Pleuroptyx in the Iowa Coal Measures

At a horizon of some hundred feet above the base of the Coal Measures in Fairfield Township in Jefferson County is a seam of a concretionary limestone varying from two to five feet in thickness. It crops out on the hillside in a creek that follows the south side of the abandoned embankment of the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy railroad, where this leaves the new line, about a mile and a half west of the city of Fairfield. The ledge has been quarried in several places close to the line of the old road, where some pits are still seen. On this limestone lies a black, fissile bituminous shale, lumps of which are seen in the old pits. Last summer the writer found in one of these lumps a bone which he thought might be a phalanx of some early batrachian

On the Occurrence of Rhizopods in the Pella Beds in Iowa

In Jefferson County the Pella beds of the Saint Louis formation have a thickness of about twenty feet. They consist of heavy ledges of calcareous limestones, interbedded with seams of marly shales, the latter being best developed in the upper part of the section. The several seams and ledges appear quite persistent and some have been identified at different points a few miles apart. They have evidently been laid down at some considerable distance from the shore. Occasionally there are ledges of limestone which are very fine-grained, almost lithographic in texture. Here as elsewhere in the south part of the state, the fauna of the formation is meager in species but quite prolific in individuals. Pugnax ottumwa, Spirifer keokuk, Zaphrentis pallaensis, Anisotrypa fistulosa, and stems of crinoids appear everywhere, especially in the marls. This has long been known

Cyclonic Distribution of Precipitation

Several years ago I devised a method for ascertaining statistically the relation of weather conditions to different parts of a cyclone for a certain locality or limited region of territory. Some results obtained by this method seem worth the while recording

The Pine Creek Conglomerate

In the right bank of the west branch of Pine Creek, a short distance north from where it leaves section thirty-four in range one west, township seventy-seven north, there is a pebbly sandstone, unlike the coal measure conglomerate in the surrounding country. This sandstone is mostly brown in color, changing to yellow. It has a rather coarse texture, compared with the coal measure rocks, and is somewhat more variable in this respect. The best exposure appears in a small gully, which comes down the hill from the west, some twenty rods north of the south line of the section. In all a thickness of about sixteen feet is seen

Diatomaceous Earth in Muscatine County

While at work on the geology of Muscatine County last summer, the writer found some diatomaceous earth in the south bank of the creek which runs west near the south line of section fourteen, in Cedar Township. It is associated with a peaty layer, which overlies it, and which appears somewhat disturbed. This peat is overlain by fine laminated sand and silt, which here forms the base of the loess. Below the peat bed and the diatomaceous layer there is a white sand without a trace of ferruginous stains. Boggy conditions are indicated, or perhaps the conditions of a lake or pond. The diatomaceous earth itself does not lie in a continuous layer, but in a broken layer, or in small pockets, which are scattered. It has a peculiar dull, pink color, and this has lately enabled the writer to find small lumps of it in the peaty soil under the loess in Scott County, near Davenport. It was from this loess that the remains of a mastodon have been reported by Mr. Pratt

Some Preglacial Soils

In the region south of the Wisconsin Driftless area an old soil is occasionally found under the Kansan drift, generally resting on the bed rock, and often associated with laminated water-bedded clay and other silt. It is exposed under a bluff of drift in the southern part of Muscatine, Iowa. The material is here dark brown in color, mottled with small black fragments of vegetable tissue. The upper part is a dark mucky clay. The whole bed is only two or three inches in thickness. It lies below what appears to be pre-Kansan drift

Playacting happiness: tragicomedy in Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford

Thesis (M.A.) University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2020This thesis examines tragicomedy in two 19th Century British novels, Jane Austen's Mansfield Park and Elizabeth Gaskell's Cranford. Both narratives have perceived happy endings; however, tragedy lies underneath the surface. With Shakespeare's play A Midsummer Night's Dream as a starting point, playacting becomes the vehicle through which tragedy can be discovered by the reader. Throughout, I find examples in which playacting begins as a comedic act, but acquires tragic potential when parents enter the scene. Here, I define tragedy not as a dramatic experience, but rather seemingly small injustices that, over time, cause more harm than good. In Mansfield Park, the tragedy is parental neglect and control. In Cranford, the tragedy is parental abuse. For both narratives, characters are unable to experience life fully, and past parental injuries cannot be redeemed. While all the children in the narratives experience some form of parental neglect, the marginalized children are harmed more than the others. In addition, I find that lifelong loneliness is a common theme in both narratives, showing that tragedy can lead to grief experienced in isolation

Towards robust functional neuroimaging genetics of cognition

A commonly held assumption in cognitive neuroscience is that, because measures of human brain function are closer to underlying biology than distal indices of behavior/cognition, they hold more promise for uncovering genetic pathways. Supporting this view is an influential fMRI-based study of sentence reading/listening by Pinel et al. (2012), who reported that common DNA variants in specific candidate genes were associated with altered neural activation in language-related regions of healthy individuals that carried them. In particular, different single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of FOXP2 correlated with variation in task-based activation in left inferior frontal and precentral gyri, whereas a SNP at the KIAA0319/TTRAP/THEM2 locus was associated with variable functional asymmetry of the superior temporal sulcus. Here, we directly test each claim using a closely matched neuroimaging genetics approach in independent cohorts comprising 427 participants, four times larger than the original study of 94 participants. Despite demonstrating power to detect associations with substantially smaller effect sizes than those of the original report, we do not replicate any of the reported associations. Moreover, formal Bayesian analyses reveal substantial to strong evidence in support of the null hypothesis (no effect). We highlight key aspects of the original investigation, common to functional neuroimaging genetics studies, which could have yielded elevated false-positive rates. Genetic accounts of individual differences in cognitive functional neuroimaging are likely to be as complex as behavioral/cognitive tests, involving many common genetic variants, each of tiny effect. Reliable identification of true biological signals requires large sample sizes, power calculations, and validation in independent cohorts with equivalent paradigms. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT A pervasive idea in neuroscience is that neuroimaging-based measures of brain function, being closer to underlying neurobiology, are more amenable for uncovering links to genetics. This is a core assumption of prominent studies that associate common DNA variants with altered activations in task-based fMRI, despite using samples (10–100 people) that lack power for detecting the tiny effect sizes typical of genetically complex traits. Here, we test central findings from one of the most influential prior studies. Using matching paradigms and substantially larger samples, coupled to power calculations and formal Bayesian statistics, our data strongly refute the original findings. We demonstrate that neuroimaging genetics with task-based fMRI should be subject to the same rigorous standards as studies of other complex traits

Systematic meta-analyses, field synopsis and global assessment of the evidence of genetic association studies in colorectal cancer

Objective: To provide an understanding of the role of common genetic variations in colorectal cancer (CRC) risk, we report an updated field synopsis and comprehensive assessment of evidence to catalogue all genetic markers for CRC (CRCgene2). Design: We included 869 publications after parallel literature review and extracted data for 1063 polymorphisms in 303 different genes. Meta-Analyses were performed for 308 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) in 158 different genes with at least three independent studies available for analysis. Scottish, Canadian and Spanish data from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) were incorporated for the meta-Analyses of 132 SNPs. To assess and classify the credibility of the associations, we applied the Venice criteria and Bayesian False-Discovery Probability (BFDP). Genetic associations classified as â € positive' and â € less-credible positive' were further validated in three large GWAS consortia conducted in populations of European origin. Results: We initially identified 18 independent variants at 16 loci that were classified as â € positive' polymorphisms for their highly credible associations with CRC risk and 59 variants at 49 loci that were classified as â € less-credible positive' SNPs; 72.2% of the â € positive' SNPs were successfully replicated in three large GWASs and the ones that were not replicated were downgraded to â € less-credible' positive (reducing the â € positive' variants to 14 at 11 loci). For the remaining 231 variants, which were previously reported, our meta-Analyses found no evidence to support their associations with CRC risk. Conclusion: The CRCgene2 database provides an updated list of genetic variants related to CRC risk by using harmonised methods to assess their credibility.</p