Kinematics of oblique collision and ramping inferred from microstructures and strain in middle crustal rocks, central Southern Alps, New Zealand

The hanging wall of the Alpine Fault near Franz Josef Glacier has been exhumed during the past similar to2-3 m.y. providing a sample of the ductilely deformed middle crust of a modem obliquely convergent orogen. Presently exposed rocks of the Pacific Plate are inferred to have undergone several phases of ductile deformation as they moved westward above a mid-crustal detachment. Initially they were transpressed across the outboard part of the orogen, resulting in oblate fabrics with a down-dip stretch. Later, they encountered the Alpine Fault, experiencing an oblique-slip backshearing on vertical planes. This escalator-like deformation tilted and thinned the incoming crust onto that crustal-scale oblique ramp. This style of hanging wall deformation may affect only the most rapidly uplifting, central part of the Southern Alps because of the low flexural rigidity of the crust in that region and its displacement over a relatively sharp ramp-angle at depth. A 3D transpressive flow affected mylonites locally near the fault, but their shear direction remained parallel to plate motion, ruling out ductile 'extrusion' as an important process in this orogen. Outside the mylonite zone, late Cenozoic shortening is inferred to be modest (30-40%), as measured from deformation of younger biotite grains. Oblique collision is dominated by translation on the Alpine Fault, and rocks migrate rapidly through the deforming zone, preventing the accumulation of large finite strains. Transpression may play a minor role in oblique collision. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.

Lepocreadiidae (Digenea) from the batfish of the genus Platax Cuvier (Teleostei : Ephippidae) from the southern Great Barrier Reef, Queensland, Australia

The following species are described from Platax spp.: Neomultitestis aspidogastriformis n. sp., from P. teira, off Heron Island, Queensland, which can be distinguished from its congeners by the transversely elongate ventral sucker divided into three loculi and probably by testis number; Multitestis magnacetabulum Mamaev, 1970, from P. teira, off Heron Island, Queensland; Diploproctodaeum rutellum ( Mamaev, 1970), from P. teira, off Heron Island, Queensland; Diploproctodaeum tsubameuo n. sp., from P. batavianus, from the Swain Reefs, off Queensland, which differs from its congeners in its overlapping, posteriorly attenuated testes and 38-55 ovarian lobes; and Diplocreadium sp., from P. batavianus, from the Swain Reefs, off Queensland.

Cross-border insolvency: Adoption of CLERP 8 as an evolution of Australian insolvency law

In 1997 the United Nations adopted the UNCITRAL Model Law on Cross-Border Insolvency and recommended that member states adopt it as part of domestic legislation. In 2002 Australia, an active participant in UNCITRAL's Working Group on Insolvency Law, announced that the next phase of the Commonwealth Government's Corporate Law Economic Reform Program would be a review of cross-border insolvency law. CLERP 8 seeks feedback on the proposed enactment of the Model Law by a separate Commonwealth statute. This article places such a development within the context of Australian cross-border insolvency law as it has evolved from early English bankruptcy legislation through case law arising from the banking collapses of the late 19th century to the more recent jurisprudence produced by corporate collapses of the late 1980s to early 1990s and current high-profile insolvencies.