The Japanese fishermen cultivating pearls along the seacoasts of Japan have been confronting in recent years by several severe difficulties, such as a considerable decrease in the production of high quality pearls. The decrease is supposed to be caused by desolation of pearl farms, the remarkable increase of mortality of mother pearl oysters, careless cultivation management and water pollution. The improvement of pearl cultivation techniques in future is discussed from the viewpoint of biomineralogy in this report.
In identifying a gemstone, the refractive index of the stone is one of the important characters. When the refractive index is in the range over the ordinary refractometer, we have to identify the stone by other characters. Since the refractive index is theoretically a function of reflective index, an instrument is designed to measure high refractive index using the value of reflectivity. Measurements on several gemstones with higher refractive index by this instrument showed that we could identify them, provided that stones have the refractive index over 1.81. This instrument will be useful for identifying high refractive gemstones.
The principle, technical procedure and design of the freezing-stage method in the fluid inclusion studies is introduced. The relation between the concentration of salts and the melting point of ice in saline solutions is reviewed. The formation of liquid CO_2 and CO_2 hydrate in cooled CO_2-bearing fluid inclusions is also discussed briefly. Concerning with the composition of fluid inclusions, the pressure-specific volume-temperature and pressure-composition-temperature relations of binary systems of H_2O-NaCl and H_2O-CO_2 in hydrothermal conditions are reviewed.