Metallurgy: high nickel release from 1- and 2-euro coins

The amount of nickel is regulated in European products that come into direct and prolonged contact with human skin because this metal may cause contact allergy, particularly hand eczema. Here we show that 1- and 2-euro coins induce positive skin-test reactions in sensitized individuals and release 240-320-fold more nickel than is allowed under the European Union Nickel Directive. A factor contributing to this high release of nickel is corrosion due to the bimetallic structure of these coins, which generates a galvanic potential of 30-40 mV in human sweat.     

神经模糊网络自适应模糊控制研究

提出了一种由样品辨识、模糊推理和控制处理 3个子网模块构成的基于知识的多层神经网络 .这种网络由各子网分别构成并按照最初的模糊控制结构适当连接而建立 ,具有明确区分各组成子网功能及其知识流结构 .由于综合了模糊逻辑的推理过程及神经网络的学习能力 ,使它能够在其结构中以模糊规则的形式引入语言知识并通过网络的训练及自学习对这些知识进行加工 ,从而实现了真正意义上的自适应模糊控制器 .最后还讨论了这种 NFN网络在动态过程控制中的应用     

Ecosystem-level patterns of primary productivity and herbivory in terrestrial habitats

Ecosystems are structurally organized as food webs within which energy is transmitted between trophic levels and dissipated into the environment. Energy flow between two trophic levels is given by the amount of production at the lower level and by the proportion of production that is consumed, assimilated and respired at the higher level. Considerable evidence indicates that food-web structure varies predictably in different habitats, but much less is known about quantitative relationships among food web fluxes. Many of the energetic properties of herbivores in African game parks are associated with rainfall and, by inference, with net primary productivity. Respiratory costs per unit production at the consumer trophic level are higher for homeotherms than for heterotherms. Plant secondary chemicals affect herbivore dietary choices and the allocation of plant resources to those chemicals varies with resource availability. How these phenomena are translated into ecosystem fluxes is unknown. We present evidence that herbivore biomass, consumption and productivity are closely correlated with plant productivity, suggesting that the latter is a principal integrator and indicator of functional processes in food webs.     

Slow dust in Enceladus' plume from condensation and wall collisions in tiger stripe fractures

One of the spectacular discoveries of the Cassini spacecraft was the plume of water vapour and icy particles (dust) originating near the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The data imply considerably smaller velocities for the grains than for the vapour, which has been difficult to understand. The gas and dust are too dilute in the plume to interact, so the difference must arise below the surface. Here we report a model for grain condensation and growth in channels of variable width. We show that repeated wall collisions of grains, with re-acceleration by the gas, induce an effective friction, offering a natural explanation for the reduced grain velocity. We derive particle speed and size distributions that reproduce the observed and inferred properties of the dust plume. The gas seems to form near the triple point of water; gas densities corresponding to sublimation from ice at temperatures less than 260 K are generally too low to support the measured particle fluxes. This in turn suggests liquid water below Enceladus' south pole.     

Use of Internet Technology for the Improvement of Execution Management in Geotechnical Engineering Projects

An internet-based information and monitoring platform for the specific requirements of geotechnical engineering projects is presented. The platform is based on a hybrid-model approach consisting of a model-based information management system and a resource management system, the latter also referred to as DCMS. Project key information can be accessed via the main user interface, the graphical navigator. The graphical navigator provides also a direct access to additional information in the DCMS. Prompt reac-tion in exceptional situations as well as in daily work gets an extensive support. In practical applications it has been proven that this platform seems to be an adequate tool especially for risk assessment and management in geotechnical engineering projects. Components and advantages of the platform as well as ex periences from the applications are presented and discussed in the paper.     

Experimental study on dehydration melting of natural biotite-plagioclase gneiss from High Himalayas and implications for Himalayan crust anatexis

Here we present the results of dehydration melting, melt morphology and fluid migration based on the dehydration melting experiments on natural biotite-plagioclase gneiss performed at the pressure of 1.0—1.4 GPa, and at the temperature of 770—1028℃. Experimental results demonstrate that: (ⅰ) most of melt tends to be distributed along mineral boundaries forming “melt film” even the amount of melt is less than 5 vol%; melt connectivity is controlled not only by melt topology but also by melt fraction; (ⅱ) dehydration melting involves a series of subprocesses including subsolidus dehydration reaction, fluid migration, vapor-present melting and vapor-absent melting; (ⅲ) experiments produce peraluminous granitic melt whose composition is similar to that of High Himalayan leucogranites (HHLG) and the residual phase assemblage is Pl+Qz+ Gat+Bio+Opx± Cpx+Ilm/Rut± Kfs and can be comparable with granulites observed in Himalayas. The experiments provide the evidence that biotite-plagioclase gneiss is one of source rocks of HHLG and dehydration melting is an important way to form HHLG and the granulites. Additionally, experimental results provide constraints on determining the P-T conditions of Himalayan crustal anatexis.     

The genomic basis of adaptive evolution in threespine sticklebacks

Marine stickleback fish have colonized and adapted to thousands of streams and lakes formed since the last ice age, providing an exceptional opportunity to characterize genomic mechanisms underlying repeated ecological adaptation in nature. Here we develop a high-quality reference genome assembly for threespine sticklebacks. By sequencing the genomes of twenty additional individuals from a global set of marine and freshwater populations, we identify a genome-wide set of loci that are consistently associated with marine-freshwater divergence. Our results indicate that reuse of globally shared standing genetic variation, including chromosomal inversions, has an important role in repeated evolution of distinct marine and freshwater sticklebacks, and in the maintenance of divergent ecotypes during early stages of reproductive isolation. Both coding and regulatory changes occur in the set of loci underlying marine-freshwater evolution, but regulatory changes appear to predominate in this well known example of repeated adaptive evolution in nature.     

Optical nano-imaging of gate-tunable graphene plasmons

The ability to manipulate optical fields and the energy flow of light is central to modern information and communication technologies, as well as quantum information processing schemes. However, because photons do not possess charge, a way of controlling them efficiently by electrical means has so far proved elusive. A promising way to achieve electric control of light could be through plasmon polaritons—coupled excitations of photons and charge carriers—in graphene. In this two-dimensional sheet of carbon atoms, it is expected that plasmon polaritons and their associated optical fields can readily be tuned electrically by varying the graphene carrier density. Although evidence of optical graphene plasmon resonances has recently been obtained spectroscopically, no experiments so far have directly resolved propagating plasmons in real space. Here we launch and detect propagating optical plasmons in tapered graphene nanostructures using near-field scattering microscopy with infrared excitation light. We provide real-space images of plasmon fields, and find that the extracted plasmon wavelength is very short—more than 40 times smaller than the wavelength of illumination. We exploit this strong optical field confinement to turn a graphene nanostructure into a tunable resonant plasmonic cavity with extremely small mode volume. The cavity resonance is controlled in situ by gating the graphene, and in particular, complete switching on and off of the plasmon modes is demonstrated, thus paving the way towards graphene-based optical transistors. This successful alliance between nanoelectronics and nano-optics enables the development of active subwavelength-scale optics and a plethora of nano-optoelectronic devices and functionalities, such as tunable metamaterials, nanoscale optical processing, and strongly enhanced light–matter interactions for quantum devices and biosensing applications.     

Deep carbon export from a Southern Ocean iron-fertilized diatom bloom

Fertilization of the ocean by adding iron compounds has induced diatom-dominated phytoplankton blooms accompanied by considerable carbon dioxide drawdown in the ocean surface layer. However, because the fate of bloom biomass could not be adequately resolved in these experiments, the timescales of carbon sequestration from the atmosphere are uncertain. Here we report the results of a five-week experiment carried out in the closed core of a vertically coherent, mesoscale eddy of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, during which we tracked sinking particles from the surface to the deep-sea floor. A large diatom bloom peaked in the fourth week after fertilization. This was followed by mass mortality of several diatom species that formed rapidly sinking, mucilaginous aggregates of entangled cells and chains. Taken together, multiple lines of evidence-although each with important uncertainties-lead us to conclude that at least half the bloom biomass sank far below a depth of 1,000 metres and that a substantial portion is likely to have reached the sea floor. Thus, iron-fertilized diatom blooms may sequester carbon for timescales of centuries in ocean bottom water and for longer in the sediments.