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The hydrological characteristics, including temperatures and salinities, of the upper water over the last 30 ka from two sites connected by the Indonesian Throughflow (ITF) across the Makassar Strait are reconstructed and compared. The thermocline hydrological gradient in the strait was larger during 13.4~19 ka BP and 24.2~27 ka BP than that in the Holocene. The weakened ITF during those periods in the last glacial period, corresponding to the decreased trade wind stress under an El Niño-like climate mean state, likely accounts for the increased thermocline gradient. The thermocline water temperature variabilities of the two sites, in particular the highest peaks at ~7 ka BP, are different from the records of the open western Pacific. Reoccurrence of the South China Sea Throughflow and thus a decreased surface throughflow along the Makassar Strait perhaps led to a warmer peak of thermocline temperature at ~7 ka BP than at ~11 ka BP.

Risley prism scanners are increasingly used for laser beam steering due to their wide angular scanning range and high resolution. However, the inverse problem, which focuses on obtaining the required prisms' orientations for a given target position, has not been perfectly solved so far. The existing inverse solutions are not accurate or efficient enough for high-accuracy and real-time tracking. An iterative method that combines an approximate inverse solution with an iterative refinement by the forward solution is set forth in this paper. Two case studies indicate that the rotation motions of Risley prism pairs controlled by iterative solutions can slew the beam to create the desired tracking pattern quickly and accurately. Based on this method, a Risley prism scanner developed as a standard trajectory generator is implemented for the error measurement of a robotic manipulator in our experiments. The simulation and experimental results show that the inverse solution for one target point can be obtained within nine iterations for a prescribed tracking error threshold.