Site U1316 (Proposal Site PORC-4A) is located in the downslope sediment deposits ~ 700 meters to the southwest of Challenger Mound. The principal objectives at Site U1316 were: • To gain insight into history of drift deposits on the downslope flank of the Challenger Mound and the off-mound transport of mound-related skeletal and non-skeletal grains. • To investigate the character and age of the...

The nests of some mound-building ants are thought to serve an important function as passive solar collectors. To test this hypothesis, imported fire ant (Solenopsis invicta Buren, S. richteri Forel, and their hybrid) mound shape characteristics (south facing slope angle and area, mound height, and basal elongation in the plane of the ground) were quantified in 2005 and 2006 at a number of locat...

Valenciennea longipinnis spawns monogamously in a burrow. After spawning, the paired female constructs a conspicuous mound on the burrow by carrying and piling up substratum-derived materials while the male tends eggs in the burrow until hatching occurs. In this study, the mounds of V. longipinnis were tested in the field to confirm their function of promoting water-exchange in the burrow, and ...

Failure of the quay walls due to earthquakes results in severe economic loss. Because of hazards threatening such inexpensive nodes of national and international transportation networks, seismic design of quay walls is still an evolving topic in marine structural engineering. This study investigates the sensitivity of the gravity-type quay wall stability respect to uncertain soil and seismic pr...