Evidence of atmospheric sulphur in the martian regolith from sulphur isotopes in meteorites

Sulphur is abundant at the martian surface, yet its origin and evolution over time remain poorly constrained. This sulphur is likely to have originated in atmospheric chemical reactions, and so should provide records of the evolution of the martian atmosphere, the cycling of sulphur between the atmosphere and crust, and the mobility of sulphur in the martian regolith. Moreover, the atmospheric deposition of oxidized sulphur species could establish chemical potential gradients in the martian near-surface environment, and so provide a potential energy source for chemolithoautotrophic organisms. Here we present measurements of sulphur isotopes in oxidized and reduced phases from the SNC meteorites--the group of related achondrite meteorites believed to have originated on Mars--together with the results of laboratory photolysis studies of two important martian atmospheric sulphur species (SO2 and H2S). The photolysis experiments can account for the observed sulphur-isotope compositions in the SNC meteorites, and so identify a mechanism for producing large abiogenic 34S fractionations in the surface sulphur reservoirs. We conclude that the sulphur data from the SNC meteorites reflects deposition of oxidized sulphur species produced by atmospheric chemical reactions, followed by incorporation, reaction and mobilization of the sulphur within the regolith.     

Early history of Earth's crust-mantle system inferred from hafnium isotopes in chondrites

The 176Lu to 176Hf decay series has been widely used to understand the nature of Earth's early crust-mantle system. The interpretation, however, of Lu-Hf isotope data requires accurate knowledge of the radioactive decay constant of 176Lu (lambda176Lu), as well as bulk-Earth reference parameters. A recent calibration of the lambda176Lu value calls for the presence of highly unradiogenic hafnium in terrestrial zircons with ages greater than 3.9 Gyr, implying widespread continental crust extraction from an isotopically enriched mantle source more than 4.3 Gyr ago, but does not provide evidence for a complementary depleted mantle reservoir. Here we report Lu-Hf isotope measurements of different Solar System objects including chondrites and basaltic eucrites. The chondrites define a Lu-Hf isochron with an initial 176Hf/177Hf ratio of 0.279628 +/- 0.000047, corresponding to lambda176Lu = 1.983 +/- 0.033 x 10-11 yr-1 using an age of 4.56 Gyr for the chondrite-forming event. This lambda176Lu value indicates that Earth's oldest minerals were derived from melts of a mantle source with a time-integrated history of depletion rather than enrichment. The depletion event must have occurred no later than 320 Myr after planetary accretion, consistent with timing inferred from extinct radionuclides.     

Late formation and prolonged differentiation of the Moon inferred from W isotopes in lunar metals

The Moon is thought to have formed from debris ejected by a giant impact with the early 'proto'-Earth and, as a result of the high energies involved, the Moon would have melted to form a magma ocean. The timescales for formation and solidification of the Moon can be quantified by using 182Hf-182W and 146Sm-142Nd chronometry, but these methods have yielded contradicting results. In earlier studies, 182W anomalies in lunar rocks were attributed to decay of 182Hf within the lunar mantle and were used to infer that the Moon solidified within the first approximately 60 million years of the Solar System. However, the dominant 182W component in most lunar rocks reflects cosmogenic production mainly by neutron capture of 181Ta during cosmic-ray exposure of the lunar surface, compromising a reliable interpretation in terms of 182Hf-182W chronometry. Here we present tungsten isotope data for lunar metals that do not contain any measurable Ta-derived 182W. All metals have identical 182W/184W ratios, indicating that the lunar magma ocean did not crystallize within the first approximately 60 Myr of the Solar System, which is no longer inconsistent with Sm-Nd chronometry. Our new data reveal that the lunar and terrestrial mantles have identical 182W/184W. This, in conjunction with 147Sm-143Nd ages for the oldest lunar rocks, constrains the age of the Moon and Earth to Myr after formation of the Solar System. The identical 182W/184W ratios of the lunar and terrestrial mantles require either that the Moon is derived mainly from terrestrial material or that tungsten isotopes in the Moon and Earth's mantle equilibrated in the aftermath of the giant impact, as has been proposed to account for identical oxygen isotope compositions of the Earth and Moon.     

Analysis of carbon isotopes in airborne carbonate and implications for aeolian sources

Methods were developed to determine the mass ratios of carbon isotopes in trace amounts of aerosol carbonate. A Finnigan MAT 252 mass spectrometer fitted with an on-line Kiel device was to determine the ^13C/^12C ratio in CO2 produced from the carbonate. A study using these methods was conducted to characterize the carbonate carbon isotopes in aerosol samples collected in Xi‘an on dusty and normal days during March and April 2002. Results of the study demonstrate that insights into the origin of the dust can be deduced from its isotopic composition. That is, the δ^13C ofcarbonate for dust storm samples ranged from -1.4‰ to -4.2‰, and this is consistent with sandy materials in dust source regions upwind. In contrast, for non-dusty days δ^13C ranged from -7.5% to -9.3‰, which is more similar to fine particles emitted from local surface soils. Comparisons of dust storm aerosols with surface soils from source regions and with aerosol samples collected downwind indicate that the δ^13C values did not change appreciably during longrange transport. Therefore, carbon isotopes have the potential for distinguishing among source materials, and this approach provides a powerful new tool for identifying dust provenance.     

电极活性材料氮化钼的制备与表征

文章通过三氧化钼与氨气的高温反应 ,采用程序升温法开展了氮化钼的制备 ,采用 XRD和表面测定等方法对反应产物进行了表征和研究。探讨了反应条件对产物晶型、比表面积和比电容的影响。研究表明制备条件能显著影响氮化钼的结晶形态、分布和不同晶型的比例 ;反应温度、恒温时间及冷却方式对氮化钼的比表面积和电容特性有重要影响。制备出高比表面积的氮化钼 ,循环伏安测试显示了氮化钼电极具有良好的电容特性。     

Progress in multi-waveband observations of supernova remnants

The development of observational techniques has enriched our knowledge of supernova remnants. In this paper, we review the main progresses in the last decade, including new discoveries of supernova remnants and the associated （rare type of） pulsars, nucleosynthesis, the interaction between supernova remnants and molecular clouds, dust in the supernova remnants, shock physics, and cosmic ray accelerations.     

含钼的酸性料液中回收钼的研究

采用N235从无机酸体系中萃取钼,考察了影响萃取主要因素,筛选出反萃取条件。萃取钼的最佳条件为:以N235作为萃取剂,浓度为816.00μg/mL含Mo酸浸液为研究对象,确定N235浓度为1.0%,萃取温度为室温(25℃),相比W/O为2∶1,萃取级数为2级,硫酸浓度为0.13 mol.L-1,此时萃取率达到97.38%;反萃时选用氨水浓度为0.27 mol.L-1,相比O/W为1∶1,反萃级数为2级,此时反萃率为99.19%.     

History of trace gases in presolar diamonds inferred from ion-implantation experiments

Diamond grains are the most abundant presolar grains found in primitive meteorites. They formed before the Solar System, and therefore provide a record of nuclear and chemical processes in stars and in the interstellar medium. Their origins are inferred from the unusual isotopic compositions of trace elements-mainly xenon-which suggest that they came from supernovae. But the exact nature of the sources has been enigmatic, as has the method by which noble gases were incorporated into the grains. One observation is that different isotopic components are released at different temperatures when the grains are heated, and it has been suggested that these components have different origins. Here we report results of a laboratory study that shows that ion implantation (previously suggested on other grounds) is a viable mechanism for trapping noble gases. Moreover, we find that ion implantation of a single isotopic composition can produce both low- and high-temperature release peaks from the same grains. We conclude that both isotopically normal and anomalous gases may have been implanted by multiple events separated in space and/or time, with thermal processing producing an apparent enrichment of the anomalous component in the high-temperature release peak. The previous assumption that the low- and high-temperature components were not correlated may therefore have led to an overestimate of the abundance of anomalous argon and krypton, while obscuring an enhancement of the light-in addition to the heavy-krypton isotopes.     

根据航磁解释的塔里木盆地基岩分布

根据对塔里木盆地航磁异常研究，将盆地基岩区划为：１）塔西南古元古构造活动带穿插的新太古陆核；２）中部古（或中）元古镁铁超镁铁岩墙；３）北部古元古基底的海西活化区；４）镁铁超镁铁岩墙向东北延伸；５）塔东南中、新元古基底的加里东断褶带（海西改建）；６）巴楚古元古基底的海西活动区。盆地基岩的主体是在古（或中）元古代，向南运移的北塔里木地块与向北运移的南塔里木地块相接触，经由壳底幔顶的融熔岩浆沿边缘深断裂上涌形成的镁铁超镁铁岩墙将它们牢固地结合成一体．提出了罗布泊断陷是盆地油气勘探很有远景的地区，急需开展勘查．     

Lightning on Venus inferred from whistler-mode waves in the ionosphere

The occurrence of lightning in a planetary atmosphere enables chemical processes to take place that would not occur under standard temperatures and pressures. Although much evidence has been reported for lightning on Venus, some searches have been negative and the existence of lightning has remained controversial. A definitive detection would be the confirmation of electromagnetic, whistler-mode waves propagating from the atmosphere to the ionosphere. Here we report observations of Venus' ionosphere that reveal strong, circularly polarized, electromagnetic waves with frequencies near 100 Hz. The waves appear as bursts of radiation lasting 0.25 to 0.5 s, and have the expected properties of whistler-mode signals generated by lightning discharges in Venus' clouds.     

A short timescale for terrestrial planet formation from Hf-W chronometry of meteorites

Determining the chronology for the assembly of planetary bodies in the early Solar System is essential for a complete understanding of star- and planet-formation processes. Various radionuclide chronometers (applied to meteorites) have been used to determine that basaltic lava flows on the surface of the asteroid Vesta formed within 3 million years (3 Myr) of the origin of the Solar System. Such rapid formation is broadly consistent with astronomical observations of young stellar objects, which suggest that formation of planetary systems occurs within a few million years after star formation. Some hafnium-tungsten isotope data, however, require that Vesta formed later (approximately 16 Myr after the formation of the Solar System) and that the formation of the terrestrial planets took a much longer time (62(-14)(+4504) Myr). Here we report measurements of tungsten isotope compositions and hafnium-tungsten ratios of several meteorites. Our measurements indicate that, contrary to previous results, the bulk of metal-silicate separation in the Solar System was completed within <30 Myr. These results are completely consistent with other evidence for rapid planetary formation, and are also in agreement with dynamic accretion models that predict a relatively short time (approximately 10 Myr) for the main growth stage of terrestrial planet formation.     

Phylogeny of SARS-CoV as inferred from complete genome comparison

SARS-CoV, as the pathogeny of severe acute respi-ratory syndrome (SARS), seems to be the first coronavirus that is lethal to humans. Coronavirus (family Coronaviri-dae, genus Coronavirus) is an enveloped, single-stranded plus sense RNA virus whose genome has approximately 30 kb size. Whereas coronaviruses may cause severe dis-ease in animals, coronaviruses human strains only cause mild diseases until SARS-CoV was discovered. To date, SARS-CoV genomes from 12 isolates have been comp…     

Early planetesimal melting from an age of 4.5662 Gyr for differentiated meteorites

Long- and short-lived radioactive isotopes and their daughter products in meteorites are chronometers that can test models for Solar System formation. Differentiated meteorites come from parent bodies that were once molten and separated into metal cores and silicate mantles. Mineral ages for these meteorites, however, are typically younger than age constraints for planetesimal differentiation. Such young ages indicate that the energy required to melt their parent bodies could not have come from the most likely heat source-radioactive decay of short-lived nuclides ((26)Al and (60)Fe) injected from a nearby supernova-because these would have largely decayed by the time of melting. Here we report an age of 4.5662 +/- 0.0001 billion years (based on Pb-Pb dating) for basaltic angrites, which is only 1 Myr younger than the currently accepted minimum age of the Solar System and corresponds to a time when (26)Al and (60)Fe decay could have triggered planetesimal melting. Small (26)Mg excesses in bulk angrite samples confirm that (26)Al decay contributed to the melting of their parent body. These results indicate that the accretion of differentiated planetesimals pre-dated that of undifferentiated planetesimals, and reveals the minimum Solar System age to be 4.5695 +/- 0.0002 billion years.     

Efficient mixing of the solar nebula from uniform Mo isotopic composition of meteorites

The abundances of elements and their isotopes in our Galaxy show wide variations, reflecting different nucleosynthetic processes in stars and the effects of Galactic evolution. These variations contrast with the uniformity of stable isotope abundances for many elements in the Solar System, which implies that processes efficiently homogenized dust and gas from different stellar sources within the young solar nebula. However, isotopic heterogeneity has been recognized on the subcentimetre scale in primitive meteorites, indicating that these preserve a compositional memory of their stellar sources. Small differences in the abundance of stable molybdenum isotopes in bulk rocks of some primitive and differentiated meteorites, relative to terrestrial Mo, suggest large-scale Mo isotopic heterogeneity between some inner Solar System bodies, which implies physical conditions that did not permit efficient mixing of gas and dust. Here we report Mo isotopic data for bulk samples of primitive and differentiated meteorites that show no resolvable deviations from terrestrial Mo. This suggests efficient mixing of gas and dust in the solar nebula at least to 3 au from the Sun, possibly induced by magnetohydrodynamic instabilities. These mixing processes must have occurred before isotopic fractionation of gas-phase elements and volatility-controlled chemical fractionations were established.     

Maternal inheritance in polyploid fish inferred from mitochondrial ATPase genes analysis

The sequences of the ATPase8/6 genes for the triploid, tetraploid and pentaploid hybrids as well as for their male parent blunt snout bream were determined. In order to examine mitochondrial maternal inheritance, the sequences were subjected to a comparative sequence analysis with the homologous sequences of red crucian carp, their female parent, and zebrafish as the outgroup. Base composition and variation as well as the divergences based on nucleotide sequences and deduced amino acid sequences were calculated. Phylogenetic trees were also constructed with maximum parsimony (MP), minimum evolution (ME), neighbor joining (NJ) and the unweighted pair group method with arithmetic mean (UPGMA) algorithms in MEGA 3.1. The results showed that most nucleotide substitutions occurred at the third codon position of the two genes and thus represented synonymous mutations. The nucleotide sequence divergences of the ATPase8/6 genes ranged from 0.0% to 21.6% among ingroup samples (three types of polyploids and their parents), and 27.0–28.2% between their ingroup and the outgroup samples. All the polyploids were considerably closer in sequence relationship to the female parent red crucian carp (0.0–3.3%) compared to their male parent blunt snout bream (21.0–21.6%). The phylogenetic trees also showed a similar result. In conclusion, the mitochondrial ATPase8/6 genes of artificial polyploid fish stringently indicated maternal inheritance. Our results also suggested that the ATPase8/6 genes are valuable genetic markers to track genealogies and variations in the progenies of the hybrids.     

Glacial--interglacial stability of ocean pH inferred from foraminifer dissolution rates

The pH of the ocean is controlled by the chemistry of calcium carbonate. This system in turn plays a large role in regulating the CO2 concentration of the atmosphere on timescales of thousands of years and longer. Reconstructions of ocean pH and carbonate-ion concentration are therefore needed to understand the ocean's role in the global carbon cycle. During the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the pH of the whole ocean is thought to have been significantly more basic, as inferred from the isotopic composition of boron incorporated into calcium carbonate shells, which would partially explain the lower atmospheric CO2 concentration at that time. Here we reconstruct carbonate-ion concentration--and hence pH--of the glacial oceans, using the extent of calcium carbonate dissolution observed in foraminifer faunal assemblages as compiled in the extensive global CLIMAP data set. We observe decreased carbonate-ion concentrations in the glacial Atlantic Ocean, by roughly 20 micromolkg-1, while little change occurred in the Indian and Pacific oceans relative to today. In the Pacific Ocean, a small (5 micromolkg-1) increase occurred below 3,000m. This rearrangement of ocean pH may be due to changing ocean circulation from glacial to present times, but overall we see no evidence for a shift in the whole-ocean pH as previously inferred from boron isotopes.     

从生产废渣中回收钼的工艺研究

本文研究了碳酸钠和碳酸氢钠的用量比，浸取时间，温度，液固比等因素对从废渣中回收钼的影响，通过正交试验确定了用碳酸钠和碳酸氢钠混合碱浸的工艺条件，浸取率可达89％。     

Conformational transition of Sec machinery inferred from bacterial SecYE structures

Over 30% of proteins are secreted across or integrated into membranes. Their newly synthesized forms contain either cleavable signal sequences or non-cleavable membrane anchor sequences, which direct them to the evolutionarily conserved Sec translocon (SecYEG in prokaryotes and Sec61, comprising alpha-, gamma- and beta-subunits, in eukaryotes). The translocon then functions as a protein-conducting channel. These processes of protein localization occur either at or after translation. In bacteria, the SecA ATPase drives post-translational translocation. The only high-resolution structure of a translocon available so far is that for SecYEbeta from the archaeon Methanococcus jannaschii, which lacks SecA. Here we present the 3.2-A-resolution crystal structure of the SecYE translocon from a SecA-containing organism, Thermus thermophilus. The structure, solved as a complex with an anti-SecY Fab fragment, revealed a 'pre-open' state of SecYE, in which several transmembrane helices are shifted, as compared to the previous SecYEbeta structure, to create a hydrophobic crack open to the cytoplasm. Fab and SecA bind to a common site at the tip of the cytoplasmic domain of SecY. Molecular dynamics and disulphide mapping analyses suggest that the pre-open state might represent a SecYE conformational transition that is inducible by SecA binding. Moreover, we identified a SecA-SecYE interface that comprises SecA residues originally buried inside the protein, indicating that both the channel and the motor components of the Sec machinery undergo cooperative conformational changes on formation of the functional complex.     

Diverse transitional giant fleas from the Mesozoic era of China

Fleas are one of the major lineages of ectoparasitic insects and are now highly specialized for feeding on the blood of birds or mammals. This has isolated them among holometabolan insect orders, although they derive from the Antliophora (scorpionflies and true flies). Like most ectoparasitic lineages, their fossil record is meagre and confined to Cenozoic-era representatives of modern families, so that we lack evidence of the origins of fleas in the Mesozoic era. The origins of the first recognized Cretaceous stem-group flea, Tarwinia, remains highly controversial. Here we report fossils of the oldest definitive fleas--giant forms from the Middle Jurassic and Early Cretaceous periods of China. They exhibit many defining features of fleas but retain primitive traits such as non-jumping hindlegs. More importantly, all have stout and elongate sucking siphons for piercing the hides of their hosts, implying that these fleas may be rooted among the pollinating 'long siphonate' scorpionflies of the Mesozoic. Their special morphology suggests that their earliest hosts were hairy or feathered 'reptilians', and that they radiated to mammalian and bird hosts later in the Cenozoic.