2020 ROVER. S.M. Clegg 1 , R.C. Wiens 1 , S. Maurice 2 , O. Gasnault 2 , S.K. Sharma 3 , A.K. Misra 3 , R. Newell 1 , O. Forni 2 , J. Lasue 2 , R.B. Anderson 4 , K.L.Nowak-Lovato 1 , T. Fouchet, 5 S. M. Angel 6 , F. Rull 7 , J.R Johnson 8 and the SuperCam Science Team 1 Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, NM, [email protected], 2 Institut de Recherches en Astrophysique et Planétologie, To...

Mineralogical and chemical analyses of three textural varieties of pyrophyllite samples collected from Baliadihi mine of Keonjhar district, Orissa, India are investigated. Mineralogically they consist of quartz, pyrophyllite, altered feldspar as major minerals and muscovite, chlorite, tourmaline, hematite etc. as minor minerals. The samples exhibit compositional variation of SiO2 65.56 71.66%, ...

Twenty nine samples of silica sinter, ranging in age from modern to Miocene, record temporal changes in both mineralogy and texture. When ®rst deposited, sinters consist largely of noncrystalline spheres (<1±8 lm diameter) of opal-A exhibiting varying degrees of closepacking. Particle densities range from 1.5 to 2.1 g cm, total water 4±10 wt%, and porosities 35±60%. Changes over 10,000 years fo...

Introduction: Many processing methods exist to extract mineralogical information from Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM) images [1, 2, 3], however, such methods are not designed with large-scale, exploratory surveys in mind. Typically, for manual analyses mineral information must be provided a priori (that is, analysts must know in advance the mineral type they are loo...

In this review, atmospheric particulates as composite airborne earth materials often containing both natural and anthropogenic components were examined in the context of medical geology. Despite a vast number of both experimental and epidemiological studies confirming the direct and indirect links between atmospheric particulates and human health, the exact nature of mechanisms affecting the pa...

During carbon steel manufacture, slag residues are generated to remove material impurities from liquid metal and thus control the quality of carbon steel. As the utilization of secondary metallurgical slags is not as efficient as those of primary slags, a comprehensive characterization of steel ladle slag was performed. Pseudo-total concentrations of a wide range of elements were determined dur...

The mineralogy and evolution of Al and Mg in U mill tailings are poorly understood. Elemental analyses (ICP-MS) of both solid and aqueous phases show that precipitation of large masses of secondary Al and Mg mineral phases occurs throughout the raffinate neutralization process (pH 1-11) at the Key Lake U mill, Saskatchewan, Canada. Data from a suite of analytical methods (ICP-MS, EMPA, laborato...

[1] The cryptoendolithic habitat of the Antarctic Dry Valleys has been considered a good analogy for past Martian ecosystems, if life arose on the planet. Yet cryptoendoliths are thought to favor the colonization of rocks that have a preexisting porous structure, e.g., sandstones. This may weaken their significance as exact analogues of potential rockcolonizing organisms on Mars, given our curr...

The biology of metal transforming microorganisms is of a fundamental and applied importance for our understanding of past and present biogeochemical processes on Earth and in the Universe. The extreme thermoacidophile Metallosphaera sedula is a metal mobilizing archaeon, which thrives in hot acid environments (optimal growth at 74°C and pH 2.0) and utilizes energy from the oxidation of reduced ...

Abstract Cetaceans are obligate aquatic mammals derived from terrestrial artiodactyls. The defining characteristic of cetaceans is a thick and dense lip (pachyosteosclerotic involucrum) of an ear bone (the tympanic). This unique feature is absent in modern terrestrial artiodactyls and is suggested to be important in underwater hearing. Here, we investigate the mineralogical and biochemical prop...