An analytical description of transmembrane voltage induced on spherical cells was determined in the 1950s, and the tools for numerical assessment of transmembrane voltage induced on spheroidal cells were developed in the 1970s. However, it has often been claimed that an analytical description is unattainable for spheroidal cells, while others have asserted that even if attainable, it does not b...

During the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil well blowout in the Northern Gulf of Mexico (GoM), the application of 6.97 million litres of chemical dispersants was used at the well-head and on the sea surface to promote oil degradation and weathering of the Mississippi Canyon 252 (MC252) crude oil. Chemical dispersants encourage microbial degradation by increasing the surface area of the spilled oil, w...

Quantifying long-term rates of chemical weathering and physical erosion is important for understanding the long-term evolution of soils, landscapes, and Earth’s climate. Here we describe how long-term chemical weathering rates can be measured for actively eroding landscapes using cosmogenic nuclides together with a geochemical mass balance of weathered soil and parent rock. We tested this appro...

The weathering of volcanic rocks contributes significantly to the global silicate weathering budget, effecting carbon dioxide drawdown and long-term climate control. The rate of chemical weathering is influenced by the composition of the rock. Rock-dwelling micro-organisms are known to play a role in changing the rate of weathering reactions; however, the influence of rock composition on bio-we...

We used cosmogenic nuclide and geochemical mass balance methods to measure long-term rates of chemical weathering and total denudation in granitic landscapes in diverse climatic regimes. Our 42 study sites encompass widely varying climatic and erosional regimes, with mean annual temperatures ranging from 2 to 25 jC, average precipitation ranging from 22 to 420 cm year , and denudation rates ran...

We construct asymptotic formulae for the approximation of certain prolate spheroidal wave functions and of the corresponding eigenvalues. We investigate two regimes: when the ratio c/m decays, and when both c and m grow, but the ratio c/m stays bounded. Both the regions of validity and the accuracies of the obtained expansions are illustrated with numerical examples. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All ri...

It has been hypothesized that predecessors of today's bryophytes significantly increased global chemical weathering in the Late Ordovician, thus reducing atmospheric CO2 concentration and contributing to climate cooling and an interval of glaciations. Studies that try to quantify the enhancement of weathering by non-vascular vegetation, however, are usually limited to small areas and low number...

Much of the literature that analyzes the effect of various factors on basaltic weathering rates does not assess the synergistic effects of several factors at once. Those studies that do address such synergies generally report their results in formats that are difficult to integrate into geographic analysis. The research outlined in this paper employs multivariate statistics to assess the effect...

The isotope ratios of Sr are useful tracers for studying parent material sources, weathering processes, and biogeochemical cycling. Mineralogical and geochemical investigations of two lateritic weathering covers, in an area close to the Tropic of Cancer (Guangxi Province, southern China), were undertaken to study the regional weathering processes and Sr isotopic sources. We found that weatherin...

Meteorites are frequently not the pristine record of early solar system processes that we would like them to be. Many unique meteorites, samples that can further our understanding of the environment of the early solar system, are finds, so a knowledge of terrestrial weathering becomes a requirement to accurately interpret their preterrestrial history. This chapter outlines the weathering proces...