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Les Sources Occultes - Teaser /999
Réalisation Laurent Courau sur un scénario de thierry Ehrmann
blog.ehrmann.org/films2/les-sources-occultes-teaser.html
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers... Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offre aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'Esprit de la Salamandre...
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Faceted diamonds - "Cumulus" brooch with 8 carat diamond at top. (public display, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5200 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
Elements are fundamental substances of matter - matter that is composed of the same types of atoms. At present, 118 elements are known (four of them are still unnamed). Of these, 98 occur naturally on Earth (hydrogen to californium). Most of these occur in rocks & minerals, although some occur in very small, trace amounts. Only some elements occur in their native elemental state as minerals.
To find a native element in nature, it must be relatively non-reactive and there must be some concentration process. Metallic, semimetallic (metalloid), and nonmetallic elements are known in their native state.
The element carbon occurs principally in its native state as graphite (C) and diamond (C). Graphite is the common & far less valuable polymorph of carbon. A scarce polymorph of carbon is diamond. The physical properties of diamond and graphite couldn’t be more different, considering they have the same chemistry. Diamond has a nonmetallic, adamantine luster, typically occurs in cubic or octahedral (double-pyramid) crystals, or subspherical to irregularly-shaped masses, and is extremely hard (H≡10). Diamonds can be almost any color, but are typically clearish, grayish, or yellowish. Many diamonds are noticeably fluorescent under black light (ultraviolet light), but the color and intensity of fluorescence varies. Some diamonds are phosphorescent - under certain conditions, they glow for a short interval on their own.
Very rarely, diamond is a rock-forming mineral (see diamondite - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/14618393527).
Pyrite concretions in black shale from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois, USA. (SDSMT 131, South Dakota School of Mines and Technology, Museum of Geology, Rapid City, South Dakota, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5500 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
The sulfide minerals contain one or more sulfide anions (S-2). The sulfides are usually considered together with the arsenide minerals, the sulfarsenide minerals, and the telluride minerals. Many sulfides are economically significant, as they occur commonly in ores. The metals that combine with S-2 are mainly Fe, Cu, Ni, Ag, etc. Most sulfides have a metallic luster, are moderately soft, and are noticeably heavy for their size. These minerals will not form in the presence of free oxygen. Under an oxygen-rich atmosphere, sulfide minerals tend to chemically weather to various oxide and hydroxide minerals.
Pyrite is a common iron sulfide mineral (FeS2). It’s nickname is “fool's gold”. Pyrite has a metallic luster, brassy gold color (in contrast to the deep rich yellow gold color of true gold - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/sets/72157651325153769/), dark gray to black streak, is hard (H=6 to 6.5), has no cleavage, and is moderately heavy for its size. It often forms cubic crystals or pyritohedrons (crystals having pentagonal faces).
Pyrite is common in many hydrothermal veins, shales, coals, various metamorphic rocks, and massive sulfide deposits.
The pyrite specimens shown above are "pyrite suns" - discoidal concretions developed along a bedding plane in black shale (which is probably restored or reconstructed or fabricated for the retail market). Texturally, the concretions have outward-radiating crystals with moderately-developed concentricity. Mineralogically, they are principally composed of pyrite, plus minor marcasite (also FeS2 - iron sulfide; marcasite is a polymorph of pyrite).
Stratigraphy: Anna Shale (= roof shale of the Herrin Coal), upper Carbondale Formation, Desmoinesian Series, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: coal mine near Sparta, Randolph County, southwestern Illinois, USA
------------------------
Photo gallery of pyrite:
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Un hommage à Norman Spinrad
Comédienne : Élora Bessey
Effets pyrotechniques : Thierry Loir
Images, textes et montage : Laurent Courau
Photographe de plateau : Kurt Ehrmann
Bande-son originale : Cheerleader 69
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois, Rodolphe Bessey et Vincent Kindred Véhixe.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Récolté par Jules Cimon
Date de récolte : 2013.06.20
Substrat : débris ligneux à demi submergés (feuillu?) d’une forêt mixte
Ascome 7 mm de hauteur totale
Apothécie 1 mm de hauteur, 2 mm de diam.
Asques à 8 spores partiellement bisériées, avec crochetés à la base et appareil apical amyloïde, jusqu’à 76 x 9 um
Paraphyses cylindriques, septées, parfois à une petite ramification cylindrique au tiers inférieur, légèrement élargies et parfois couvertes d’une substance hyaline (gélifiée?) à l’apex, pigmentées de brun ochracé olivâtre à ocre doré, à contenu jaunâtre > 80%, jusqu’à 75 x 3,5 µm, dépassant les asques de 3-6 µm
Réaction négative dans le KOH
Spores ellipsoïdes, lisses, non septées, avec 2 petites ou moyennes guttules, hyalines à jaunâtres, 7-12 x 2,5-3,3 µm, 8,4 x 2,9 µm en moyenne, Q = 2,89
Medulla en textura epidermoidea / intricata, ± ascendant, à cellules hyphoïdes polymorphes, hyalines, de taille variable, 25-90 x 5-30 µm
Excipulum ectal en textura globulosa / globulosa-angularis, à cellules à paroi légèrement épaissie, 15-34 x 13-32 µm
Revêtement externe formé de cellules globuleuses à ellipsoïdes en chaîne (?), à pigment brun à olivâtre, 16-18 x 12-15 um
Cellules marginales cylindriques à l’apex et à segments progressivement plus gros vers la base
Revêtement caulinaire brun olivâtre à brun foncé, avec cellulules terminales sinueuses, cylindriques à clavées
Micrographie: J. Labrecque
Recherche: R. Labbé
Identification: Hans O. Baral
www.flickr.com/photos/23151213@N03/9096421446/in/photolis...
The Term Morph Is Inappropriate
As if we didn’t know, we asked a solitary roadside birder, “Looking for something?”
“The Gyrfalcon.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t anybody else looking?”
“They’re all at Grace Lake, waiting and hoping.”
Well, Maggie and I spent a little time in the parking lot overlooking Grace Lake from the southwest side. There were gulls: Herrings, Ring-bills and Lesser Black-backs, as well as some Canadas, Mallards and Common Mergs, but no falcon, just distant birders standing with their scopes on the east side of the lake.
A falcon of the tundra, one that perches on the ground or on low human-made objects, needs extensive unobstructed views, a place with wide open spaces, low-cut grass. So we went to the airport.
It was about 3:20 PM. We couldn’t ask for better timing. On the airport’s south side, we immediately drove up to a juvenile Gyrfalcon, a brown bird, perched on the snow not more than 50-60 feet from the road. Though the direction of light was almost just right, photography was not ideal. The falcon was on the other side of the airport’s chain-linked fence. Nevertheless, my camera knew what it had to do.
Seemingly indifferent to us, the Gyr was leaning over, using its beak to clean its toes, followed by facial combing with its talons. Afterwards it gazed in all directions as though seeking something, perhaps out of hunger. Then lifting its wings, it took to the air, keeping just a few feet above the ground and was quickly lost in the airport’s distant expanse of snow shadow and glare--my fourth Gyr in southeast Michigan, my ninth in the State as of today, 16 November 2019.
Alan
Tom J. Cade (1928-2019, a world renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Peregrine Fund, had this to say: “In the old literature naturalists wrote about white, grey and black ‘color phases’ of the gyrfalcon and even different species of gyrs. In fact, the different plumage types grade imperceptibly into one another, with every kind of intermediate condition represented in different individuals. . . . The Ungava region of northern Quebec is especially interesting as the whitest and blackest varieties breed together in the same area along with every kind of grey intermediate. (p. 76, The Falcons of the World, 1980).”
Eugene Potapov, assistant professor, Bryn Athyn College, is a raptor specialist and the notable author of The Gyrfalcon 2005, a definitive work: “Cade et al quite rightly state that . . . the Gyrfalcon has complete gradation rendering the term ‘morph’ inappropriate (p. 23).”
“Gyrfalcons also have shades of brown and gray in their feathers, and worn plumage may be tan-brown; Gyrs may or may not have a barred tail and moustachial stripes (p. 47).
“. . . some authors classify the birds on the basis of their background color (Cade et al. 1998). Gray form can then be a bird with gray color in the background or bird with a white background but with a lot of dark gray or brown streaks, spots or bars. The degree of the coverage of these spots can then divide the white and gray morphs. As a consequence, it is often difficult to classify Gyrs with excessive numbers or spots and a true white background ( p. 47)
“. . . Palmer (1988) considered that the division of the Gyrfalcons ‘into two or three color morphs . . . is misleading, and ‘any attempt to categorize Gyrs is subjective’, ‘because of variations from nearly (entirely?) white to almost or entirely black. Flann (2003) suggested that the Gyrfalcon has ‘continuous polymorphism’ and so does not have morphs (p.47).
“Another process is the coloration of the background, which may perhaps be independent of, but is parallel with, the variation in coloration and size of dark spots. So, . . . we have two axes of variation in coloration. One is the color as such, including both the color of the background and the color of dark spots. The second axis is the size and pattern of the dark/light spots. Interestingly, there have been no attempts to analyze this two-dimensional variation using objective criteria. In the following section we make an attempt to measure Gyrfalcon colors using a new approach (p. 47).”
To those who wish to pursue this new approach to the color patterns of the Gyrfalcon, I suggest read Potapov’s book.
Here's a preview of the upcoming new skybox from Polymorph.
The Dreamer's skybox is inspired by The Sandman tv show and it features a light control HUD that allows the owner to set the light intensity and color.
The skybox will come as a single prefab, or as a fatpack including the throne.
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Un hommage à Norman Spinrad
Comédienne : Élora Bessey
Effets pyrotechniques : Thierry Loir
Images, textes et montage : Laurent Courau
Photographe de plateau : Kurt Ehrmann
Bande-son originale : Cheerleader 69
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois, Rodolphe Bessey et Vincent Kindred Véhixe.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
I loved the book Cats Cradle when I was a young lad, the concept of Ice Nine is scary and fascinating.
From Wikipedia:
Ice-nine is a fictional material conceived by writer Kurt Vonnegut in his novel Cat's Cradle. It is supposed to be a more stable polymorph of water than common ice (Ice Ih) which instead of melting at 0 degrees Celsius (32 degrees Fahrenheit), melts at 45.8 °C (114.4 °F). When ice-nine comes into contact with liquid water below 45.8 °C (which is thus effectively supercooled), it acts as a seed crystal, and causes the solidification of the entire body of water which quickly crystallizes as ice-nine. A global catastrophe involving freezing the Earth's oceans by simple contact with ice-nine is used as a plot device in Vonnegut's novel.
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Un hommage à Norman Spinrad
Comédienne : Élora Bessey
Effets pyrotechniques : Thierry Loir
Images, textes et montage : Laurent Courau
Photographe de plateau : Kurt Ehrmann
Bande-son originale : Cheerleader 69
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois, Rodolphe Bessey et Vincent Kindred Véhixe.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Réalisation : Laurent Courau
Scénario : Thierry Ehrmann
Comédienne : Elora Bessey
Artificier : Thierry Loir
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois et Rodolphe Bessey.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Un hommage à Norman Spinrad
Comédienne : Élora Bessey
Effets pyrotechniques : Thierry Loir
Images, textes et montage : Laurent Courau
Photographe de plateau : Kurt Ehrmann
Bande-son originale : Cheerleader 69
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois, Rodolphe Bessey et Vincent Kindred Véhixe.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Faceted diamonds - "Cumulus" brooch with 8 carat diamond at top. (public display, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5200 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
Elements are fundamental substances of matter - matter that is composed of the same types of atoms. At present, 118 elements are known (four of them are still unnamed). Of these, 98 occur naturally on Earth (hydrogen to californium). Most of these occur in rocks & minerals, although some occur in very small, trace amounts. Only some elements occur in their native elemental state as minerals.
To find a native element in nature, it must be relatively non-reactive and there must be some concentration process. Metallic, semimetallic (metalloid), and nonmetallic elements are known in their native state.
The element carbon occurs principally in its native state as graphite (C) and diamond (C). Graphite is the common & far less valuable polymorph of carbon. A scarce polymorph of carbon is diamond. The physical properties of diamond and graphite couldn’t be more different, considering they have the same chemistry. Diamond has a nonmetallic, adamantine luster, typically occurs in cubic or octahedral (double-pyramid) crystals, or subspherical to irregularly-shaped masses, and is extremely hard (H≡10). Diamonds can be almost any color, but are typically clearish, grayish, or yellowish. Many diamonds are noticeably fluorescent under black light (ultraviolet light), but the color and intensity of fluorescence varies. Some diamonds are phosphorescent - under certain conditions, they glow for a short interval on their own.
Very rarely, diamond is a rock-forming mineral (see diamondite - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/14618393527).
Kyanite is a typically blue aluminosilicate mineral, found in aluminium-rich metamorphic pegmatites and sedimentary rock. It is the high pressure polymorph of andalusite and sillimanite, and the presence of kyanite in metamorphic rocks generally indicates metamorphism deep in the Earth's crust. Kyanite is also known as disthene or cyanite.[5]
Kyanite is strongly anisotropic, in that its hardness varies depending on its crystallographic direction. In kyanite, this anisotropism can be considered an identifying characteristic, along with its characteristic blue color. Its name comes from the same origin as that of the color cyan, being derived from the Ancient Greek word κύανος. This is typically rendered into English as kyanos or kuanos and means "dark blue."
Kyanite is used as a raw material in the manufacture of ceramics and abrasives, and it is an important index mineral used by geologists to trace metamorphic zones.
Properties
Deep blue kyanite
Kyanite within quartz, Hunterian Museum, Glasgow
Kyanite is an aluminum silicate mineral, with the chemical formula Al2SiO5. It is typically patchy blue in color, though it can range from pale to deep blue[6] and can also be gray or white or, infrequently, light green.[7] It typically forms sprays of bladed crystals, but is less commonly found as distinct euhedral (well-shaped) crystals, which are particularly prized by collectors.[6] It has a perfect {100} cleavage plane, parallel to the long axis of the crystal, and a second good cleavage plane {010} that is at an angle of 79 degrees to the {100} cleavage plane. Kyanite also shows a parting on {001} at an angle of about 85 degrees to the long axis of the crystal.[7] Cleavage surfaces typically display a pearly luster. The crystals are slightly flexible.[6]
Kyanite's elongated, columnar crystals are usually a good first indication of the mineral, as well as its color (when the specimen is blue). Associated minerals are useful as well, especially the presence of the polymorphs of staurolite, which occurs frequently with kyanite. However, the most useful characteristic in identifying kyanite is its anisotropism. If one suspects a specimen to be kyanite, verifying that it has two distinctly different hardness values on perpendicular axes is a key to identification; it has a hardness of 5.5 parallel to {001} and 7 parallel to {100}.[2][3] Thus, a steel needle will easily scratch a kyanite crystal parallel to its long axis, but the crystal is impervious to being scratched by a steel needle perpendicular to the long axis.[6]
Structure
The kyanite structure can be visualized as a distorted face centered cubic lattice of oxygen ions, with aluminium ions occupying 40% of the octahedral sites and silicon occupying 10% of the tetrahedral sites. The aluminium octahedra form chains along the length of the crystal, half of which are straight and half of which are zigzag, with silica tetrahedra linking the chains together. There is no direct linkage between the silica tetrahedra, making kyanite a member of the nesoilicate class of silicate minerals.[8][9]
Occurrence
KyaniteAndalusiteSillimanite
Phase diagram of Al2SiO5
(aluminosilicates).[10]
Kyanite occurs in biotite gneiss, mica schist, and hornfels, which are metamorphic rocks formed at high pressure during regional metamorphism of a protolith which is rich in aluminium (a pelitic protolith). Kyanite is also occasionally found in granite and pegmatites[9][11] and associated quartz veins,[12] and is infrequently found in eclogites. It occurs as detrital grains in sedimentary rocks, although it tends to weather rapidly.[7][11] It is associated with staurolite, andalusite, sillimanite, talc, hornblende, gedrite, mullite and corundum.[2]
Kyanite is one of the most common minerals, having the composition Al2SiO5. Minerals with identical compositions but a different, distinct crystal structure are called polymorphs. There are two polymorphs of kyanite: andalusite and sillimanite. Kyanite is the most stable at high pressure, andalusite is the most stable at lower temperature and pressure, and sillimanite is the most stable at higher temperature and lower pressure.[13] They are all equally stable at the triple point near 4.2 kbar and 530 °C (986 °F).[14] This makes the presence of kyanite in a metamorphic rock an indication of metamorphism at high pressure.
Kyanite is often used as an index mineral to define and trace a metamorphic zone that was subject to a particular degree of metamorphism at great depth in the crust. For example, G. M. Barrow defined kyanite zones and sillimanite zones in his pioneering work on the mineralogy of metamorphic rocks. Barrow was characterizing a region of Scotland that had experienced regional metamorphism at depth. By contrast, the metamorphic zones surrounding the Fanad pluton of Ireland, which formed by contact metamorphism at a shallower depth in the crust, include andalusite and sillimanite zones but no kyanite zone.[15]
Kyanite is potentially stable at low temperature and pressure. However, under these conditions, the reactions that produce kyanite, such as:
muscovite + staurolite + quartz → biotite + kyanite + H2O
never take place, and hydrous aluminosilicate minerals such as muscovite, pyrophyllite, or kaolinite are found instead of kyanite.[16]
Bladed crystals of kyanite are very common, but individual euhedral crystals are prized by collectors.[6] Kyanite occurs in Manhattan schist, formed under extreme pressure as a result of a continental collision during the assembly of the supercontinent of Pangaea.[17] It is also found in pegmatites of the Appalachian Mountains and in Minas Gerais, Brazil. Splendid specimens are found at Pizzo Forno in Switzerland.[6]
Kyanite can take on an orange color, which notably occurs in Loliondo, Tanzania.[18] The orange color is due to inclusions of small amounts of manganese (Mn3+) in the structure.
Uses
Kyanite is used primarily in refractory and ceramic products, including porcelain plumbing and dishware. It is also used in electronics, electrical insulators and abrasives.[19]
At temperatures above 1100 °C, kyanite decomposes into mullite and vitreous silica via the following reaction:
3(Al2O3·SiO2) → 3Al2O3·2SiO2 + SiO2
This transformation results in an expansion.[20] Mullitized kyanite is used to manufacture refractory materials.[19]
Kyanite has been used as a semiprecious gemstone, which may display cat's eye chatoyancy, though this effect is limited by its anisotropism and perfect cleavage. Color varieties include orange kyanite from Tanzania.[18] The orange color is due to inclusions of small amounts of manganese (Mn3+) in the structure.[21]
References
Specific citations
Warr, L.N. (2021). "IMA–CNMNC approved mineral symbols". Mineralogical Magazine. 85 (3): 291–320. Bibcode:2021MinM...85..291W. doi:10.1180/mgm.2021.43. S2CID 235729616.
"Kyanite" (PDF). Handbook of Mineralogy. 2001. Retrieved 2018-01-01.
"Kyanite". MinDat. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
"Kyanite Mineral Data". Webmineral.com. Retrieved 2013-06-14.
Jackson, Julia A., ed. (1997). Glossary of geology (Fourth ed.). Alexandria, Virginia: American Geological Institute. ISBN 0922152349.
Sinkankas, John (1964). Mineralogy for amateurs. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. pp. 528–529. ISBN 0442276249.
Nesse, William D. (2000). Introduction to mineralogy. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 319. ISBN 9780195106916.
Winter, J.K.; Ghose, S. (1979). "Thermal expansion and high-temperature crystal chemistry of the Al 2 SiO 5 polymorphs". American Mineralogist. 64 (5–6): 573–586. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
Nesse 2000, p. 315.
Whitney, D.L. (2002). "Coexisting andalusite, kyanite, and sillimanite: Sequential formation of three Al2SiO5 polymorphs during progressive metamorphism near the triple point, Sivrihisar, Turkey". American Mineralogist. 87 (4): 405–416. doi:10.2138/am-2002-0404.
"Geology Page - Kyanite". Geology Page. 2014-05-16. Retrieved 2020-02-20.
Sinkankas, John (1964). Mineralogy for amateurs. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand. p. 529. ISBN 0442276249.
Nesse 2000, p. 76.
Bohlen, S.R.; Montana, A.; Kerrick, D.M. (1991). "Precise determinations of the equilibria kyanite⇌ sillimanite and kyanite⇌ andalusite and a revised triple point for Al2SiO5 polymorphs". American Mineralogist. 76 (3–4): 677–680. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
Yardley, B. W. D. (1989). An introduction to metamorphic petrology. Harlow, Essex, England: Longman Scientific & Technical. pp. 8–10. ISBN 0582300967.
Yardley 1989, p. 68-69.
Quinn, Helen (6 June 2013). "How ancient collision shaped New York skyline". BBC Science. BBC.co.uk. Retrieved 2013-06-13. Prof Stewart was keeping an eye out for a mineral known as kyanite, a beautiful blue specimen commonly seen in the Manhattan schist. 'Kyanite is a key mineral to identify, we know it only forms at very deep depths and under extensive pressure,' he said. 'It's like a fingerprint, revealing a wealth of information.' The presence of this mineral reveals that the Manhattan schist was compressed under incredibly high pressure over 300 million years ago. The schist formed as a result of two enormous landmasses coming together to form a supercontinent, known as Pangaea.
M. Chadwick, Karen; R. Rossman, George (2009-01-01). "Orange kyanite from Tanzania". Gems and Gemology. 45.
Nesse 2000, p. 316.
Speyer, Robert (1993). Thermal Analysis of Materials. CRC Press. p. 166. ISBN 0-8247-8963-6.
M. Gaft; L. Nagli; G. Panczer; G. R. Rossman; R. Reisfeld (August 2011). "Laser-induced time-resolved luminescence of orange kyanite Al2SiO5". Optical Materials. 33 (10): 1476–1480. Bibcode:2011OptMa..33.1476G. doi:10.1016/j.optmat.2011.03.052.
As borboletas são insectos da ordem Lepidoptera classificados nas super-famílias Hesperioidea e Papilionoidea, que constituem o grupo informal Rhopalocera.
As borboletas têm dois pares de asas membranosas cobertas de escamas e peças bucais adaptadas a sucção. Distinguem-se das traças (mariposas) pelas antenas rectilíneas que terminam numa bola, pelos hábitos de vida diurnos, pela metamorfose que decorre dentro de uma crisálida rígida e pelo abdómen fino e alongado. Quando em repouso, as borboletas dobram as suas asas para cima.
As borboletas são importantes polinizadores de diversas espécies de plantas.
O ciclo de vida das borboletas engloba as seguintes etapas:
1) ovo→ fase pré-larval
2) larva→ chamada também de lagarta ou taturana,
3) pupa→ que se desenvolve dentro da crisálida (ou casulo)
4) imago→ fase adulta
_______________________
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths.
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. The caterpillars of some butterflies eat harmful insects. A few species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Professor Liwei Lin
Liwei Lin
Professor
Specialist of the Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC“Thousand Talents Program”, professor of Yangtze river scholars, Mechanical Engineering School professor of the University of California, Berkeley, co-director of the Berkeley Sensor and Executive Component Research Center, president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems Branch, published about 130 theses on many international well-known journals, such as IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems, Nano Letters, Advanced Materials, ACS Nano, Nanotechnology Review etc, published about 200 theses on many main conference in this area, such as IEEE-MEMS, Transducer etc, co-authoring 4 monographs, authorized 17 invention patents, relative achievements were highlighted reported by many well-known medias, such as Science, LA Times, NHK Japan and Science Channel TV, had a wide international response. Now he hold a concurrent post of the chief editor of IEEE/ASME Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems and Chinese Journal of Sensors and Actuators, the editor of the ASME Journal of Micro- and Nano-Manufacturing , Chinese Journal of Sensors and Actuators, the reviewer of more than 20 journals, such as Science, Nature Nanotechnology, Nano Letters and Advanced Materials etc, the co-chair of the IEEE-MEMS 2011 Conference, the program committee chair of IEEE-NEMS 2010 and many other IEEE-NEMS, was well-known in the micro nano technology area.
Research Area
MEMS/NEMS, micro nano sensor and actuator, micro nano integration and encapsulation, polymer nano structure and its application, flexible electronic manufacturing technology, nanofiber manufacturing and application, micro nano 3D printing technology etc.
Part of Treatises
Yifang Liu,Daner Chen,Liwei Lin,Gaofeng Zheng, Jianyi Zheng, Lingyun Wang*,Daoheng Sun*,Glass frit bonding with controlled width and height using a two-step wet silicon etching procedure, Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, 2016, 26: 035018-035026.
Lei Xu*, Wen Han, Gaofeng Zheng, Dezhi Wu, Xiang Wang, Daoheng Sun*, Initial jet before the onset of effective electrospinning of polymeric nanofibers, The Open Mechanical Engineering Journal, 2015, 9: 666-669.
Dezhi Wu, Shaohua Huang, Zhiqin Xu, Zhiming Xiao, Chuan Shi, Jinbao Zhao, Rui Zhu, Daoheng Sun*, Liwei Lin, Polyethylene terephthalate/poly (vinylidene fluoride) composite separator for Li-ion battery, Journal of Physics D:Applied Physics, 2015, 48: 285305-285312.
[6] Tingping Lei, Lingke Yu, Lingyun Wang, Fan Yang, Daoheng Sun*, Predicting polymorphism of electrospun polyvinylidene fluoride membranes by their morphologies, Journal of Macromolecular Science, 2015, 54: 91-101.
Xiang Wang, Xingwang Hu, Xiaochun Qiu, Xiangyu Huang, Dezhi Wu*, Daoheng Sun*, Strip-distributed polymer solution on tip-less electrospinning for uniform nanofibers, Materials Letters, 2013, 99: 21-23.
Lei Xu, Daoheng Sun*, Electrohydrodynamic printing under applied pole-type nozzle configuration, Applied Physics Letters, 2013,102(2): 024101.
WangLingyun, DuJiang, Luo Zhiwei, Du Xiaohui, Li Yipan, Liu Juan, Daoheng Sun*. Design and Experiment of a Jetting Dispenser Driven by Piezostack Actuator [J]. IEEE Transactions on Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology, 2013, 3(1): 147-156.
Xiang Wang, Gaofeng Zheng, Lei Xu, Wei Cheng, Bulei Xu, Yongfang Huang, Daoheng Sun*, Fabrication of nanochannels via near-field electrospinning, Appled Physics A, 2012, 108(4): 825-828.
Wang Linyun, Qiu Yongrong, Pei Yanbo, Su Yuanzhe, Zhan Zhan, Lv Wenlong, Daoheng Sun*. A novel electrohydrodynamic printing jet head with retractable needle[J]. Proceedings of the Institution
Zheng Gaofeng, Wang Xiang, Li Wenwang, Lei Tingping, Tao Wei, Du Jiang, Qiu QiYan, Chi XinGuo, Daoheng Sun*. Single step fabrication of organic nanofibrous membrane for piezoelectric vibration sensor [C]. Actuators and Microsystems Conference (TRANSDUCERS), 2011 16th International Conference: 2782-2785.
Daoheng Sun*, Chieh Chang, Sha Li, and Liwei Lin*,Near-Field Electrospinning, Nano Letters,Department of Mechanical Engineering and Berkeley Sensor and Actuator Center,Received February 6, 2006; Revised Manuscript Received March 9, 2006
Part of Patents
A polymer solar battery light trapping structure manufacturing method.
A micro devices movable structure manufacturing method which based on silicon/glass anode bonding.
A horizontal array carbon nanotube manufacturing method.
The Term Morph Is Inappropriate
As if we didn’t know, we asked a solitary roadside birder, “Looking for something?”
“The Gyrfalcon.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t anybody else looking?”
“They’re all at Grace Lake, waiting and hoping.”
Well, Maggie and I spent a little time in the parking lot overlooking Grace Lake from the southwest side. There were gulls: Herrings, Ring-bills and Lesser Black-backs, as well as some Canadas, Mallards and Common Mergs, but no falcon, just distant birders standing with their scopes on the east side of the lake.
A falcon of the tundra, one that perches on the ground or on low human-made objects, needs extensive unobstructed views, a place with wide open spaces, low-cut grass. So we went to the airport.
It was about 3:20 PM. We couldn’t ask for better timing. On the airport’s south side, we immediately drove up to a juvenile Gyrfalcon, a brown bird, perched on the snow not more than 50-60 feet from the road. Though the direction of light was almost just right, photography was not ideal. The falcon was on the other side of the airport’s chain-linked fence. Nevertheless, my camera knew what it had to do.
Seemingly indifferent to us, the Gyr was leaning over, using its beak to clean its toes, followed by facial combing with its talons. Afterwards it gazed in all directions as though seeking something, perhaps out of hunger. Then lifting its wings, it took to the air, keeping just a few feet above the ground and was quickly lost in the airport’s distant expanse of snow shadow and glare--my fourth Gyr in southeast Michigan, my ninth in the State as of today, 16 November 2019.
Alan
Tom J. Cade (1928-2019, a world renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Peregrine Fund, had this to say: “In the old literature naturalists wrote about white, grey and black ‘color phases’ of the gyrfalcon and even different species of gyrs. In fact, the different plumage types grade imperceptibly into one another, with every kind of intermediate condition represented in different individuals. . . . The Ungava region of northern Quebec is especially interesting as the whitest and blackest varieties breed together in the same area along with every kind of grey intermediate. (p. 76, The Falcons of the World, 1980).”
Eugene Potapov, assistant professor, Bryn Athyn College, is a raptor specialist and the notable author of The Gyrfalcon 2005, a definitive work: “Cade et al quite rightly state that . . . the Gyrfalcon has complete gradation rendering the term ‘morph’ inappropriate (p. 23).”
“Gyrfalcons also have shades of brown and gray in their feathers, and worn plumage may be tan-brown; Gyrs may or may not have a barred tail and moustachial stripes (p. 47).
“. . . some authors classify the birds on the basis of their background color (Cade et al. 1998). Gray form can then be a bird with gray color in the background or bird with a white background but with a lot of dark gray or brown streaks, spots or bars. The degree of the coverage of these spots can then divide the white and gray morphs. As a consequence, it is often difficult to classify Gyrs with excessive numbers or spots and a true white background ( p. 47)
“. . . Palmer (1988) considered that the division of the Gyrfalcons ‘into two or three color morphs . . . is misleading, and ‘any attempt to categorize Gyrs is subjective’, ‘because of variations from nearly (entirely?) white to almost or entirely black. Flann (2003) suggested that the Gyrfalcon has ‘continuous polymorphism’ and so does not have morphs (p.47).
“Another process is the coloration of the background, which may perhaps be independent of, but is parallel with, the variation in coloration and size of dark spots. So, . . . we have two axes of variation in coloration. One is the color as such, including both the color of the background and the color of dark spots. The second axis is the size and pattern of the dark/light spots. Interestingly, there have been no attempts to analyze this two-dimensional variation using objective criteria. In the following section we make an attempt to measure Gyrfalcon colors using a new approach (p. 47).”
To those who wish to pursue this new approach to the color patterns of the Gyrfalcon, I suggest read Potapov’s book.
The 56 Full Sized Morphs Are:
01 Blaze a Trail | 02 Pearly King Morph | 03 The Messenger Morph | 04 The Power of Morphing Communication | 05 Morph Over, There's Room for Two! | 06 Morph into the Piñataverse | 07 Morpheus | 08 Apart Together | 09 London Parklife | 10 On Guard | 11 Mr Create | 12 Morph's Inspirational Dungarees | 13 Cactus Morph | 14 Forget-Me-Not | 15 Gingerbread Morph I 16 Totally Morphomatic! | 17 Dance-off Morph I 18 The Bard I 19 Mondrian Morph | 20 Morph Whizz Kidz Argonaut | 21 It's Raining Morphs! Halleujah! | 22 Messy Morph | 23 I Spy Morph | 24 Astromorph | 25 Make Your Mark | 26 Roll With It | 27 Morph and Friends Explore London | 28 Tartan Trailblazer | 29 London Collage | 30 Peace Love and Morph | 31 Midas Morph | 32 Freedom | 33 Good Vibes | 34 Tiger Morph | 35 Maximus Morpheus Londinium | 36 Chocks Away! | 37 Morph! It's the Wrong Trousers! | 38 Diverse-City | 39 Apples and Pears | 40 Morphlowers Please! | 41 Cyborg Morph | 42 Pride Morph | 43 The London Man | 44 Looking After the Ocean | 45 Rock Star! | 46 Wheelie | 47 Gentlemorph | 48 Polymorphism | 49 Whizz Bang! | 50 Stay Frosty | 51 Mmmmmmmoprh! | 52 Swashbuckler | 53 Morph Target | 54 Canary Morph | 55 Morph the Yeoman Guard | 56 Fish Ahoy!
The 23 Mini Morphs Are:
01 Neville | 02 Messy Morph | 03 Meta-MORPH-osis | 04 Morley the Morph - Ready to Board | 05 Near and Far | 06 Bright Ideas | 07 Creativity Rocks! | 08 Growing Together | 10 Many Hands Make Valence | 11 Mr. Tayo Shnubbub 'The Wellbeing Hero' | 12 Captain Compass I 13 Hands-On & Hands-Up | 14 This is Us | 15 The Adventures of Morph | 16 Our School | 17 Riverside Spirit | 18 Morpheby | 19 GRIT | 20 Happiness is an Inside Job | 21 Growing Together in Learning and in Faith | 22 Look for the Light I 23 Bringing Great Energy and Spirit to Make Things Happen
The Red Postman (Heliconius erato) is one of about 40 Neotropical species of butterfly belonging to the genus Heliconius.
Heliconius erato is one of the few butterflies that collects and digests pollen, conferring considerable longevity to the adults (several months). Adults roost in groups, returning to the same location each night.
A recent study, using amplified fragment length polymorphism (AFLP) and mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) data sets, places the origins of Heliconius erato at 2.8 million years ago. Heliconius erato also shows clustering of AFLPs by geography revealing that the species originated in western South America.
(from Wikipedia)
(~4.7 centimeters across at its widest)
-----------------------------------
Igneous rocks form by the cooling and crystallization of hot, molten rock (magma and lava). If this happens at or near the land surface, or on the seafloor, they are extrusive igneous rocks. If this happens deep underground, they are intrusive igneous rocks. Most igneous rocks have a crystalline texture, but some are clastic, vesicular, frothy, or glassy.
Obsidian is readily identifiable. It is a glassy-textured, extrusive igneous rock. Obsidian is natural glass - it lacks crystals, and therefore lacks minerals. Obsidian is typically black in color, but most obsidians have a felsic to intermediate chemistry. Felsic igneous rocks are generally light-colored, so a felsic obsidian seems a paradox. Mafic obsidians are scarce, but they are also black and glassy. Obsidian is sometimes referred to "glassy rhyolite".
Obsidian is an uncommon rock, but can be examined at several famous localities in America, such as Obsidian Cliff at the Yellowstone Hotspot (northwestern Wyoming, USA) and Big Obsidian Flow at the Newberry Volcano (central Oregon, USA).
Obsidian is moderately hard and has a conchoidal fracture (smooth and curved fracture surface), with sharp broken edges. Freshly-broken obsidian has the sharpest edges of any material known, natural or man-made (as seen under a scanning electron microscope).
Obsidian forms two ways: 1) very rapid cooling of lava, which prevents the formation of crystals; 2) cooling of high-viscosity lava, which prevents easy movement of atoms to form crystals. An example of obsidian that formed the first way is along the margins of basaltic lava flows at Kilaeua Volcano (Hawaii Hotspot, central Pacific Ocean). The obsidian sample seen here formed the second way.
Obsidian is unstable on geologic time scales - it will slowly convert to material that is not obsidian. A partially-converted obsidian is a distinctive rock called snowflake obsidian. The black portions of the rock seen here are rhyolitic obsidian (glass). The white patches ("snowflakes") are devitrification spots composed of cristobalite (SiO2, a polymorph of quartz).
Locality: unrecorded / undisclosed, but possibly from Twin Peaks, Utah, USA
The Term Morph Is Inappropriate
As if we didn’t know, we asked a solitary roadside birder, “Looking for something?”
“The Gyrfalcon.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t anybody else looking?”
“They’re all at Grace Lake, waiting and hoping.”
Well, Maggie and I spent a little time in the parking lot overlooking Grace Lake from the southwest side. There were gulls: Herrings, Ring-bills and Lesser Black-backs, as well as some Canadas, Mallards and Common Mergs, but no falcon, just distant birders standing with their scopes on the east side of the lake.
A falcon of the tundra, one that perches on the ground or on low human-made objects, needs extensive unobstructed views, a place with wide open spaces, low-cut grass. So we went to the airport.
It was about 3:20 PM. We couldn’t ask for better timing. On the airport’s south side, we immediately drove up to a juvenile Gyrfalcon, a brown bird, perched on the snow not more than 50-60 feet from the road. Though the direction of light was almost just right, photography was not ideal. The falcon was on the other side of the airport’s chain-linked fence. Nevertheless, my camera knew what it had to do.
Seemingly indifferent to us, the Gyr was leaning over, using its beak to clean its toes, followed by facial combing with its talons. Afterwards it gazed in all directions as though seeking something, perhaps out of hunger. Then lifting its wings, it took to the air, keeping just a few feet above the ground and was quickly lost in the airport’s distant expanse of snow shadow and glare--my fourth Gyr in southeast Michigan, my ninth in the State as of today, 16 November 2019.
Alan
Tom J. Cade (1928-2019, a world renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Peregrine Fund, had this to say: “In the old literature naturalists wrote about white, grey and black ‘color phases’ of the gyrfalcon and even different species of gyrs. In fact, the different plumage types grade imperceptibly into one another, with every kind of intermediate condition represented in different individuals. . . . The Ungava region of northern Quebec is especially interesting as the whitest and blackest varieties breed together in the same area along with every kind of grey intermediate. (p. 76, The Falcons of the World, 1980).”
Eugene Potapov, assistant professor, Bryn Athyn College, is a raptor specialist and the notable author of The Gyrfalcon 2005, a definitive work: “Cade et al quite rightly state that . . . the Gyrfalcon has complete gradation rendering the term ‘morph’ inappropriate (p. 23).”
“Gyrfalcons also have shades of brown and gray in their feathers, and worn plumage may be tan-brown; Gyrs may or may not have a barred tail and moustachial stripes (p. 47).
“. . . some authors classify the birds on the basis of their background color (Cade et al. 1998). Gray form can then be a bird with gray color in the background or bird with a white background but with a lot of dark gray or brown streaks, spots or bars. The degree of the coverage of these spots can then divide the white and gray morphs. As a consequence, it is often difficult to classify Gyrs with excessive numbers or spots and a true white background ( p. 47)
“. . . Palmer (1988) considered that the division of the Gyrfalcons ‘into two or three color morphs . . . is misleading, and ‘any attempt to categorize Gyrs is subjective’, ‘because of variations from nearly (entirely?) white to almost or entirely black. Flann (2003) suggested that the Gyrfalcon has ‘continuous polymorphism’ and so does not have morphs (p.47).
“Another process is the coloration of the background, which may perhaps be independent of, but is parallel with, the variation in coloration and size of dark spots. So, . . . we have two axes of variation in coloration. One is the color as such, including both the color of the background and the color of dark spots. The second axis is the size and pattern of the dark/light spots. Interestingly, there have been no attempts to analyze this two-dimensional variation using objective criteria. In the following section we make an attempt to measure Gyrfalcon colors using a new approach (p. 47).”
To those who wish to pursue this new approach to the color patterns of the Gyrfalcon, I suggest read Potapov’s book.
Claudine Nicol
Photographic Services Technician
Born in Epsom, United Kingdom, in 1973
2020
Plastic, polymorph plastic, metal, mink eyelash extensions, synthetic fibres
Collection of the artist
This work depicts society's hypersexualization of women and its harsh criticism of female bodies, whether skinny, fat, muscled, sagging, virginal, whorish, fake, flat-chested, scarred, wrinkled, covered in cellelulite, and so on. Here, gaze is now turned from every angle onto the viewer.
Cuculus canorus
[order] Cuculiformes | [family] Cuculidae | [latin] Cuculus canorus | [UK] Cuckoo | [FR] Coucou gris | [DE] Kuckuck | [ES] Cuco Europeo | [IT] Cuculo eurasiatico | [NL] Koekoek | [IRL] Cuach
Status: Widespread summer visitor to Ireland from April to August.
Conservation Concern: Green-listed in Ireland. The European population is currently evaluated as secure.
Identification: Despite its obvious song, relatively infrequently seen. In flight, can be mistaken for a bird of prey such as Sparrowhawk, but has rapid wingbeats below the horizontal plane - ie. the wings are not raised above the body. Adult male Cuckoos are a uniform grey on the head, neck, back, wings and tail. The underparts are white with black barring. Adult females can appear in one of two forms. The so-called grey-morph resembles the adult male plumage, but has throat and breast barred black and white with yellowish wash. The rufous-morph has the grey replaced by rufous, with strong black barring on the wings, back and tail. Juvenile Cuckoos resemble the female rufous-morph, but are darker brown above.
Similar Species: Sparrowhawk
Call: The song is probably one of the most recognisable and well-known of all Irish bird species. The male gives a distinctive “wuck-oo”, which is occasionally doubled “wuck-uck-ooo”. The female has a distinctive bubbling “pupupupu”. The song period is late April to late June.
Diet: Mainly caterpillars and other insects.
Breeding: Widespread in Ireland, favouring open areas which hold their main Irish host species – Meadow Pipit. Has a remarkable breeding biology unlike any other Irish breeding species.
Wintering: Cuckoos winter in central and southern Africa.
To minimise the chance of being recognised and thus attacked by the birds they are trying to parasitize, female cuckoos have evolved different guises.
The common cuckoo (Cuculus canorus) lays its eggs in the nests of other birds. On hatching, the young cuckoo ejects the host's eggs and chicks from the nest, so the hosts end up raising a cuckoo chick rather than a brood of their own. To fight back, reed warblers (a common host across Europe) have a first line of defence: they attack, or ‘mob’, the female cuckoo, which reduces the chance that their nest is parasitized.
To deter the warbler from attacking, the colouring of the grey cuckoo mimics sparrow hawks, a common predator of reed warblers. However, other females are bright rufous (brownish-red). The presence of alternate colour morphs in the same species is rare in birds, but frequent among the females of parasitic cuckoo species. The new research shows that this is another cuckoo trick: cuckoos combat reed warbler mobbing by coming in different guises.
In the study, the researchers manipulated local frequencies of the more common grey colour cuckoo and the less common (in the United Kingdom) rufous colour cuckoo by placing models of the birds at neighbouring nests. They then recorded how the experience of watching their neighbours mob changed reed warbler responses to both cuckoos and a sparrow hawk at their own nest.
They found that reed warblers increased their mobbing, but only to the cuckoo morph that their neighbours had mobbed. Therefore, as one cuckoo morph increases in frequency, local host populations will become alerted specifically to that morph. This means the alternate morph will be more likely to slip past host defences and lay undetected. This is the first time that ‘social learning’ has been documented in the evolution of mimicry as well as the evolution of different observable characteristics - such as colour - in the same species (called polymorphism).
From the University of Cambridge “When mimicry becomes less effective, evolving to look completely different can be a successful trick. Our research shows that individuals assess disguises not only from personal experience, but also by observing others. However, because their learning is so specific, this social learning then selects for alternative cuckoo disguises and the arms race continues.”.
“It’s well known that cuckoos have evolved various egg types which mimic those of their hosts in order to combat rejection. This research shows that cuckoos have also evolved alternate female morphs to sneak through the hosts' defenses. This explains why many species which use mimicry, such as the cuckoo, evolve different guises.”
The Term Morph Is Inappropriate
As if we didn’t know, we asked a solitary roadside birder, “Looking for something?”
“The Gyrfalcon.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t anybody else looking?”
“They’re all at Grace Lake, waiting and hoping.”
Well, Maggie and I spent a little time in the parking lot overlooking Grace Lake from the southwest side. There were gulls: Herrings, Ring-bills and Lesser Black-backs, as well as some Canadas, Mallards and Common Mergs, but no falcon, just distant birders standing with their scopes on the east side of the lake.
A falcon of the tundra, one that perches on the ground or on low human-made objects, needs extensive unobstructed views, a place with wide open spaces, low-cut grass. So we went to the airport.
It was about 3:20 PM. We couldn’t ask for better timing. On the airport’s south side, we immediately drove up to a juvenile Gyrfalcon, a brown bird, perched on the snow not more than 50-60 feet from the road. Though the direction of light was almost just right, photography was not ideal. The falcon was on the other side of the airport’s chain-linked fence. Nevertheless, my camera knew what it had to do.
Seemingly indifferent to us, the Gyr was leaning over, using its beak to clean its toes, followed by facial combing with its talons. Afterwards it gazed in all directions as though seeking something, perhaps out of hunger. Then lifting its wings, it took to the air, keeping just a few feet above the ground and was quickly lost in the airport’s distant expanse of snow shadow and glare--my fourth Gyr in southeast Michigan, my ninth in the State as of today, 16 November 2019.
Alan
Tom J. Cade (1928-2019, a world renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Peregrine Fund, had this to say: “In the old literature naturalists wrote about white, grey and black ‘color phases’ of the gyrfalcon and even different species of gyrs. In fact, the different plumage types grade imperceptibly into one another, with every kind of intermediate condition represented in different individuals. . . . The Ungava region of northern Quebec is especially interesting as the whitest and blackest varieties breed together in the same area along with every kind of grey intermediate. (p. 76, The Falcons of the World, 1980).”
Eugene Potapov, assistant professor, Bryn Athyn College, is a raptor specialist and the notable author of The Gyrfalcon 2005, a definitive work: “Cade et al quite rightly state that . . . the Gyrfalcon has complete gradation rendering the term ‘morph’ inappropriate (p. 23).”
“Gyrfalcons also have shades of brown and gray in their feathers, and worn plumage may be tan-brown; Gyrs may or may not have a barred tail and moustachial stripes (p. 47).
“. . . some authors classify the birds on the basis of their background color (Cade et al. 1998). Gray form can then be a bird with gray color in the background or bird with a white background but with a lot of dark gray or brown streaks, spots or bars. The degree of the coverage of these spots can then divide the white and gray morphs. As a consequence, it is often difficult to classify Gyrs with excessive numbers or spots and a true white background ( p. 47)
“. . . Palmer (1988) considered that the division of the Gyrfalcons ‘into two or three color morphs . . . is misleading, and ‘any attempt to categorize Gyrs is subjective’, ‘because of variations from nearly (entirely?) white to almost or entirely black. Flann (2003) suggested that the Gyrfalcon has ‘continuous polymorphism’ and so does not have morphs (p.47).
“Another process is the coloration of the background, which may perhaps be independent of, but is parallel with, the variation in coloration and size of dark spots. So, . . . we have two axes of variation in coloration. One is the color as such, including both the color of the background and the color of dark spots. The second axis is the size and pattern of the dark/light spots. Interestingly, there have been no attempts to analyze this two-dimensional variation using objective criteria. In the following section we make an attempt to measure Gyrfalcon colors using a new approach (p. 47).”
To those who wish to pursue this new approach to the color patterns of the Gyrfalcon, I suggest read Potapov’s book.
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Réalisation : Laurent Courau
Scénario : Thierry Ehrmann
Comédienne : Elora Bessey
Artificier : Thierry Loir
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois et Rodolphe Bessey.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Wood frogs exhibit a range of different colors. Here are two female wood frogs that were found at the same pond. One is brown and the other is red. To my eye, both colors seem to be excellent camouflage in the forests where these frogs live.
Are these color polymorphisms genetically based or induced by the environment? I am not aware of any research that has investigated this, but I would be very curious to know!
C'est un lézard de forme élancée, espèce extrêmement polymorphe, avec une variabilité extraordinaire de l'écaillure, une coloration très variable, brun, gris ou même verdâtre. La face ventrale est claire, jaune, bleu ou rougeâtre. La gorge est mouchetée de noir. Le mâle mesure 20 cm, exceptionnellement 25 cm, la femelle 18 cm. On ne peut pas déterminer son sexe tant qu'il n'a pas atteint la maturité. La queue de ce lézard casse facilement (autotomie), lui permettant ainsi d'échapper à des prédateurs. En effet, l'extrémité « perdue » continue à s'agiter ce qui constitue un leurre vis-à-vis de l'attaquant. Une queue de remplacement repousse progressivement mais elle est dépourvue d'écailles, et elle est uniformément gris sombre. Parfois elle peut repousser double. On peut observer ce lézard toute l'année dans le sud de la France.
As borboletas são insectos da ordem Lepidoptera classificados nas super-famílias Hesperioidea e Papilionoidea, que constituem o grupo informal Rhopalocera.
As borboletas têm dois pares de asas membranosas cobertas de escamas e peças bucais adaptadas a sucção. Distinguem-se das traças (mariposas) pelas antenas rectilíneas que terminam numa bola, pelos hábitos de vida diurnos, pela metamorfose que decorre dentro de uma crisálida rígida e pelo abdómen fino e alongado. Quando em repouso, as borboletas dobram as suas asas para cima.
As borboletas são importantes polinizadores de diversas espécies de plantas.
O ciclo de vida das borboletas engloba as seguintes etapas:
1) ovo→ fase pré-larval
2) larva→ chamada também de lagarta ou taturana,
3) pupa→ que se desenvolve dentro da crisálida (ou casulo)
4) imago→ fase adulta
_______________________
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths.
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. The caterpillars of some butterflies eat harmful insects. A few species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
As borboletas são insectos da ordem Lepidoptera classificados nas super-famílias Hesperioidea e Papilionoidea, que constituem o grupo informal Rhopalocera.
As borboletas têm dois pares de asas membranosas cobertas de escamas e peças bucais adaptadas a sucção. Distinguem-se das traças (mariposas) pelas antenas rectilíneas que terminam numa bola, pelos hábitos de vida diurnos, pela metamorfose que decorre dentro de uma crisálida rígida e pelo abdómen fino e alongado. Quando em repouso, as borboletas dobram as suas asas para cima.
As borboletas são importantes polinizadores de diversas espécies de plantas.
O ciclo de vida das borboletas engloba as seguintes etapas:
1) ovo→ fase pré-larval
2) larva→ chamada também de lagarta ou taturana,
3) pupa→ que se desenvolve dentro da crisálida (ou casulo)
4) imago→ fase adulta
_______________________
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths.
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. The caterpillars of some butterflies eat harmful insects. A few species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Polymorph's head was hand cast by me so she is green right the way through! Yay! She didn't turn out too badly I think :) What colour should I make next? :P Her body is an obitsu :)
A butterfly is a mainly day-flying insect of the order Lepidoptera, which includes the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, the butterfly's life cycle consists of four parts: egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths. The earliest known butterfly fossils date to the mid Eocene epoch, between 40–50 million years ago.[1]
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Some species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees; however, some species are agents of pollination of some plants, and caterpillars of a few butterflies (e.g., Harvesters) eat harmful insects. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Pyrite concretions in black shale from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois, USA. (public display, National Rockhound Hall of Fame, Murdo, South Dakota, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5500 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
The sulfide minerals contain one or more sulfide anions (S-2). The sulfides are usually considered together with the arsenide minerals, the sulfarsenide minerals, and the telluride minerals. Many sulfides are economically significant, as they occur commonly in ores. The metals that combine with S-2 are mainly Fe, Cu, Ni, Ag, etc. Most sulfides have a metallic luster, are moderately soft, and are noticeably heavy for their size. These minerals will not form in the presence of free oxygen. Under an oxygen-rich atmosphere, sulfide minerals tend to chemically weather to various oxide and hydroxide minerals.
Pyrite is a common iron sulfide mineral (FeS2). It’s nickname is “fool's gold”. Pyrite has a metallic luster, brassy gold color (in contrast to the deep rich yellow gold color of true gold - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/sets/72157651325153769/), dark gray to black streak, is hard (H=6 to 6.5), has no cleavage, and is moderately heavy for its size. It often forms cubic crystals or pyritohedrons (crystals having pentagonal faces).
Pyrite is common in many hydrothermal veins, shales, coals, various metamorphic rocks, and massive sulfide deposits.
The pyrite specimens shown above are "pyrite suns" - discoidal concretions developed along a bedding plane in black shale (which is probably restored or reconstructed or fabricated for the retail market). Texturally, the concretions have outward-radiating crystals with moderately-developed concentricity. Mineralogically, they are principally composed of pyrite, plus minor marcasite (also FeS2 - iron sulfide; marcasite is a polymorph of pyrite).
Stratigraphy: Anna Shale (= roof shale of the Herrin Coal), upper Carbondale Formation, Desmoinesian Series, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: coal mine near Sparta, Randolph County, southwestern Illinois, USA
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Photo gallery of pyrite:
Mohs 7.
Quartz is a hard, crystalline mineral composed of silica (silicon dioxide). The atoms are linked in a continuous framework of SiO4 silicon–oxygen tetrahedra, with each oxygen being shared between two tetrahedra, giving an overall chemical formula of SiO2. Quartz is the second most abundant mineral in Earth's continental crust, behind feldspar.
Quartz exists in two forms, the normal α-quartz and the high-temperature β-quartz, both of which are chiral. The transformation from α-quartz to β-quartz takes place abruptly at 573 °C (846 K; 1,063 °F). Since the transformation is accompanied by a significant change in volume, it can easily induce microfracturing of ceramics or rocks passing through this temperature threshold.
There are many different varieties of quartz, several of which are classified as gemstones. Since antiquity, varieties of quartz have been the most commonly used minerals in the making of jewelry and hardstone carvings, especially in Eurasia.
Quartz is the mineral defining the value of 7 on the Mohs scale of hardness, a qualitative scratch method for determining the hardness of a material to abrasion.
Etymology
The word "quartz" is derived from the German word "Quarz", which had the same form in the first half of the 14th century in Middle High German and in East Central German] and which came from the Polish dialect term kwardy, which corresponds to the Czech term tvrdý ("hard")
The Ancient Greeks referred to quartz as κρύσταλλος (krustallos) derived from the Ancient Greek κρύος (kruos) meaning "icy cold", because some philosophers (including Theophrastus) apparently believed the mineral to be a form of supercooled ice. Today, the term rock crystal is sometimes used as an alternative name for transparent coarsely crystalline quartz.
Crystal habit and structure
Quartz belongs to the trigonal crystal system at room temperature, and to the hexagonal crystal system above 573 °C (846 K; 1,063 °F). The ideal crystal shape is a six-sided prism terminating with six-sided pyramids at each end. In nature quartz crystals are often twinned (with twin right-handed and left-handed quartz crystals), distorted, or so intergrown with adjacent crystals of quartz or other minerals as to only show part of this shape, or to lack obvious crystal faces altogether and appear massive.[16][17] Well-formed crystals typically form as a druse (a layer of crystals lining a void), of which quartz geodes are particularly fine examples.The crystals are attached at one end to the enclosing rock, and only one termination pyramid is present. However, doubly terminated crystals do occur where they develop freely without attachment, for instance, within gypsum.
Although many of the varietal names historically arose from the color of the mineral, current scientific naming schemes refer primarily to the microstructure of the mineral. Color is a secondary identifier for the cryptocrystalline minerals, although it is a primary identifier for the macrocrystalline varieties.[24]
Major varieties of quartz
TypeColor and descriptionTransparency
Herkimer diamondColorlessTransparent
Rock crystalColorlessTransparent
AmethystPurple to violet colored quartzTransparent
CitrineYellow quartz ranging to reddish-orange or brown (Madera quartz), and occasionally greenish yellowTransparent
AmetrineA mix of amethyst and citrine with hues of purple/violet and yellow or orange/brownTransparent
Rose quartzPink, may display diasterismTransparent
ChalcedonyFibrous, variously translucent, cryptocrystalline quartz occurring in many varieties.
The term is often used for white, cloudy, or lightly colored material intergrown with moganite.
Otherwise more specific names are used.
CarnelianReddish orange chalcedonyTranslucent
AventurineQuartz with tiny aligned inclusions (usually mica) that shimmer with aventurescenceTranslucent to opaque
AgateMulti-colored, curved or concentric banded chalcedony (cf. Onyx)Semi-translucent to translucent
OnyxMulti-colored, straight banded chalcedony or chert (cf. Agate)Semi-translucent to opaque
JasperOpaque cryptocrystalline quartz, typically red to brown but often used for other colorsOpaque
Milky quartzWhite, may display diasterismTranslucent to opaque
Smoky quartzLight to dark gray, sometimes with a brownish hueTranslucent to opaque
Tiger's eyeFibrous gold, red-brown or bluish colored chalcedony, exhibiting chatoyancy.
PrasioliteGreenTransparent
Rutilated quartzContains acicular (needle-like) inclusions of rutile
Dumortierite quartzContains large amounts of blue dumortierite crystalsTranslucent
Varieties (according to color)[edit]
Pure quartz, traditionally called rock crystal or clear quartz, is colorless and transparent or translucent, and has often been used for hardstone carvings, such as the Lothair Crystal. Common colored varieties include citrine, rose quartz, amethyst, smoky quartz, milky quartz, and others. These color differentiations arise from the presence of impurities which change the molecular orbitals, causing some electronic transitions to take place in the visible spectrum causing colors.
The most important distinction between types of quartz is that of macrocrystalline (individual crystals visible to the unaided eye) and the microcrystalline or cryptocrystalline varieties (aggregates of crystals visible only under high magnification). The cryptocrystalline varieties are either translucent or mostly opaque, while the transparent varieties tend to be macrocrystalline. Chalcedony is a cryptocrystalline form of silica consisting of fine intergrowths of both quartz, and its monoclinic polymorph moganite] Other opaque gemstone varieties of quartz, or mixed rocks including quartz, often including contrasting bands or patterns of color, are agate, carnelian or sard, onyx, heliotrope, and jasper
Amethyst
Clear (regular) quartz
Amethyst
Blue quartz
Dumortierite quartz
Citrine quartz (natural)
Citrine quartz (heat-altered amethyst)
Milky quartz
Rose quartz
Smoky quartz
Prasiolite
Amethyst is a form of quartz that ranges from a bright vivid violet to a dark or dull lavender shade. The world's largest deposits of amethysts can be found in Brazil, Mexico, Uruguay, Russia, France, Namibia, and Morocco. Sometimes amethyst and citrine are found growing in the same crystal. It is then referred to as ametrine. Amethyst derives its color from traces of iron in its structure.[27]
Blue quartz
Blue quartz contains inclusions of fibrous magnesio-riebeckite or crocidolite.
Dumortierite quartz]
Inclusions of the mineral dumortierite within quartz pieces often result in silky-appearing splotches with a blue hue. Shades of purple or grey sometimes also are present. "Dumortierite quartz" (sometimes called "blue quartz") will sometimes feature contrasting light and dark color zones across the material.[29][30] "Blue quartz" is a minor gemstone.[29][31]
Citrine
Citrine is a variety of quartz whose color ranges from pale yellow to brown due to a submicroscopic distribution of colloidal ferric hydroxide impurities.[32] Natural citrines are rare; most commercial citrines are heat-treated amethysts or smoky quartzes. However, a heat-treated amethyst will have small lines in the crystal, as opposed to a natural citrine's cloudy or smoky appearance. It is nearly impossible to differentiate between cut citrine and yellow topaz visually, but they differ in hardness. Brazil is the leading producer of citrine, with much of its production coming from the state of Rio Grande do Sul. The name is derived from the Latin word citrina which means "yellow" and is also the origin of the word "citron". Sometimes citrine and amethyst can be found together in the same crystal, which is then referred to as ametrine.[33] Citrine has been referred to as the "merchant's stone" or "money stone", due to a superstition that it would bring prosperity.[34]
Citrine was first appreciated as a golden-yellow gemstone in Greece between 300 and 150 BC, during the Hellenistic Age. Yellow quartz was used prior to that to decorate jewelry and tools but it was not highly sought after.
Milky quartz
Milk quartz or milky quartz is the most common variety of crystalline quartz. The white color is caused by minute fluid inclusions of gas, liquid, or both, trapped during crystal formation, making it of little value for optical and quality gemstone applications.
Rose quartz
Rose quartz is a type of quartz that exhibits a pale pink to rose red hue. The color is usually considered as due to trace amounts of titanium, iron, or manganese, in the material. Some rose quartz contains microscopic rutile needles that produce asterism in transmitted light. Recent X-ray diffraction studies suggest that the color is due to thin microscopic fibers of possibly dumortierite within the quartz.
Additionally, there is a rare type of pink quartz (also frequently called crystalline rose quartz) with color that is thought to be caused by trace amounts of phosphate or aluminium. The color in crystals is apparently photosensitive and subject to fading. The first crystals were found in a pegmatite found near Rumford, Maine, US and in Minas Gerais, Brazil.[39] The crystals found are more transparent and euhedral, due to the impurities of phosphate and aluminium that formed crystalline rose quartz, unlike the iron and microscopic dumortierite fibers that formed rose quartz.
Smoky quartz
Smoky quartz is a gray, translucent version of quartz. It ranges in clarity from almost complete transparency to a brownish-gray crystal that is almost opaque. Some can also be black. The translucency results from natural irradiation acting on minute traces of aluminum in the crystal structure.[41]
Prasiolite
Not to be confused with Praseolite.
Prasiolite, also known as vermarine, is a variety of quartz that is green in color. Since 1950, almost all natural prasiolite has come from a small Brazilian mine, but it is also seen in Lower Silesia in Poland. Naturally occurring prasiolite is also found in the Thunder Bay area of Canada. It is a rare mineral in nature; most green quartz is heat-treated amethyst]
Synthetic and artificial treatments
A synthetic quartz crystal grown by the hydrothermal method, about 19 cm long and weighing about 127 grams
Not all varieties of quartz are naturally occurring. Some clear quartz crystals can be treated using heat or gamma-irradiation to induce color where it would not otherwise have occurred naturally. Susceptibility to such treatments depends on the location from which the quartz was mined.
Prasiolite, an olive colored material, is produced by heat treatment;[44] natural prasiolite has also been observed in Lower Silesia in Poland] Although citrine occurs naturally, the majority is the result of heat-treating amethyst or smoky quartz. Carnelian has been heat-treated to deepen its color since prehistoric times.
Because natural quartz is often twinned, synthetic quartz is produced for use in industry. Large, flawless, single crystals are synthesized in an autoclave via the hydrothermal process.
Like other crystals, quartz may be coated with metal vapors to give it an attractive sheen
Occurrence
Granite rock in the cliff of Gros la Tête on Aride Island, Seychelles. The thin (1–3 cm wide) brighter layers are quartz veins, formed during the late stages of crystallization of granitic magmas. They are sometimes called "hydrothermal veins".
Quartz is a defining constituent of granite and other felsic igneous rocks. It is very common in sedimentary rocks such as sandstone and shale. It is a common constituent of schist, gneiss, quartzite and other metamorphic rocks.[16] Quartz has the lowest potential for weathering in the Goldich dissolution series and consequently it is very common as a residual mineral in stream sediments and residual soils. Generally a high presence of quartz suggests a "mature" rock, since it indicates the rock has been heavily reworked and quartz was the primary mineral that endured heavy weathering
While the majority of quartz crystallizes from molten magma, quartz also chemically precipitates from hot hydrothermal veins as gangue, sometimes with ore minerals like gold, silver and copper. Large crystals of quartz are found in magmatic pegmatites. Well-formed crystals may reach several meters in length and weigh hundreds of kilograms
Elemental impurity incorporation strongly influences the ability to process and utilize quartz. Naturally occurring quartz crystals of extremely high purity, necessary for the crucibles and other equipment used for growing silicon wafers in the semiconductor industry, are expensive and rare. These high-purity quartz are defined containing less than 50 ppm of impurity elements. A major mining location for high purity quartz is the Spruce Pine Gem Mine in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, United States. Quartz may also be found in Caldoveiro Peak, in Asturias, Spain.
The largest documented single crystal of quartz was found near Itapore, Goiaz, Brazil; it measured approximately 6.1 m × 1.5 m × 1.5 m and weighed 39,916 kilograms.
Mining
Quartz is extracted from open pit mines. Miners occasionally use explosives to expose deep pockets of quartz. More frequently, bulldozers and backhoes are used to remove soil and clay and expose quartz veins, which are then worked using hand tools. Care must be taken to avoid sudden temperature changes that may damage the crystals.
Almost all the industrial demand for quartz crystal (used primarily in electronics) is met with synthetic quartz produced by the hydrothermal process. However, synthetic crystals are less prized for use as gemstones. The popularity of crystal healing has increased the demand for natural quartz crystals, which are now often mined in developing countries using primitive mining methods, sometimes involving child labor.[60]
Related silica minerals
Tridymite and cristobalite are high-temperature polymorphs of SiO2 that occur in high-silica volcanic rocks. Coesite is a denser polymorph of SiO2 found in some meteorite impact sites and in metamorphic rocks formed at pressures greater than those typical of the Earth's crust. Stishovite is a yet denser and higher-pressure polymorph of SiO2 found in some meteorite impact sites. Lechatelierite is an amorphous silica glass SiO2 which is formed by lightning strikes in quartz sand]
Safety
As quartz is a form of silica, it is a possible cause for concern in various workplaces. Cutting, grinding, chipping, sanding, drilling, and polishing natural and manufactured stone products can release hazardous levels of very small, crystalline silica dust particles into the air that workers breathe.Crystalline silica of respirable size is a recognized human carcinogen and may lead to other diseases of the lungs such as silicosis and pulmonary fibrosis.
From Wikipedia
Chairlift @ Lollapalooza 2016, Grant Park, Chicago, IL, on Saturday, July 30, 2016.
Lollapalooza 2016 Setlist:
Look Up
Polymorphing
Amanaemonesia
I Belong in Your Arms
Show U Off
Romeo
Crying In Public
Moth to the Flame
Ch-Ching
Get Real
‘Ōhi‘a forests on the windward slopes of Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa on Hawai'i Island suffered landscape-scale dieback in the 1950s through the 1970s that was different from Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death (Ceratocystis wilt of ‘ōhi‘a). The dead trees in this photo are signs of mortality that occurred then as evidenced by only the trunks remaining. All branches have rotted away. Several pathogens were found during that time, notably Phytophthora cinnamomi and Armillaria mellea. Cohort senescence may have led to the conditions that allowed these pathogens to cause disease. However, Ceratocystis was never detected during that time and the symptoms, slow decline and not rapid browning of the canopy, were different that what is observed today with Rapid ‘Ōhi‘a Death. Windward Mauna Kea, Hawaii Island, Hawaii.
Opening night of the show "Polymorph" by Katya Usvitsky, at The One Well, Greenpoint, Brooklyn, NYC. See press coverage here. The work will be on display/for sale through November 4th.
As borboletas são insectos da ordem Lepidoptera classificados nas super-famílias Hesperioidea e Papilionoidea, que constituem o grupo informal Rhopalocera.
As borboletas têm dois pares de asas membranosas cobertas de escamas e peças bucais adaptadas a sucção. Distinguem-se das traças (mariposas) pelas antenas rectilíneas que terminam numa bola, pelos hábitos de vida diurnos, pela metamorfose que decorre dentro de uma crisálida rígida e pelo abdómen fino e alongado. Quando em repouso, as borboletas dobram as suas asas para cima.
As borboletas são importantes polinizadores de diversas espécies de plantas.
O ciclo de vida das borboletas engloba as seguintes etapas:
1) ovo→ fase pré-larval
2) larva→ chamada também de lagarta ou taturana,
3) pupa→ que se desenvolve dentro da crisálida (ou casulo)
4) imago→ fase adulta
_______________________
A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths.
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. The caterpillars of some butterflies eat harmful insects. A few species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Gujba
Carbonaceous chondrites CBa
Nigeria
Fall: 1984
TKW: 100 kg / OBJ: 2,1 g
Gujba is a bencubbinite (carbonaceous chondrite). At 6:30 in the evening, a bright fireball approaching from the west was seen and heard by local residents. The cone-shaped mass that landed in a corn field near the village of Bogga Dingare in Yobe, Nigeria, was estimated to have weighed ~100 kg, but most of the mass was broken up into small pieces and dispersed.
To date, Gujba is the only witnessed bencubbinite fall.
Bencubbinites are unusual stony-iron meteorites composed of roughly equal amounts of Fe, Ni metal and ferromagnesian silicates. Gujba is classified as a bencubbinite (CBa); meteorites in the CBa group are primitive, metal-rich chondrites. The bencubbinites represent some of the most fascinating meteorites, recording evidence of violent planetary-sized impacts, and containing some of the most primitive solar system materials. Their primitive characteristics make the CBa chondrites valuable recorders of early nebular processes.
Gujba is a primitive, polymict, chondritic breccia, the first fall of the bencubbinite group. It contains 0.4–8 mm-diameter, rounded, metallic globules (~41 vol%) and 0.8–15 mm-diameter silicate globules (~20 vol%), cemented together by a dark-colored, silicate-rich, impact-melt matrix composed of mm-sized fragments of both silicate and metal globules (~39 vol%).
Metal globules can contain up to ~1 vol% troilite, which is positively correlated with the abundance of volatile siderophile elements. Fractionation of siderophile elements in Gujba was controlled by volatility rather than by oxidation/sulfidation processes or magmatic crystallization (Krot et al., 2002). Siderophile element correlations are inconsistent with a nebular condensation model. It is generally assumed that a protoplanetary impact gave rise to a vapor cloud with high enough partial pressures to generate a metal-enriched gas. The metal globules then condensed as liquids from this gas and were sorted by size and density, thereby establishing the high metal/silicate ratio of the group. The CB group reflects a sequence of increasingly lighter Fe isotopes from Gujba through HaH 237 to Isheyevo (Zipfel and Weyer, 2006). This wide Fe isotopic range provides further evidence of a formation within an impact vapor plume rather than in a nebula setting. See the HaH 237 page for a more detailed scenario of the CB group formation process ascertained by Fedkin et al. (2015) through kinetic condensation modeling.
In a nm-scale study of Gujba, a two-phase (kamacite and taenite) metal particle was observed comprising ~30 individual grains that demonstrate a reheating episode occurred at temperatures of ~675°C (Goldstein et al, 2011). It is estimated that a subsequent cooling to ~550°C occurred within a time period of a month. A similar metal particle having a similar thermal history was found in the CBb bencubbinite HaH 237. Through 3-D mapping of Gujba at a µm scale, at least five types of metal particles of differing Ni content (~5 to ~8.2 wt%) and sulfide content were identified (Berlin et al., 2013). These metal particles are consistent with an origin in an impact plume, followed by accretion to a secondary parent body, where they experienced impact-associated secondary heating. Based on their examination of sulfide phases embedded in metal grains within the Gujba and Weatherford CBa meteorites, and through comparisons of Fe–S–Cr phase diagrams, Srinivasan et al. (2013) concluded that both the reheating of these sulfide phases and the injection of silicate melt into metal and silicate host components were likely concurrent with this impact.
Hydrocode modeling employing a homogeneous nucleation theory demonstrates that the very high densities and temperatures that would lead to the formation of mm- to cm-sized metal globules are consistent with an impact vapor plume origin rather than a nebular origin (Anic et al., 2005). A high velocity collision is most likely to produce those conditions conducive to producing the particle size that exists in Gujba. An alternative model has been described whereby the metal was melted to form globules, while S and volatile siderophiles were subsequently evaporated out. The metal globules have varying Ni contents and exhibit quench textures (Rubin et al., 2003), and since no diffusion has occurred among globules in contact with each other, it can be inferred that they were accreted at cold temperatures after being isolated from the hot condensation region.
The silicate globules in Gujba exhibit skeletal olivine textures, contain no FeNi-metal or troilite, and have low concentrations of volatile elements, features indicative of quenching from a molten state; i.e., condensation from a hot, impact-generated vapor plume (Krot et al., 2004). CAIs have been found in some bencubbinites including HaH 237, QUE 94411, and Gujba, as well as the transitional member Isheyevo; however, since their O-isotopic values plot along the CCAM line instead of the CR trend line, they represent solar nebula material rather than condensates from the impact vapor plume (Fedkin et al., 2015).
Raman spectra have identified the first carbonaceous chondrite occurrence of several high pressure phases within barred olivine fragments and the matrix components of Gujba; these include majorite garnet, majorite-pyrope solid solution, and wadsleyite, along with minor grossular-pyrope solid solution and coesite (Weisberg and Kimura, 2010). These high pressure phases formed either from solid-state transformation of pyroxene or crystallization from an impact melt during a heterogeneous, planetesimal wide impact shock event reaching minimum pressures of ~19 GPa and temperatures of ~2000°C. The investigators argue that these high pressure phases are inconsistent with the subsequent formation of chondrules within an impact plume since at such high temperatures these phases would be rapidly back-transformed to their low temperature polymorphs. Moreover, the measured cooling rates of chondrules (ave. 100K/hr) are much too slow than that at which shock veins with high pressure polymorphs would survive (~1000K/hr). Therefore, they determined that the barred chondrules and metal in CB chondrites were formed prior to the impact event that produced the high pressure polymorphs.
The bencubbinites constitute a small group having similar oxygen and nitrogen isotopic compositions as well as similar petrologic characteristics. They have highly reduced silicates, bulk metal abundances of 60–70 vol%, Cr-bearing troilite, metal with near solar Ni/Co ratios, and similar elemental abundances. Among chondrite groups, the bencubbinites show a significant enrichment of 15N, with Gujba having an intermediate content within the group. The bencubbinites have been divided into two petrologic subgroups, CBa and CBb, representing those with cm-sized metal and silicate globules, and those with mm-sized globules, respectively. Further information on the formation of bencubbinites can be found on the Bencubbin, Isheyevo, and NWA 1814 pages.
Based on the U–Pb isotopic chronometer using the Shallowater standard (at that time corrected to 4.5613 [±0.0008] b.y. by Connelly et al., 2012), the chondrules in Gujba (CBa) and HaH 237 (CBb) were calculated to have formed simultaneously 4.56168 (±0.00051) b.y. ago; this age reflects a more recent formation event in comparison to other chondrite groups. Employing the corrected I–Xe data from Gilmour et al. (2009) for Gujba and that from Pravdivtseva et al. (2014) for HaH 237, respective closure ages of 4.5632 (±0.0013) b.y. and 4.56101 (±0.00087) b.y. were obtained. The age difference between these CBa and CBb chondrules was attributed to possible heterogeneity of the I-isotopic compositions in the two meteorites' respective formation regions within the impact vapor-melt plume (Bollard et al., 2015). Furthermore, other chronometers have provided ages consistent with those cited above, with a Hf–W age anchored to CAIs of 4.5622 (±0.0024) b.y., and a Mn–Cr age anchored to D'Orbigny of 4.5633 (±0.001) b.y. (Bollard et al., 2015). In their high-precision study of four Gujba chondrules, Bollard et al. (2015) derived a weighted average age of 4.56249 (±0.00021) b.y.; this equates to 4.8 (±0.3) m.y. after CAIs, or 1.2 (±0.6) m.y. after the formation of the youngest known nebular chondrule. Subsequent to this, high precision isotopic studies involving HaH 237 were conducted by Pravdivtseva et al. (2015, 2016), which led them to suggest a refinement in the absolute I–Xe age for the Shallowater standard of 4.5624 (±0.0002) b.y. Based on this new refinement, the age of HaH 237 relative to Shallowater was ascertained to be 4.5621 (±0.0003) m.y., which is consistent with the U-corrected Pb–Pb age determined for Gujba chondrules by Bollard et al. (2015) above, as well as that determined for HaH 237 silicates by Krot et al. (2005) of 4.5619 (±0.0009) b.y. All of these ages attest to a relatively late formation of the CB-group chondrites from a vapor-melt plume following a catastrophic impact between two planetary embryos.
The CRE age of Gujba (26 ±7 m.y.) is identical within uncertainties to that of Bencubbin (27.3 m.y.), and both have similar noble gas concentrations (also similar in some respects to the enstatite chondrites; Nakashima and Nagao, 2009), which attests to a common ejection event on their parent body. However, while the metal and silicate globules in Gujba are mostly complete, undistorted spheres, those in Bencubbin and Weatherford are fragmented and distorted. Gujba and other CB chondrites exhibit multiple characteristics that are consistent with a severe shock subsequent to its formation, including melting, brecciation, and deformation. The presence of certain high-pressure phases in Gujba—majorite and wadsleyite, produced by the conversion of low-Ca pyroxene and olivine, respectively—attests to the occurrence of a significant shock event of ~19 GPa at 2000°C (Weisberg and Kimura, 2004) consistent with a shock stage of S2. As in Bencubbin, shock-associated structures identified in Gujba include stishovite, amorphous to poorly graphitized carbon, ordered graphite, rounded to euhedral diamonds, nanodiamond clumps, and rare bucky-diamonds, along with carbonaceous nanoglobules (Garvie et al., 2011).
The CB, CH, and CR chondrites constitute the CR clan, comprising groups which likely formed in the same isotopic reservoir under similar conditions in the solar nebula; current evidence argues for an origin of the metal-rich carbonaceous chondrites in a common collision between planetary embryos (Krot et al., 2009). The Gujba specimen pictured above is an 18.1 g polished slice sectioned from a 282 g fragment that was originally purchased in 2000 in Gidan Wire, Nigeria. See also a most spectacular 81.05 g full slice of this special bencubbinite, courtesy of the Stephan Kambach collection, which exhibits the finest details of both metallic and silicate chondrules. A beautiful high-resolution exterior view of Gujba, courtesy of Paul Swartz (Meteorite Picture of the Day, 1 Oct 2014), can be seen here. The photo below shows an awesome 2,365 g end piece, part of the Jay Piatek Collection, that was sectioned from a 3,440 g complete Gujba mass.
Vug with aragonite & calcite crystals in arenaceous, ferruginous, fossiliferous limestone from the Mississippian of Ohio, USA (photograph taken & provided by James Cheshire).
This unusual sedimentary rock has small vugs containing clear to whitish aragonite crystals (CaCO3 - calcium carbonate) and whitish, blocky calcite crystals (also CaCO3). Aragonite is a less common polymorph of calcite. Aragonite is rarely found in Ohio. The host rock is an arenaceous, ferruginous, fossiiferous limestone with dolomitized crinoid stem columnals.
Stratigraphy: Vinton Member (horizon occurs at the boundary between massive, thick-bedded Vinton below & thin-bedded, flaggy Vinton above), upper Logan Formation, Osagean Stage, upper Lower Mississippian
Locality: Mt. Calvary Cemetery Outcrop - roadcut along eastern side of Jacksontown Road (Rt. 13), immediately adjacent to (east of) Mt. Calvary Catholic Cemetery, ~0.15 miles south of intersection with Hopewell Drive, Heath, south-central Licking County, east-central Ohio, USA (40° 02’ 00.8” North, 82° 24” 10.5” West)
As borboletas são insectos da ordem Lepidoptera classificados nas super-famílias Hesperioidea e Papilionoidea, que constituem o grupo informal Rhopalocera.
As borboletas têm dois pares de asas membranosas cobertas de escamas e peças bucais adaptadas a sucção. Distinguem-se das traças (mariposas) pelas antenas rectilíneas que terminam numa bola, pelos hábitos de vida diurnos, pela metamorfose que decorre dentro de uma crisálida rígida e pelo abdómen fino e alongado. Quando em repouso, as borboletas dobram as suas asas para cima.
As borboletas são importantes polinizadores de diversas espécies de plantas.
O ciclo de vida das borboletas engloba as seguintes etapas:
1) ovo→ fase pré-larval
2) larva→ chamada também de lagarta ou taturana,
3) pupa→ que se desenvolve dentro da crisálida (ou casulo)
4) imago→ fase adulta
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A butterfly is any of several groups of mainly day-flying insects of the order Lepidoptera, the butterflies and moths. Like other holometabolous insects, butterflies' life cycle consists of four parts, egg, larva, pupa and adult. Most species are diurnal. Butterflies have large, often brightly coloured wings, and conspicuous, fluttering flight. Butterflies comprise the true butterflies (superfamily Papilionoidea), the skippers (superfamily Hesperioidea) and the moth-butterflies (superfamily Hedyloidea). All the many other families within the Lepidoptera are referred to as moths.
Butterflies exhibit polymorphism, mimicry and aposematism. Some, like the Monarch, will migrate over long distances. Some butterflies have evolved symbiotic and parasitic relationships with social insects such as ants. Butterflies are important economically as agents of pollination. The caterpillars of some butterflies eat harmful insects. A few species are pests because in their larval stages they can damage domestic crops or trees. Culturally, butterflies are a popular motif in the visual and literary arts.
Obsidian in the Pleistocene of Wyoming, USA.
Obsidian is a glassy-textured, extrusive igneous rock. Glassy-textured rocks have no crystals at all. They form by very rapid cooling of lava or by cooling of high-viscosity lava. Most obsidians form by the latter. Obsidian can be felsic, intermediate, mafic, or alkaline in chemistry. Most are felsic to intermediate.
A famous locality in North America is Obsidian Cliff at Yellowstone, Wyoming. It is a Pleistocene-aged lava flow with the chemistry of rhyolite (= a light-colored, felsic, aphanitic, extrusive igneous rock). The cliff itself shows columnar jointing, which formed by cooling and contraction. The rocks principally range from black-colored, aphyric rhyolitic obsidian to partially devitrified rhyolitic obsidian. Lithophysae are sometimes present. Extremely small, microscopic crystals are present - they can be seen in thin sections. Some samples are reported to have small olivine phenocrysts. Small clusters of crystals, composed of plagioclase feldspar, pyroxene, and olivine, are sometimes present.
Many of the whitish-colored spots and bands running through most Obsidian Cliff rock samples are areas of devitrification. Glass is unstable on geologic times scales and it slowly crystallizes. The light-colored spots and bands are now non-glassy. Spotted, partially devitrified obsidian is known by the rockhound term "snowflake obsidian" (see: www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/16561606417). The spots are composed of silica (SiO2), but are not quartz. Rather, they are composed of a polymorph of quartz - cristobalite.
Why does Obsidian Cliff here not look black and glassy? The rocks are weathered, partially devitrified, and considerably lichen-covered. Classic, black, glassy obsidian can be seen in some of the boulders along the road.
Stratigraphy: Roaring Mountain Member, Plateau Rhyolite, Upper Pleistocene, ~59 ka
Locality: Obsidian Cliff, eastern edge of Obsidian Creek Valley, Yellowstone National Park, northwestern Wyoming, USA
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Age & some lithologic info. from:
Wooton (2010) - Age and Petrogenesis of the Roaring Mountain Rhyolites, Yellowstone Volcanic Field, Wyoming. M.S. thesis. University of Nevada at Las Vegas. 296 pp.
The Term Morph Is Inappropriate
As if we didn’t know, we asked a solitary roadside birder, “Looking for something?”
“The Gyrfalcon.”
“Have you seen it?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t anybody else looking?”
“They’re all at Grace Lake, waiting and hoping.”
Well, Maggie and I spent a little time in the parking lot overlooking Grace Lake from the southwest side. There were gulls: Herrings, Ring-bills and Lesser Black-backs, as well as some Canadas, Mallards and Common Mergs, but no falcon, just distant birders standing with their scopes on the east side of the lake.
A falcon of the tundra, one that perches on the ground or on low human-made objects, needs extensive unobstructed views, a place with wide open spaces, low-cut grass. So we went to the airport.
It was about 3:20 PM. We couldn’t ask for better timing. On the airport’s south side, we immediately drove up to a juvenile Gyrfalcon, a brown bird, perched on the snow not more than 50-60 feet from the road. Though the direction of light was almost just right, photography was not ideal. The falcon was on the other side of the airport’s chain-linked fence. Nevertheless, my camera knew what it had to do.
Seemingly indifferent to us, the Gyr was leaning over, using its beak to clean its toes, followed by facial combing with its talons. Afterwards it gazed in all directions as though seeking something, perhaps out of hunger. Then lifting its wings, it took to the air, keeping just a few feet above the ground and was quickly lost in the airport’s distant expanse of snow shadow and glare--my fourth Gyr in southeast Michigan, my ninth in the State as of today, 16 November 2019.
Alan
Tom J. Cade (1928-2019, a world renowned conservationist and co-founder of the Peregrine Fund, had this to say: “In the old literature naturalists wrote about white, grey and black ‘color phases’ of the gyrfalcon and even different species of gyrs. In fact, the different plumage types grade imperceptibly into one another, with every kind of intermediate condition represented in different individuals. . . . The Ungava region of northern Quebec is especially interesting as the whitest and blackest varieties breed together in the same area along with every kind of grey intermediate. (p. 76, The Falcons of the World, 1980).”
Eugene Potapov, assistant professor, Bryn Athyn College, is a raptor specialist and the notable author of The Gyrfalcon 2005, a definitive work: “Cade et al quite rightly state that . . . the Gyrfalcon has complete gradation rendering the term ‘morph’ inappropriate (p. 23).”
“Gyrfalcons also have shades of brown and gray in their feathers, and worn plumage may be tan-brown; Gyrs may or may not have a barred tail and moustachial stripes (p. 47).
“. . . some authors classify the birds on the basis of their background color (Cade et al. 1998). Gray form can then be a bird with gray color in the background or bird with a white background but with a lot of dark gray or brown streaks, spots or bars. The degree of the coverage of these spots can then divide the white and gray morphs. As a consequence, it is often difficult to classify Gyrs with excessive numbers or spots and a true white background ( p. 47)
“. . . Palmer (1988) considered that the division of the Gyrfalcons ‘into two or three color morphs . . . is misleading, and ‘any attempt to categorize Gyrs is subjective’, ‘because of variations from nearly (entirely?) white to almost or entirely black. Flann (2003) suggested that the Gyrfalcon has ‘continuous polymorphism’ and so does not have morphs (p.47).
“Another process is the coloration of the background, which may perhaps be independent of, but is parallel with, the variation in coloration and size of dark spots. So, . . . we have two axes of variation in coloration. One is the color as such, including both the color of the background and the color of dark spots. The second axis is the size and pattern of the dark/light spots. Interestingly, there have been no attempts to analyze this two-dimensional variation using objective criteria. In the following section we make an attempt to measure Gyrfalcon colors using a new approach (p. 47).”
To those who wish to pursue this new approach to the color patterns of the Gyrfalcon, I suggest read Potapov’s book.
Les Sources Occultes 008/999
Un film de Laurent Courau, d'après un scénario de Thierry Ehrmann.
Un hommage à Norman Spinrad
Comédienne : Élora Bessey
Effets pyrotechniques : Thierry Loir
Images, textes et montage : Laurent Courau
Photographe de plateau : Kurt Ehrmann
Bande-son originale : Cheerleader 69
Remerciements à Jolan Bessey, Carine Dubois, Rodolphe Bessey et Vincent Kindred Véhixe.
© Les Amis de l'Esprit de la Salamandre 1999
Entre effroi et merveilles, une zone mouvante aux portes du futur et des enfers...
Les Sources Occultes vous entraînent au coeur d'un univers polymorphe dont les clés et les motifs se révéleront au fur et à mesure des épisodes de cette série de fictions. En attendant un final apocalyptique, au sens premier du terme, qui révélera la structure générale sous la forme d'un long-métrage...
Les Sources Occultes offrent aussi une nouvelle porte d'entrée dans le labyrinthe multidimensionnel de la Demeure du Chaos à celles et ceux qui postulent à notre casting, une occasion unique de pénétrer les arcanes de l'esprit de la Salamandre.
Secrets revealed of the Abode of Chaos (112 pages, adult only) >>>
Species : Panthera onca - Spotted Jaguar Cub and Black Jaguar Cub from the same litter (~ 3 months) with their Black Jaguar Mother
The jaguar, which is the only Panthera species from Americas, gets frenquently mixed up with the leopard, but he is usually larger and sturdier build. Moreover, its behavioral and habitat characteristics are closer to those of the tiger : the jaguar habitat is commonly composed by dense rainforest however this spotted cat can also be found in forested and open terrains. Just like the tiger, the jaguar enjoys water.
Black color morph is regularly seen in the Panthera onca species : melanistic jaguars are sometimes called black panthers, but like all forms of polymorphism, they do not form a separate species (exactly like spotted and melanistic leopards). Even if they look entirely black, the spots are still visible if you watch carefully. About the gene, the melanism allele is dominant. Selection is possible by breeding in captivity.
Size : 120-180 cm lengh (head and body), females are generally smaller than males (10-20%).
Weight : 40-100 kg (150 kg for the biggest males).
Because its numbers are declining, the Jaguar is listed as Near Threatened in the UINC Red List.
Location : ZooParc de Beauval, Loir-et-Cher, France
Camera : Canon EOS 40D
Lens : Canon EF 70-300mm F4-5,6 IS USM
Camera Settings : 1/50 - F5,0 - ISO 800
Post-Processing : Photoshop CS3
You may not use this image in any way without my written permission.
Please, respect that !
Faceted diamonds - "Cumulus" brooch with 8 carat diamond at top. (public display, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, Illinois, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5200 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
Elements are fundamental substances of matter - matter that is composed of the same types of atoms. At present, 118 elements are known (four of them are still unnamed). Of these, 98 occur naturally on Earth (hydrogen to californium). Most of these occur in rocks & minerals, although some occur in very small, trace amounts. Only some elements occur in their native elemental state as minerals.
To find a native element in nature, it must be relatively non-reactive and there must be some concentration process. Metallic, semimetallic (metalloid), and nonmetallic elements are known in their native state.
The element carbon occurs principally in its native state as graphite (C) and diamond (C). Graphite is the common & far less valuable polymorph of carbon. A scarce polymorph of carbon is diamond. The physical properties of diamond and graphite couldn’t be more different, considering they have the same chemistry. Diamond has a nonmetallic, adamantine luster, typically occurs in cubic or octahedral (double-pyramid) crystals, or subspherical to irregularly-shaped masses, and is extremely hard (H≡10). Diamonds can be almost any color, but are typically clearish, grayish, or yellowish. Many diamonds are noticeably fluorescent under black light (ultraviolet light), but the color and intensity of fluorescence varies. Some diamonds are phosphorescent - under certain conditions, they glow for a short interval on their own.
Very rarely, diamond is a rock-forming mineral (see diamondite - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/14618393527).
Pyrite concretion in shale from the Pennsylvanian of Illinois, USA. (public display, Carnegie Museum of Natural History, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA)
A mineral is a naturally-occurring, solid, inorganic, crystalline substance having a fairly definite chemical composition and having fairly definite physical properties. At its simplest, a mineral is a naturally-occurring solid chemical. Currently, there are over 5500 named and described minerals - about 200 of them are common and about 20 of them are very common. Mineral classification is based on anion chemistry. Major categories of minerals are: elements, sulfides, oxides, halides, carbonates, sulfates, phosphates, and silicates.
The sulfide minerals contain one or more sulfide anions (S-2). The sulfides are usually considered together with the arsenide minerals, the sulfarsenide minerals, and the telluride minerals. Many sulfides are economically significant, as they occur commonly in ores. The metals that combine with S-2 are mainly Fe, Cu, Ni, Ag, etc. Most sulfides have a metallic luster, are moderately soft, and are noticeably heavy for their size. These minerals will not form in the presence of free oxygen. Under an oxygen-rich atmosphere, sulfide minerals tend to chemically weather to various oxide and hydroxide minerals.
Pyrite is a common iron sulfide mineral (FeS2). It’s nickname is “fool's gold”. Pyrite has a metallic luster, brassy gold color (in contrast to the deep rich yellow gold color of true gold - www.flickr.com/photos/jsjgeology/sets/72157651325153769/), dark gray to black streak, is hard (H=6 to 6.5), has no cleavage, and is moderately heavy for its size. It often forms cubic crystals or pyritohedrons (crystals having pentagonal faces).
Pyrite is common in many hydrothermal veins, shales, coals, various metamorphic rocks, and massive sulfide deposits.
The pyrite specimen shown above is a "pyrite sun" - a discoidal concretion developed along a bedding plane in black shale. Texturally, the concretion has outward-radiating crystals with moderately-developed concentricity. Mineralogically, pyrite suns are principally composed of pyrite, plus minor marcasite (also FeS2 - iron sulfide; marcasite is a polymorph of pyrite).
Stratigraphy: Anna Shale (= roof shale of the Herrin Coal), upper Carbondale Formation, Desmoinesian Series, upper Middle Pennsylvanian
Locality: coal mine near Sparta, Randolph County, southwestern Illinois, USA
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Photo gallery of pyrite: