The Holocene environmental changes revealed from the sediments of the Yarkov sub-basin of Lake Chany,south-western Siberia

Lake Chany is the largest endorheic lake in Siberia whose catchment is entirely on the territory of Russia.Its geographical location on the climate-sensitive boundary of wet and dry landscapes provides an opportunity to gain more knowledge about environmental changes in the West Siberian interior during the Holocene and about the evolution of the lake itself.Sediment cores obtained from the Yarkov subbasin of the lake in 2008 have been comprehensively studied by a number of approaches including sedimentology and AMS dating,pollen,diatom and chironomid analyses(with statistical interpretation of the results),mineralogy of authigenic minerals and geochemistry of plant lipids(biomarker analysis.).Synthesis of new results presented here and published data provides a good justification for our hypothesis that Lake Chany is very young,no older than 3.6 ka BP.Before that,between 9 and 3.6 ka BP,the Chany basin was a swampy landscape with a very low sedimentation rate;it could not be identified as a water body.In the early lake phase,between 3.6 and 1.5 ka BP,the lake was shallow,1.2–3.5 m in depth,and it rose to its modern size,up to 6.5 m in depth,during the last millennium.Our data reveal important changes in the understanding of the history of this large endorheic lake,as before it was envisioned as a large lake with significant changes in water level since ca.14 ka BP.In addition to hydrology,our proxies provide updates and details of the regional vegetation and climate change since ca.4 ka BP in the WestSiberian forest-steppe and steppe.As evolution of the Chany basin is dependent on hydroclimatic changes in a large region of southern West Siberia,we compare lake-level change and climate-change proxies from the other recently and most comprehensively studied lakes of the region.

Effect of grain size on fatigue cracking at twin boundaries in a CoCrFeMnNi high-entropy alloy

The fatigue cracking behavior at twin boundaries(TBs)in a Co Cr Fe Mn Ni high-entropy alloy with three different grain sizes was systematically investigated under low-cycle fatigue.Irrespective of grain size,the change from slip band cracking to TB cracking occurred with increasing the difference in the Schmid factors(DSF)between matrix and twin.However,the required critical DSF for the transition of the dominant cracking mode decreases with decreasing grain size due to the reduced slip band spacing that increases the impingement sites on the TBs and facilitates the coalescence of defects and voids to initiate TB cracks.

China’s participation in the international RRT for I_(c) measurement of superconducting cables organized by IEC/TC90

Currently,IEC/TC90 is working on standardizing the method for measuring critical current(Ic)in superconducting cables.At the end of 2020,an international round robin test(RRT)was organized,in which five Chinese institutions participated,and four accomplished the test.The electric-field versus current(E-I)curves obtained by each institution are highly repeatable.Those obtained by different institutions are nearly identical after appropriate curve averaging,indicating high reproducibility,except the last participant's inner core curves.The discrepancy was later determined to be the result of sample cable damage.After excluding highly deviated data,it is determined that the maximum relative standard uncertainty in I_(c) is 0.7%,and the maximum relative standard uncertainty in n-value is 12.8%.The I_(c)values are comparable to Japan's domestic RRT results,but the n-values are significantly different.The test results support the DC four-terminal method as a recommended test method,with a target relative uncertainty of less than 2%for the Ic value.