Structural Geology of Eastern Part of Dairy Ridge Quadrangle and Western Part of Meachum Ridge Quadrangle, Utah

A detailed geologic investigation was made of the eastern part of the Dairy Ridge Quadrangle and the western part of the Meachum Ridge Quadrangle, Utah. The area is located in north-central Utah in Rich County. It lies between lat. 41°22\u2730 N. and lat. 41° 28\u2750 N. and between long. 111° 21\u2740 W. and long. 111°25\u2715 W. The area measures 13.8 km in the north-south direction and 5.5 km in the east-west direction. It is on the eastern side of the Wasatch Range about 20 km west-southwest of Randolph, Utah. Stratigraphic units of Precambrian to Cambrian age crop out in the western part of the area, above the Woodruff thrust fault, and dip west. These include the Precambrian Mutual Formation and the Cambrian Geertsen Canyon Quartzite. Units of Pennsylvanian to Jurassic age crop out in the eastern part of the area below the Woodruff thrust fault. They dip west and are overturned to the east. These units include the following: Pennsylvanian Weber Formation, Permian Grandeur Member of the Park City Formation, Permian Phosphoria Formation, Triassic Thaynes Limestone, Triassic Ankareh Formation, Jurassic Nugget Sandstone, and Jurassic Twin Creek Limestone. The Tertiary Wasatch Formation unconformably overlies all older units in places. The Woodruff thrust fault is the major structural feature of the area. Quartzite of the Precambrian Mutual Formation is thrust eastward over the Pennsylvanian Weber Formation as well as over formations of Permian and Triassic ages. The Woodruff thrust fault strikes about N. 20° E. and dips 18° W. to 33° W. Stratigraphic throw is at least 5,800 m. Probable horizontal displacement is tens of kilometers. The stratigraphic units, under the thrust fault, dip west and are overturned to the east. They form the western limb of a large asymmetrical syncline. The overturned units are cut by a west-dipping high-angle thrust fault. The syncline and the thrust faults were produced by the Sevier orogeny which began in latest Jurassic or earliest Cretaceous time. Deformation may have continued into Paleocene time

Advanced visual rendering, gesture-based interaction and distributed delivery for immersive and interactive media services

The media industry is currently being pulled in the often-opposing directions of increased realism (high resolution, stereoscopic, large screen) and personalisation (selection and control of content, availability on many devices). A capture, production, delivery and rendering system capable of supporting both these trends is being developed by a consortium of European organisations including partners from the broadcast, film, telecoms and academic sectors, in the EU-funded FascinatE project. This paper reports on the latest project developments in the delivery network and end-user device domains, including advanced audiovisual rendering, computer analysis and scripting, content-aware distributed delivery and gesture-based interaction. The paper includes an overview of existing immersive media services and concludes with initial service concept descriptions and their market potential.Peer ReviewedPreprin

No longer locally extinct? Tracing the origins of a lion (Panthera leo) living in Gabon

Lions (Panthera leo) are of particular conservation concern due to evidence of recent, widespread population declines in what has hitherto been seen as a common species, robust to anthropogenic disturbance. Here we use non-invasive methods to recover complete mitochondrial genomes from single hair samples collected in the field in order to explore the identity of the Gabonese Plateaux Batéké lion. Comparison of the mitogenomes against a comprehensive dataset of African lion sequences that includes relevant geographically proximate lion populations from both contemporary and ancient sources, enabled us to identify the Plateaux Batéké lion as a close maternal relative to now extirpated populations found in Gabon and nearby Congo during the twentieth century, and to extant populations of Southern Africa. Our study demonstrates the relevance of ancient DNA methods to field conservation work, and the ability of trace field samples to provide copious genetic information about free-ranging animals.Acknowledgements We thank the laboratory technicians of the Centre for GeoGenetics and the staff of the Danish National High-Throughput DNA Sequencing Centre for technical assistance. This project received funding from the European Union�s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under grant agreement no. FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF-298820, and ERC Consolidator Grant 681396 � Extinction Genomics. Fieldwork in Gabon was funded by Panthera and The Aspinall Foundation. We thank the Staff at Projet Protection Gorilles Gabon and the Gabonese National Park Agency for their assistance in fieldwork. Thanks also to Tony King for helpful comments on the manuscript. Permission to collect and export the samples was granted by the respective Ministries of the Environment (Eaux et Forets) in Gabon and Congo, and by Gabon�s National Park Agency (ANPN).Scopu

Dopamine modulates dynamic decision-making during foraging

The mesolimbic dopaminergic system exerts a crucial influence on incentive processing. However, the contribution of dopamine in dynamic, ecological situations where reward rates vary, and decisions evolve over time, remains unclear. In such circumstances, current (foreground) reward accrual needs to be compared continuously with potential rewards that could be obtained by travelling elsewhere (background reward rate), in order to determine the opportunity cost of staying versus leaving. We hypothesised that dopamine specifically modulates the influence of background – but not foreground – reward information when making a dynamic comparison of these variables for optimal behaviour. On a novel foraging task based on an ecological account of animal behaviour (marginal value theorem), human participants of either sex decided when to leave locations in situations where foreground rewards depleted at different rates, either in rich or poor environments with high or low background rates. In line with theoretical accounts, people’s decisions to move from current locations were independently modulated by changes in both foreground and background reward rates. Pharmacological manipulation of dopamine D2 receptor activity using the agonist cabergoline significantly affected decisions to move on, specifically modulating the effect of background reward rates. In particular, when on cabergoline, people left patches in poor environments much earlier. These results demonstrate a role of dopamine in signalling the opportunity cost of rewards, not value per se. Using this ecologically derived framework we uncover a specific mechanism by which D2 dopamine receptor activity modulates decision-making when foreground and background reward rates are dynamically compared

Modulation of Escherichia coli Translation by the Specific Inactivation of tRNAGly Under Oxidative Stress

Bacterial oxidative stress responses are generally controlled by transcription factors that modulate the synthesis of RNAs with the aid of some sRNAs that control the stability, and in some cases the translation, of specific mRNAs. Here, we report that oxidative stress additionally leads to inactivation of tRNAGly in Escherichia coli, inducing a series of physiological changes. The observed inactivation of tRNAGly correlated with altered efficiency of translation of Gly codons, suggesting a possible mechanism of translational control of gene expression under oxidative stress. Changes in translation also depended on the availability of glycine, revealing a mechanism whereby bacteria modulate the response to oxidative stress according to the prevailing metabolic state of the cells

Modulation of \u3cem\u3eEscherichia coli\u3c/em\u3e Translation by the Specific Inactivation of tRNA\u3csup\u3eGly\u3c/sup\u3e Under Oxidative Stress

Bacterial oxidative stress responses are generally controlled by transcription factors that modulate the synthesis of RNAs with the aid of some sRNAs that control the stability, and in some cases the translation, of specific mRNAs. Here, we report that oxidative stress additionally leads to inactivation of tRNAGly in Escherichia coli, inducing a series of physiological changes. The observed inactivation of tRNAGly correlated with altered efficiency of translation of Gly codons, suggesting a possible mechanism of translational control of gene expression under oxidative stress. Changes in translation also depended on the availability of glycine, revealing a mechanism whereby bacteria modulate the response to oxidative stress according to the prevailing metabolic state of the cells

FHIR-DHP: A standardized clinical data harmonisation pipeline for scalable AI application deployment

Background Increasing digitalisation in the medical domain gives rise to large amounts of healthcare data which has the potential to expand clinical knowledge and transform patient care if leveraged through artificial intelligence (AI). Yet, big data and AI oftentimes cannot unlock their full potential at scale, owing to non-standardised data formats, lack of technical and semantic data interoperability, and limited cooperation between stakeholders in the healthcare system. Despite the existence of standardised data formats for the medical domain, such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), their prevalence and usability for AI remains limited.Objective We developed a data harmonisation pipeline (DHP) for clinical data sets relying on the common FHIR data standard.Methods We validated the performance and usability of our FHIR-DHP with data from the MIMIC IV database including > 40,000 patients admitted to an intensive care unit.Results We present the FHIR-DHP workflow in respect of transformation of “raw” hospital records into a harmonised, AI-friendly data representation. The pipeline consists of five key preprocessing steps: querying of data from hospital database, FHIR mapping, syntactic validation, transfer of harmonised data into the patient-model database and export of data in an AI-friendly format for further medical applications. A detailed example of FHIR-DHP execution was presented for clinical diagnoses records.Conclusions Our approach enables scalable and needs-driven data modelling of large and heterogenous clinical data sets. The FHIR-DHP is a pivotal step towards increasing cooperation, interoperability and quality of patient care in the clinical routine and for medical research

Late Quaternary paleoenvironmental records from the Chatanika River valley near Fairbanks (Alaska)

© 2016 Elsevier LtdPerennially-frozen deposits are considered as excellent paleoenvironmental archives similar to lacustrine, deep marine, and glacier records because of the long-term and good preservation of fossil records under stable permafrost conditions. A permafrost tunnel in the Vault Creek Valley (Chatanika River Valley, near Fairbanks) exposes a sequence of frozen deposits and ground ice that provides a comprehensive set of proxies to reconstruct the late Quaternary environmental history of Interior Alaska. The multi-proxy approach includes different dating techniques (radiocarbon-accelerator mass spectrometry [AMS 14C], optically stimulated luminescence [OSL], thorium/uranium radioisotope disequilibria [230Th/U]), as well as methods of sedimentology, paleoecology, hydrochemistry, and stable isotope geochemistry of ground ice. The studied sequence consists of 36-m-thick late Quaternary deposits above schistose bedrock. Main portions of the sequence accumulated during the early and middle Wisconsin periods. The lowermost unit A consists of about 9-m-thick ice-bonded fluvial gravels with sand and peat lenses. A late Sangamon (MIS 5a) age of unit A is assumed. Spruce forest with birch, larch, and some shrubby alder dominated the vegetation. High presence of Sphagnum spores and Cyperaceae pollen points to mires in the Vault Creek Valley. The overlying unit B consists of 10-m-thick alternating fluvial gravels, loess-like silt, and sand layers, penetrated by small ice wedges. OSL dates support a stadial early Wisconsin (MIS 4) age of unit B. Pollen and plant macrofossil data point to spruce forests with some birch interspersed with wetlands around the site. The following unit C is composed of 15-m-thick ice-rich loess-like and organic-rich silt with fossil bones and large ice wedges. Unit C formed during the interstadial mid-Wisconsin (MIS 3) and stadial late Wisconsin (MIS 2) as indicated by radiocarbon ages. Post-depositional slope processes significantly deformed both, ground ice and sediments of unit C. Pollen data show that spruce forests and wetlands dominated the area. The macrofossil remains of Picea, Larix, and Alnus incana ssp. tenuifolia also prove the existence of boreal coniferous forests during the mid-Wisconsin interstadial, which were replaced by treeless tundra-steppe vegetation during the late Wisconsin stadial. Unit C is discordantly overlain by the 2-m-thick late Holocene deposits of unit D. The pollen record of unit D indicates boreal forest vegetation similar to the modern one. The permafrost record from the Vault Creek tunnel reflects more than 90 ka of periglacial landscape dynamics triggered by fluvial and eolian accumulation, and formation of ice-wedge polygons and post-depositional deformation by slope processes. The record represents a typical Wisconsin valley-bottom facies in Central Alaska

The Functional DRD3 Ser9Gly Polymorphism (rs6280) Is Pleiotropic, Affecting Reward as Well as Movement

Abnormalities of motivation and behavior in the context of reward are a fundamental component of addiction and mood disorders. Here we test the effect of a functional missense mutation in the dopamine 3 receptor (DRD3) gene (ser9gly, rs6280) on reward-associated dopamine (DA) release in the striatum. Twenty-six healthy controls (HCs) and 10 unmedicated subjects with major depressive disorder (MDD) completed two positron emission tomography (PET) scans with [11C]raclopride using the bolus plus constant infusion method. On one occasion subjects completed a sensorimotor task (control condition) and on another occasion subjects completed a gambling task (reward condition). A linear regression analysis controlling for age, sex, diagnosis, and self-reported anhedonia indicated that during receipt of unpredictable monetary reward the glycine allele was associated with a greater reduction in D2/3 receptor binding (i.e., increased reward-related DA release) in the middle (anterior) caudate (p<0.01) and the ventral striatum (p<0.05). The possible functional effect of the ser9gly polymorphism on DA release is consistent with previous work demonstrating that the glycine allele yields D3 autoreceptors that have a higher affinity for DA and display more robust intracellular signaling. Preclinical evidence indicates that chronic stress and aversive stimulation induce activation of the DA system, raising the possibility that the glycine allele, by virtue of its facilitatory effect on striatal DA release, increases susceptibility to hyperdopaminergic responses that have previously been associated with stress, addiction, and psychosis

Carbonates from the ancient world's longest aqueduct:A testament of Byzantine water management

The fourth‐ and fifth‐century aqueduct system of Constantinople is, at 426 km, the longest water supply line of the ancient world. Carbonate deposits in the aqueduct system provide an archive of both archaeological developments and palaeo‐environmental conditions during the depositional period. The 246‐km‐long aqueduct line from the fourth century used springs from a small aquifer, whereas a 180‐km‐long fifth‐century extension to the west tapped a larger aquifer. Although historical records testify at least 700 years of aqueduct activity, carbonate deposits in the aqueduct system display less than 27 years of operation. This implies that the entire system must have been cleaned of carbonate, presumably during regular campaigns. A 50‐km‐long double‐aqueduct section in the central part of the system may have been a costly but practical solution to allow repairs and cleaning of the aqueducts of carbonate to ascertain a continuous water supply to the city. The fifth‐century channel was commonly contaminated with clay, caused by the nature of the aqueduct system and possible local damage to the channel. This clay‐rich water could have been one of the reasons for the construction of large reservoirs in Constantinople. imageLeverhulme Trust http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100000275Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/50110000165