Heitt Mjölnir: a heated miniature triaxial apparatus for 4D synchrotron microtomography.

Third- and fourth-generation synchrotron light sources with high fluxes and beam energies enable the use of innovative X-ray translucent experimental apparatus. These experimental devices access geologically relevant conditions whilst enabling in situ characterization using the spatial and temporal resolutions accessible at imaging beamlines. Here, Heitt Mjölnir is introduced, a heated miniature triaxial rig based on the design of Mjölnir, but covering a wider temperature range and larger sample volume at similar pressure capacities. This device is designed to investigate coupled thermal, chemical, hydraulic and mechanical processes from grain to centimetre scales using cylindrical samples of 10 mm × 20 mm (diameter × length). Heitt Mjölnir can simultaneously reach confining (hydraulic) pressures of 30 MPa and 500 MPa of axial stress with independently controlled sample pore fluid pressure < 30 MPa. This internally heated apparatus operates to temperatures up to 573 K with a minimal vertical thermal gradient in the sample of <0.3 K mm-1. This new apparatus has been deployed in operando studies at the TOMCAT (Swiss Light Source), I12 JEEP (Diamond Light Source) and PSICHÉ (Synchrotron SOLEIL) beamlines for 4D X-ray microtomography with scan intervals of a few minutes. Heitt Mjölnir is portable and modular, allowing a wide range of 4D characterizations of low-grade metamorphism and deformational processes. It enables spatially and temporally resolved fluid-rock interaction studies at conditions of crustal reservoirs and is suitable for characterization of material properties in geothermal, carbonation or subsurface gas storage applications. Technical drawings and an operation guide are included in this publication.

Multi-Disciplinary Monitoring Networks for Mesoscale Underground Experiments: Advances in the Bedretto Reservoir Project.

The Bedretto Underground Laboratory for Geosciences and Geoenergies (BULGG) allows the implementation of hectometer (>100 m) scale in situ experiments to study ambitious research questions. The first experiment on hectometer scale is the Bedretto Reservoir Project (BRP), which studies geothermal exploration. Compared with decameter scale experiments, the financial and organizational costs are significantly increased in hectometer scale experiments and the implementation of high-resolution monitoring comes with considerable risks. We discuss in detail risks for monitoring equipment in hectometer scale experiments and introduce the BRP monitoring network, a multi-component monitoring system combining sensors from seismology, applied geophysics, hydrology, and geomechanics. The multi-sensor network is installed inside long boreholes (up to 300 m length), drilled from the Bedretto tunnel. Boreholes are sealed with a purpose-made cementing system to reach (as far as possible) rock integrity within the experiment volume. The approach incorporates different sensor types, namely, piezoelectric accelerometers, in situ acoustic emission (AE) sensors, fiber-optic cables for distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), distributed strain sensing (DSS) and distributed temperature sensing (DTS), fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors, geophones, ultrasonic transmitters, and pore pressure sensors. The network was realized after intense technical development, including the development of the following key elements: rotatable centralizer with integrated cable clamp, multi-sensor in situ AE sensor chain, and cementable tube pore pressure sensor.

A framework for addressing the lack of diversity in the Geosciences through evaluating the current structure of institutional efforts.

How can universities build institutional partnerships through supporting community geography projects? This paper details the case of university members seeking to achieve a community goal of expanding Geosciences education opportunities, while also targeting a long-range goal of improving diversity within the university Geosciences. Over the course of one year, two Ph.D students collaborated with community members affiliated with a local middle school to design and organize the School of Earth, Society, and Environment (SESE) Geosciences Camp for Middle School Girls, held in August 2019. This paper deconstructs and critiques the camp organizing process and its outcomes. The conclusion addresses what worked and what did not as a model for future attempts at more sustainable institutional partnerships serving community geography projects.

Data models, representation and adequacy-for-purpose.

We critically engage two traditional views of scientific data and outline a novel philosophical view that we call the pragmatic-representational (PR) view of data. On the PR view, data are representations that are the product of a process of inquiry, and they should be evaluated in terms of their adequacy or fitness for particular purposes. Some important implications of the PR view for data assessment, related to misrepresentation, context-sensitivity, and complementary use, are highlighted. The PR view provides insight into the common but little-discussed practices of iteratively reusing and repurposing data, which result in many datasets' having a phylogeny-an origin and complex evolutionary history-that is relevant to their evaluation and future use. We relate these insights to the open-data and data-rescue movements, and highlight several future avenues of research that build on the PR view of data.

A smartphone-based petrographic microscope.

Photomicrographs of thin sections provide a swift and efficient means of sharing information for consultation, education, documentation and publication within the Geosciences and related areas. In general terms, the main way to capture digital microscopic images involves the use of a mounted camera unit on a high-end costly benchtop microscope. However, freehand methods to capture microscope-scale images using a smartphone, as well as smartphone adapters that can be attached to a microscope have emerged during recent years. This paper presents the design features of a costless system able to obtain photomicrographs without requiring a conventional microscope. The imaging device is comprised of a mini-objective lens attached to a smartphone and a structure that allows it to focus as well as to rotate the stage and to insert/remove a polarized sheet. The quality and magnification of the images attainable from the new design is comparable to the images normally obtained by a conventional petrographic microscope using a ×4 objective and a ×10 ocular (total magnification ×40).

The importance of minerals in medical geology: impacts of the environment on health / La importancia de los minerales en la geología médica: impactos del medio ambiente en la salud

Objective: the purpose of this work is to review research on the role of minerals in Medical Geology, highlighting the importance and interrelationships between geological factors and human health. Materials and methods: qualitative study under the documentary approach from which a review of previous studies on the topic of interest was carried out, taking into account that there is an increasing interest between the health and geoscience communities by elucidating the geologic origins and flow of toxic elements in the environment that lead to human exposure through the consumption of food and water. Results: during the review process of the existing literature, it was evidenced that the advance of science and technology has allowed the opening of new lines of research that require multidisciplinary work with the participation of professionals in different areas of knowledge and the medical geology proposes collaboration between two broad fields of knowledge that apparently have no relationship, such as Earth sciences and biomedical sciences. Several aspects are considered, including the interaction between environment and health, which is very important for an extensive audience, including students, researchers, geological and biomedical professionals, policymakers and general public. Conclusion: medical geology should be considered as a component of the Colombia's National Health Action Plan and therefore, to be most effective the Colombian geoscience community should be included as one of the key players or agencies involved in environmental health studies..Au

Objetivo: la finalidad del presente trabajo es revisar investigaciones sobre el papel de los minerales en Geología Médica, destacando la importancia y las interrelaciones entre los factores geológicos y la salud humana. Materiales y métodos: estudio de carácter cualitativo bajo el enfoque documental a partir del cual se llevó a cabo una revisión de estudios previos sobre el tópico de interés, teniendo en cuenta que existe un interés creciente entre las comunidades de salud y geociencia al dilucidar los orígenes geológicos y flujo de elementos tóxicos en el medio ambiente que conducen a la exposición humana a través del consumo de alimentos y agua. Resultados: durante el proceso de revisión de la literatura existente, se evidenció que el avance de la ciencia y la tecnología ha permitido la apertura de nuevas líneas de investigación que requieren un trabajo multidisciplinario con la participación de profesionales en diferentes áreas del conocimiento y la geología médica propone colaboración entre dos amplios campos de conocimiento que aparentemente no tienen relación, como las ciencias de la tierra y las ciencias biomédicas. Se consideran varios aspectos, incluida la interacción entre el medio ambiente y la salud, que es muy importante para una audiencia extensa, incluidos estudiantes, investigadores, profesionales geológicos y biomédicos, encargados de formular políticas y público en general. Conclusión: la geología médica debe considerarse como un componente del Plan de Acción Nacional de Salud de Colombia y, por lo tanto, para ser más eficaz, la comunidad de geociencia colombiana debe ser incluida como uno de los actores o agencias clave involucradas en los estudios de salud ambiental..Au

Benquerencia (La Serena - Spain) rock art: An integrated spectroscopy analysis with FTIR and Raman.

La Serena region is a large plateau with open landscapes bounded in the south by a mountain chain formed by the Benquerencia, Tiros and La Rinconada Sierras. There are more than 300 painted and engraved sites in the region. Cueva Grande, Cueva de En medio and Cueva Pequeña are three Schematic rock art shelters located in the municipality of Benquerencia de la Serena, Badajoz, Spain. Over their panels have been documented more than a hundred of painted schematic figures (anthropomorphic figures, eye-shape figures and symbols) (Neolithic - Copper Age). Paintings are monochromatic with red or black coloration. A total of 13 samples (10 red and 3 black samples) from different panels were collected and analyzed using micro-Raman spectroscopy and ATR-FTIR. Micro-Raman spectroscopy was able to characterize the main mineral component, respectively hematite for the red figures and charcoal for the black paintings. ATR-FTIR was useful to possible ochre and possible organic identification. These latest results are particularly important for understanding manufacturing processes and addressing conservation problems.

Bayesian analysis of the impact of rainfall data product on simulated slope failure for North Carolina locations.

In the past decades, many different approaches have been developed in the literature to quantify the load-carrying capacity and geotechnical stability (or the Factor of Safety, F s) of variably saturated hillslopes. Much of this work has focused on a deterministic characterization of hillslope stability. Yet, simulated F s values are subject to considerable uncertainty due to our inability to characterize accurately the soil mantle's properties (hydraulic, geotechnical and geomorphologic) and spatiotemporal variability of the moisture content of the hillslope interior. This is particularly true at larger spatial scales. Thus, uncertainty-incorporating analyses of physically based models of rain-induced landslides are rare in the literature. Such landslide modeling is typically conducted at the hillslope scale using gauge-based rainfall forcing data with rather poor spatiotemporal coverage. For regional landslide modeling, the specific advantages and/or disadvantages of gauge-only, radar-merged and satellite-based rainfall products are not clearly established. Here, we compare and evaluate the performance of the Transient Rainfall Infiltration and Grid-based Regional Slope-stability analysis (TRIGRS) model for three different rainfall products using 112 observed landslides in the period between 2004 and 2011 from the North Carolina Geological Survey database. Our study includes the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Multi-satellite Precipitation Analysis Version 7 (TMPA V7), the North American Land Data Assimilation System Phase 2 (NLDAS-2) analysis, and the reference 'truth' Stage IV precipitation. TRIGRS model performance was rather inferior with the use of literature values of the geotechnical parameters and soil hydraulic properties from ROSETTA using soil textural and bulk density data from SSURGO (Soil Survey Geographic database). The performance of TRIGRS improved considerably after Bayesian estimation of the parameters with the DiffeRential Evolution Adaptive Metropolis (DREAM) algorithm using Stage IV precipitation data. Hereto, we use a likelihood function that combines binary slope failure information from landslide event and 'null' periods using multivariate frequency distribution-based metrics such as the False Discovery and False Omission Rates. Our results demonstrate that the Stage IV-inferred TRIGRS parameter distributions generalize well to TMPA and NLDAS-2 precipitation data, particularly at sites with considerably larger TMPA and NLDAS-2 rainfall amounts during landslide events than null periods. TRIGRS model performance is then rather similar for all three rainfall products. At higher elevations, however, the TMPA and NLDAS-2 precipitation volumes are insufficient and their performance with the Stage IV-derived parameter distributions indicate their inability to accurately characterize hillslope stability.

Content Based Geographic Image Retrieval using Local Vector Pattern

ABSTRACT Large image archives formed by satellite remote sensing missions are getting an increasing valuable source of information in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). The need for retrieving a required image from a huge image database is increasing significantly for the purpose of analyzing resources in GIS. Content Based Geographic Image Retrieval (CBGIR) in the image processing field is the best solution to meet the requirement. In this work, we used Local Vector Pattern (LVP) to extract fine features present in the geographical image and retrieve the applicable images from a large remote sensing image database. The primary idea of our method is generating micro patterns of LVP by the vectors of each pixel that are constructed by calculating the values between the centre pixels and its neighbourhood pixels with various distances of different directions. Then the proposed method was designed for concatenating these vector patterns to produce more unique features of geographical images and comparing the results with Local Binary Pattern (LBP), Local Derivative Pattern (LDP) and Local Tetra Pattern (LTrP). Ultimately, the extensive analysis carried out on different geographical image collections proved that the proposed method achieves the improved classification accuracy and better retrieving results.

Solid-state NMR and short-range order in crystalline oxides and silicates: a new tool in paramagnetic resonances.

Most applications of high-resolution NMR to questions of short-range order/disorder in inorganic materials have been made in systems where ions with unpaired electron spins are of negligible concentration, with structural information extracted primarily from chemical shifts, quadrupolar coupling parameters, and nuclear dipolar couplings. In some cases, however, the often-large additional resonance shifts caused by interactions between unpaired electron and nuclear spins can provide unique new structural information in materials with contents of paramagnetic cations ranging from hundreds of ppm to several per cent and even higher. In this brief review we focus on recent work on silicate, phosphate, and oxide materials with relatively low concentrations of paramagnetic ions, where spectral resolution can remain high enough to distinguish interactions between NMR-observed nuclides and one or more magnetic neighbors in different bonding configurations in the first, second, and even farther cation shells. We illustrate the types of information available, some of the limitations of this approach, and the great prospects for future experimental and theoretical work in this field. We give examples for the effects of paramagnetic transition metal, lanthanide, and actinide cation substitutions in simple oxides, pyrochlore, zircon, monazite, olivine, garnet, pyrochlores, and olivine structures.

Convergence in the Geosciences.

The 21st century presents unprecedented challenges if society is to continue to provide abundant energy, water, and food, and high quality housing and medical care to a growing global population. Deforestation and aquifer depletion are at unsustainable rates, and use of fossil fuels is leading to unprecedented climate change. Geoscientists can confront these challenges by expanding partnerships with other disciplines. "Convergence," the integration of engineering, physical sciences, computation, and life sciences to benefit health, energy, and the environment, has been successfully developed for biomedical research. It is time for the geosciences to embrace convergence, as our future depends upon it.

Shoot and root phenotyping of the barley mutant kcs6 (3-ketoacyl-CoA synthase6) depleted in epicuticular waxes under water limitation.

Aerial parts of plants are separated from the environment by a cuticle which functions in protection against desiccation and pathogen attack. Recently, we reported on a barley mutant with defect in the 3-KETOACYL-CoA-SYNTHASE (HvKCS6) gene, resulting in reduced coverage of the cuticle with epicuticular waxes. Spores of adapted and non-adapted powdery mildew fungi germinated less frequently on mutant leaves possibly because plant derived signals are missing. We used a shoot and root phenotyping facility to test whether depletion in epicuticular waxes negatively impacts plant performance under water-limiting conditions. While shoots of mutant plants grew slower at well-watered conditions than wild-type plants, they showed an equal or slightly better growth rate at water limitation. Also for roots, differences between mutant and parental line were less prominent at water-limiting as compared to well-watered conditions. Our results challenge the intuitive belief that reduced epicuticular wax might become a drawback at water limitation.

A Terra 'quente' na imprensa: confiabilidade de notícias sobre aquecimento global / 'Hot' Earth in the mass media: the reliability of news reports on global warming

Pesquisa sobre confiabilidade de notícias a respeito do 'aquecimento global', em veículos do grupo de comunicação UOL, Folha.com e Folha de S. Paulo, revelou certa polaridade de posições entre a concordância plena de que as causas sejam exclusivamente antrópicas (posição predominante) e sua completa negação. A amostra compreende 676 notícias, entre mais de três mil relacionadas ao tema, entre outubro de 2007 e outubro de 2008. Avaliou-se a hipótese de ser o noticiário dos três meios de comunicação dominado pelas posições do Painel Intergovernamental de Mudança Climática. Em termos absolutos, o Painel é a fonte mais referenciada, pois apenas sete notícias constituem exceções ao 'consenso'. Tais opiniões contrárias perfazem 1,03% da amostra.

Research into the reliability of news reports on 'global warming' published by the UOL media group, Folha.com and Folha de S. Paulo reveals a tendency for positions to be polarized between complete agreement with the assertion that the causes are entirely anthropogenic (the dominant position) and complete denial. The sample comprised 676 news items from more than 3,000 published on the topic between October 2007 and October 2008. The study tested the hypothesis that the news output of the three media outlets is dominated by the positions of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. In absolute terms, the panel is the most frequently cited source, since just seven news items comprised exceptions to the 'consensus.' These contrary opinions made up 1.03% of the sample.

Educação para a água

A água como tema no contexto educacional é abordada a partir de diversas perspectivas. Diante das discussões em relação à crise socioambiental atual, acreditamos que a educação para a água deva ser realizada a partir da abordagem das dimensões espacial e temporal, considerando nesta última o tempo geológico e a história humana, sem a qual não é possível enfrentar a fragmentação do conhecimento que predomina no ambiente escolar. A abordagem do local, tendo como unidade de estudo a bacia hidrográfica, auxiliada pelos conteúdos das geociências e por metodologias interdisciplinares, proporciona uma visão integrada e contextualizada do tema para a construção do conhecimento.