We developed a simple quantitative framework based on crustal thickness estimations along the Carnegie, Cocos and Malpelo ridges, to place first-order constraints on the tectonic evolution of the Galapagos Volcanic Province and on the along-axis intensity of the Galapagos melt anomaly during the last 20 m.y. Our results suggest that the Cocos^ Nazca spreading centre has migrated northwards at 2...

INTRODUCTION Located in the central Pacific between 4° and 14°north latitude and 160° and 173° east longitude, the Marshall Islands consist of two nearly parallel groups (the Ratak or Sunrise and the Ralik or Sunset Chains) of twenty-nine atolls and five table reefs, totalling 181 km2 of land and 10,455 km2 of lagoon area. Together these two chains extend about 1,130 km north to south and appro...

In order to forage and to provision oVspring eVectively, seabirds negotiate a complex of behavioural, energetic, environmental and social constraints. In Wrst tests of GPS loggers with seabirds in North America, we investigated the foraging tactics of free-ranging northern gannets (Sula bassana) at a large and a mediumsized colony that diVered in oceanography, coastal position and prey Welds. G...

We present new proper motions from the 10 m Keck telescopes for a puzzling population of massive, young stars located within a parsec of the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center. Our proper motion measurements have uncertainties of only 0.07 mas yr−1 (3 km s−1), which is ! 7 times better than previous proper motion measurements for these stars, and enables us to measure accelerations ...

[1] Shipboard radiosonde measurements revealed a persistent temperature inversion layer with a thickness of 200 m at 12–13 km in a nonconvective region over the tropical eastern Pacific, along 2 N, in September 1999. Simultaneous relative humidity measurements indicated that the thin inversion layer was located at the top of a very wet layer with a thickness of 3–4 km, which was found to origin...

[1] The India-Eurasia collision and the decratonization of the North China Craton have drawn much attention from the scientific community. Here we provide the first large-scale S wave velocity model for China (CH11-S) based on constraints from both teleseismic surface and body waves. We take advantage of the recent deployment of the 140 permanent stations of the Chinese Digital Seismic Network ...