ALBERT

Notes: Historical records demonstrate that the Lake of Tunis, Tunisia, was an open bay that became separated from the Mediterranean by an accreting barrier spit, forming a lagoon. Closure of the lagoon was caused by increased sedimentation as a consequence of Roman deforestation of the Medjerda River drainage basin to the north and subsequent accelerated longshore transport. The separation of the lagoon from the Mediterranean was completed in the early 1500s. At present, the 48 km2 lagoon averages less than 1 m in depth and reaches eutrophic conditions in the late summer. Consistent with the historical records, the lagoon sedimentary column shows three distinct successive environments of deposition: (1) an arid continental environment; (2) an open marine bay; and (3) the present brackish to hypersaline lagoon. These depositional environments are represented by the lower grey layer, which is less than 0-5 m thick, the middle olive-grey layer, which varies from 1 to 5 m in thickness, and the upper black layer, which is 1 m thick. All of the strata are predominantly silt plus clay, but usually contain at least 10% sand. The lower grey layer consists of pitted quartz sand, with very few abraded, broken molluscan fragments and benthic foraminifera with thick tests. An arid, subaerial depositional environment of latest Pleistocene time best explains these sediment and fossil assemblages. In the middle olive-grey layer, coral, coralline algae, open marine graeses and the dominance of foraminifera over ostracods (expressed as a low percentage of ostracods/ostracods plus foraminifera) attest to a depositional environment of an open marine bay. A sharp increase in the percentage of ostracods/ostracods plus foraminifera and organic carbon from the middle olive-grey layer to the upper black layer signifies a major change in depositional environment. The predominance of ostracods over foraminifera, abundance of gastropods characteristic of eutrophic conditions, high organic carbon content and absence of macro-fossils characteristic of open marine conditions clearly indicate that the upper black layer was deposited in a brackish to hypersaline, eutrophic lagoon which has persisted to the present. Seismic records indicate a karstic bedrock surface underlying the lagoon. The surface is marked by considerable relief, and shows a linear depression which may represent an early sixteenth century ship canal. Heavy metal analyses of total samples in five cores demonstrate that Mn and Fe vary randomly, and are apparently derived from natural sources only. Cd, Cr, Pb, Cu and Zn are typically highest in the uppermost unit, which reflects levels of human contamination since closure of the lagoon.

Notes: Traditionally, the Cretaceous has been considered as a long period of global warmth, a ‘greenhouse’ world. This view has been challenged in recent years by several lines of evidence; palaeobotany, stable isotopes, and palaeoclimatic modelling in particular. However, although these data demonstrate that cooling is likely, the only first-hand evidence which demonstrates the presence of substantial ice build-up in Cretaceous high palaeolatititudes are dropstones. These outsized or exotic clasts set in a fine-grained sediment are often interpreted as a direct result of ice rafting. The reliability of this dropstone evidence and particularly its validity is questioned in demonstrating ice age interludes within the Cretaceous greenhouse.

Notes: At the stoichiometric 1 : 1 ratio of atoms, the cubic NaCl-type monoxides TiO, VO and NbO have a large number of vacant sites on both the metal and oxygen sublattices. X-ray determinations of the thermal expansions of these materials show quite distinct differences. At 298 °K, the coefficients of linear expansion defined as α = (1/a)(da/dT) are as follows: (TiO)0.856(\square)0.144, α = 6.6 (7) x 10−6; (VO)0.848(\square)0.152, α = 9.3 (6) x 10−6; (NbO)0.750(\square)0.250, α = 4.8 (0) x 10−6. Progressive filling of the vacancies in titanium monoxide merely shifts the expansion curves parallel to each other in the direction of higher lattice parameters.

Notes: New lattice parameter and density results have been obtained for alloys in the β-NiAl and 6-Ni2Al3 phase fields of the nickel–aluminium system. The lattice parameter of the β-NiAl phase (CsCl-type) falls linearly from 2.8870 Å at 50 at.% Ni to 2.8618 Å at 66. at.% Ni, with 2.00 atoms per unit cell. On the other hand, the lattice parameter on the Al-rich side of NiAl falls linearly from 2.8870 Å to 2.8652 Å, while the number of atoms per unit cell falls from 2.00 to 1.817 by the creation of vacancies in normally nickel sites. The trigonal 6-Ni2Al3 phase-structure, which is essentially an extension of cubic β-NiAl, but with every third plane of nickel atoms perpendicular to the trigonal axis missing, shows a minimum in the a and c spacings at stoichiometric Ni2Al3. Density measurements indicate that the vacancies formed by the missing planes are progressively filled as nickel is added to Ni2Al3, but that a substitutional solid solution is formed on the aluminium-rich side of stoichiometric Ni2Al3 with aluminium replacing nickel atom by atom. In the NiAl phase, the number of valence electrons increases from 2.28 per unit cell at 61.9 at.% Ni to 3.00 at stoichiometric NiAl, and remains constant at 3.00 as the vacancies form until Ni2Al3 is reached, at which stage the number of vacancies will have reached a maximum when there are only 1.67 atoms per pseudo-cubic cell. The number of electrons per pseudo-cubic unit cell then begins to rise and reaches the phase boundary value of 3.12 at 37.6 at.% Ni.