Expansion of the South China Sea basin:Constraints from magnetic anomaly stripes,sea floor topography,satellite gravity and submarine geothermics

The widely distributed E-W-trending magnetic anomaly stripes in the central basin and the N-Etrending magnetic anomaly stripes in the southwest sub-basin provide the most important evidence for Neogene expansion of the South China Sea.The expansion mechanism remains,however,controversial because of the lack of direct drilling data,non-systematic marine magnetic survey data,and irregular magnetic anomaly stripes with two obvious directions.For example,researchers have inferred different ages and episodes of expansion for the central basin and southwest sub-basin.Major controversy centers on the order of basinal expansion and the mechanism of expansion for the entire South China Sea basin.This study attempts to constrain these problems from a comprehensive analysis of the seafloor topography,magnetic anomaly stripes,regional aeromagnetic data,satellite gravity,and submarine geothermics.The mapped seafloor terrain shows that the central basin is a north-south rectangle that is relatively shallow with many seamounts,whereas the southwest sub-basin is wide in northeast,gradually narrows to the southwest,and is relatively deeper with fewer seamounts.Many magnetic anomaly stripes are present in the central basin with variable dimensions and directions that are dominantly EWtrending,followed by the NE-,NW- and NS-trending.Conversely such stripes are few in the southwest sub-basin and mainly NE-trending.Regional magnetic data suggest that the NW-trending Ailaoshan-Red River fault extends into the South China Sea,links with the central fault zone in the South China Sea,which extends further southward to Reed Tablemount.Satellite gravity data show that both the central basin and southwest sub-basin are composed of oceanic crust.The Changlong seamount is particularly visible in the southwest sub-basin and extends eastward to the Zhenbei seamount.Also a low gravity anomaly zone coincides with the central fault zone in the sub-basin.The submarine geothermic distribution demonstrates that the southwest sub-basin has a higher geothermal value than the central basin,and that the central fault zone is defined by a low thermal anomaly.This study suggests that NW-SE expansion of the southwest subbasin is later than the N-S expansion of the central basin with the sub-basin extending into the central basin and with both expansions ending at the same time.The expansion of southwestern sub-basin,similar to the Japanese Sea,is likely caused by left-lateral strike slip on the central fault zone in the South China Sea,which may have significance for finding oil and gas in this region.

Extraction of Basic Trends of Urban Expansion in China over Past 40 Years from Satellite Images

If urban sprawl is to be avoided in China in the next ten years, it is not only crucial to understand the overall history, current status, and future trends of urban expansion there, but also these differences, and this is presently lacking. In this study, remotely sensed images with approximately 30 m spatial resolution were used to quantitatively assess the spatial and temporal patterns of urban expansion of 60 Chinese cities(1973–2013). Urban-expansion-process curves of the cities studied were drawn using annual expansion area as an indicator. Curve similarity analysis generated four basic process modes of urban expansion in China. These included cities that: 1) peaked around 2004 and then decelerated; 2) peaked around 2010 and then decelerated; 3) showed sustained acceleration, and 4) showed continued deceleration. Four basic process modes represented cities under different levels of development stage. Geographic location was found to be the most related characteristic to urban expansion process. Regional development policies at the national level in each region also showed highly temporal consistency with fluctuation characteristics of urban expansion process. Urban characteristic such as population size and administrative level were not found to be significantly related to urban expansion-process modes. Understanding the basic process-mode categories well is extremely important for future regional-balance planning and development of macroeconomic policies.

Bound states in the continuum on perfect conducting reflection gratings

Bound states can be supported on the surface of a periodically corrugated perfect conductor known as spoof surface plasmon polaritons with their dispersion curves reside below the light line.Here we show that bound states in the continuum(BICs)can also be achieved in such systems.Two types of grating structures are proposed to suppress the radiation leakage and hence generate bound states.The first one is a simple grating with broad grooves in which multiple cavity modes are accommodated.Due to the symmetry incompatibility and the destructive interaction mainly from the TM_(0)and TM_(1)modes,BICs at theΓpoint and at off-Γpoints are both realized.The second one is a dimerized grating with two grooves in each unit cell.The destructive interaction between the modes in the two grooves can suppresses the radiation and BICs at theΓpoint are observed.The Q factors of the whole bands can be further tuned by the dimerization strength effectively.This work may offer new opportunity for the applications of metallic grating in the low frequency bands.

Anomalous low-temperature heat capacity in antiperovskite compounds

The low-temperature heat capacities are studied for antiperovskite compounds AX M_3（A = Al, Ga, Cu, Ag, Sn, X = C,N, M = Mn, Fe, Co）. A large peak in（C- γ T）/T^3 versus T is observed for each of a total of 18 compounds investigated,indicating an existence of low-energy phonon mode unexpected by Debye T^3 law. Such a peak is insensitive to the external magnetic field up to 80 k Oe（1 Oe = 79.5775 A·m-1）. For compounds with smaller lattice constant, the peak shifts towards higher temperatures with a reduction of peak height. This abnormal peak in（C- γ T）/T^3 versus T of antiperovskite compound may result from the strongly dispersive acoustic branch due to the heavier A atoms and the optical-like mode from the dynamic rotation of X M_6 octahedron. Such a low-energy phonon mode may not contribute negatively to the normal thermal expansion in AX M_3 compounds, while it is usually concomitant with negative thermal expansion in open-structure material（e.g., ZrW_2O_8, Sc F_3）.

Spatial pattern and developing mechanism of railway geo-systems based on track gauge:A case study of Eurasia

The railway is an indispensable feature of a nation’s infrastructure,and the gauge isan internal and objective technical regulation of the railway.In the large-scale regional space,the track gauges reflect the development differences,historical relations and mutual influencesbetween countries and regions.This makes the railway,originally as a regional connection,have special social,political,military and other multiple attributes.Based on this,thepaper,from the perspective of railway gauge,takes the Eurasian continent as the case regionto explore the spatial pattern,formation mechanism and organizational mode of communicationof the Eurasian continental railway geo-system.The results show that 11 kinds of railwaygauge structures exist in Eurasia,which respectively belong to three types of wide-gauge,standard-gauge,and narrow-gauge,but the mainstream gauge only includes 1520 mm,1435mm and 1067 mm.Considerable variation in the coverage length and space range of differentgauges is apparent,which provides a physical and technological basis for railway systemdifferentiation and network fragmentation,which leads to the formation of eight railwaygeo-systems.Due to different modes for railway transport management in different geographicallocations,the geographical pattern and geographical relationship of four transportorganizations are formed.What especially important is the emergence of“1435 gauge space”and“1520 gauge space”,as well as the railway geo-space confrontation between them,onthe Eurasian continent.Besides,we also find that the railway geo-system of Eurasia is mainlyaffected by the technology dissemination,path dependence,geopolitics,national defenseand the colonial expansion of military latitude,and on this basis,five geo-modes of railwaygauge propagation are formed.