DSB) was reinterpreted by applying 3-D density modelling that incorporated independent information on other geophysical researches allowing for regional and residual filtering in the gravity field, carrying out curvature analysis and Euler deconvolution of the combined gravity field. 3-D density modelling enables us to detailed resolution of upper crustal structures from the southern to the northern subbasin below the saline Dead Sea. 3-D gravity modelling led to the identification of three salt structures, which are found beneath the Sedom area, the Lisan Peninsula and the Dead Sea. In the vicinity of the western margin of the Dead Sea, a salt diapir segment with a thickness of about 4 km has been identified at a top depth of about 2 km, which has not been recognised by any other geophysical interpretations. The thickness of the sedimentary infill overlying the basement in the DSB decreases from 14 km in the vicinity of the Lisan Peninsula to 8 km in the northern and the southern subbasins. Large negative gravity anomalies (lower than –100 × 10 −5 m s −2 ) observed in the DSB correspond with the spatial distribution of salt diapirism with an average density of 2 100 kg m −3 . The shallower microearthquakes registered in the DSB are related to the movement of salt diapir in the DSB.

Description: SUMMARY We propose a new method to analyse seismic time-series and estimate the arrival times of seismic waves. Our approach combines two ingredients: the time-series are first lifted into a high-dimensional space using time-delay embedding; the resulting phase space is then parametrized using a non-linear method based on the eigenvectors of the graph Laplacian. We validate our approach using a data set of seismic events that occurred in Idaho, Montana, Wyoming and Utah between 2005 and 2006. Our approach outperforms methods based on singular-spectrum analysis, wavelet analysis and short-term average/long-term average (STA/LTA).

Description: SUMMARY 10 Be and 36 Cl cosmic ray exposure (CRE) and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of offset terraces have been performed to constrain the long-term slip rate of the Dehshir fault. Analysis of cosmogenic 10 Be and 36 Cl in 73 surface cobbles and 27 near-surface amalgams collected from inset terraces demonstrates the occurrence of a low denudation rate of 1 m Ma −1 and of a significant and variable inheritance from exposure prior to the aggradation of these alluvial terraces. The significant concentrations of cosmogenic nuclides measured in the cobbles collected within the riverbeds correspond to 72 ± 20 ka of inheritance. The mean CRE age of the surface samples collected on the older terrace T3 is 469 ± 88 ka but the analysis of the distribution of 10 Be concentration in the near-surface samples discard ages older than 412 ka. The mean CRE age of the surface samples collected on terrace T2 is 175 ± 62 ka but the 10 Be depth profile discard ages older than 107 ka. For each terrace, there is a statistical outlier with a younger age of 49.9 ± 3.3 and 235.5 ± 35.4 ka on T2 and T3, respectively. The late sediments aggraded before the abandonment of T2 and inset levels, T1 b and T1a, yielded OSL ages of, respectively, 26.9 ± 1.3, 21.9 ± 1.5 and 10.0 ± 0.6 ka. For a given terrace, the OSL ages, where available, provide ages that are systematically younger than the CRE ages. These discrepancies between the CRE and OSL ages exemplify the variability of the inheritance and indicate the youngest cobble on a terrace, that minimizes the inheritance, is the most appropriate CRE age for approaching that of terrace abandonment. However, the upper bound on the age of abandonment of a terrace that is young with respect to the amount of inheritance is best estimated by the OSL dating of the terrace material. For such terraces, the CRE measurements are complementary of OSL dating and can be used to unravel the complex history of weathering and transport in the catchment of desert alluvial fans. This comprehensive set of dating is combined with morphological offsets ranging from 12 ± 2 to 380 ± 20 m to demonstrate the Dehshir fault slips at a rate in the range 0.9 mm yr −1 –1.5 mm yr −1 . The variable inheritance exemplified here may have significant implications for CRE dating in arid endorheic plateaus such as Tibet and Altiplano.

Description: The beneficiaries of technology adoption in agriculture and biofuel markets in the United States are heavily influenced by biofuel policies and market context. Biofuel mandates, one of the key pillars of domestic biofuel policies, may significantly alter the elasticity of demand for biofuels as well as the derived demand for maize used to produce a significant share of ethanol in the United States. Using a stochastic agriculture and biofuel model, it is determined that market context relative to biofuel policy is critically important in understanding the winners and losers from technology adoption. The results for both feedstock and biofuel producers as well as the US tax payers are used to discuss implications for the analysis of EU biofuel policies.