The Nile is generally regarded as the longest river in the world. Knowledge of the timing of the Nile's initiation as a major river is important to a number of research questions. For example, the timing of the river's establishment as a catchment of continental proportions can be used to document surface uplift of its Ethiopian upland drainage, with implications for constraining rift tectonics. Furthermore, the time of major freshwater input to the Mediterranean is considered to be an important factor in the development of sapropels. Yet the river's initiation as a major drainage is currently constrained no more precisely than Eocene to Pleistocene. Within the modern Nile catchment, voluminous Cenozoic Continental Flood Basalts (CFBs) are unique to the Ethiopian Highlands; thus first detection of their presence in the Nile delta record indicates establishment of the river's drainage at continental proportions at that time. We present the first detailed multiproxy provenance study of Oligocene–Recent Nile delta cone sediments. We demonstrate the presence of Ethiopian CFB detritus in the Nile delta from the start of our studied record (c. 31 Ma) by (1) documenting the presence of zircons with U–Pb ages unique, within the Nile catchment, to the Ethiopian CFBs and (2) using Sr–Nd data to construct a mixing model which indicates a contribution from the CFBs. We thereby show that the Nile river was established as a river of continental proportions by Oligocene times. We use petrography and heavy mineral data to show that previous petrographic provenance studies which proposed a Pleistocene age for first arrival of Ethiopian CFBs in the Nile delta did not take into account the strong diagenetic influence on the samples. We use a range of techniques to show that sediments were derived from Phanerozoic sedimentary rocks that blanket North Africa, Arabian–Nubian Shield basement terranes, and Ethiopian CFB's. We see no significant input from Archaean cratons supplied directly via the White Nile in any of our samples. Whilst there are subtle differences between our Nile delta samples from the Oligocene and Pliocene compared to those from the Miocene and Pleistocene, the overall stability of our signal throughout the delta record, and its similarity to the modern Nile signature, indicates no major change in the Nile's drainage from Oligocene to present day.
The SF-36 is one of the most widely used self-completion measures of health status. The inclusion of the SF-36 in the first Australian national household panel survey, the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey, provides an opportunity to investigate health inequalities. In this analysis we establish the psychometric properties and criterion validity of the SF-36 HILDA Survey data and examine scale profiles across a range of measures of socio-economic circumstance.Data from 13,055 respondents who completed the first wave of the HILDA Survey were analysed to determine the psychometric properties of the SF-36 and the relationship of the SF-36 scales to other measures of health, disability, social functioning and demographic characteristics.Results of principle components analysis were similar to previous Australian and international reports. Survey scales demonstrated convergent and divergent validity, and different markers of social status demonstrated unique patterns of outcomes across the scales.Results demonstrated the validity of the SF-36 data collected during the first wave of the HILDA Survey and support its use in research examining health inequalities and population health characteristics in Australia.
A large body of research evidence across developed countries has demonstrated significant long-term disadvantages for children from divorced compared with intact families of origin. These disadvantages range across family, social and psychological outcomes, and poor outcomes are roughly 50 to 100 percent more likely for those from divorced families. Circumstantial evidence indicates that these disadvantages are not attributable to family separation itself but there have been relatively few studies attempting to establish what other factors contribute to such differences. One notable exception is the suggestion that financial hardship accounts for half of educational disadvantage seen in children raised in lone-parent families in the United States. There has also been considerable speculation internationally about the role of family conflict in explaining poor outcomes in children after parental divorce, but research findings have been inconsistent on this issue.
Les applications multimedia haut debit emergentes necessitent la realisation de circuits analogiques hautes performances et bas cout a des frequences de plus en plus elevee, pour lesquelles le choix de la technologie MMIC s'impose. Assurant la fonction de transposition de frequence, le melangeur est un composant essentiel de tous les emetteurs et recepteurs fonctionnant aux frequences micro-ondes. Le travail que nous presentons ici traite des methodologies necessaires a la conception souvent tres delicate de ce circuit. En nous appuyant sur la description des differentes topologies et methodologies de conception existantes pour les melangeurs (equilibres, sous-harmoniques a paires de diodes Schottky antiparalleles, a FET froid, etc. ), nous appliquons ces principes au developpement de la methodologie de conception et a la realisation d'une nouvelle architecture de melangeur resistif millimetrique a hautes performances le melangeur sous-harmonique d'ordre 2 equilibre a paire de FETs froids . L'objectif majeur de ce travail est de demontrer les fortes potentialites en linearite des melangeurs resistifs a FETs froids aux frequences millimetriques.