Corrigendum to ‘Vermiculations from karst caves: The case of Pertosa-Auletta system (Italy)’. (Catena (2019) 182 (104178) (S0341816219303200), (10.1016/j.catena.2019.104178))

The authors regret the presence of incomplete information in the author affiliations (reported correctly above) and in the acknowledgments of the original article (provided in the amended version below). The authors are obliged to Mr. Vincenzo Manisera, speleologist of the MIdA Foundation, for sharing his experiences and for his invaluable help in all the field activities, to Dr. Sacha A. Berardo (University of Salerno, Italy) for the language editing, and to the two anonymous reviewers, who provided helpful comments and suggestions. Funding was provided by the Spanish project MINECO CGL2016-75590-P with ERDF funds, by the MIdA Foundation, which generously supported the whole project, and by the University of Salerno, which provided facilities for carrying out the research. The authors would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused

Microbial Community Characterizing Vermiculations from Karst Caves and Its Role in Their Formation

The microbiota associated with vermiculations from karst caves is largely unknown. Vermiculations are enigmatic deposits forming worm-like patterns on cave walls all over the world. They represent a precious focus for geomicrobiological studies aimed at exploring both the microbial life of these ecosystems and the vermiculation genesis. This study comprises the first approach on the microbial communities thriving in Pertosa-Auletta Cave (southern Italy) vermiculations by next-generation sequencing. The most abundant phylum in vermiculations was Proteobacteria, followed by Acidobacteria > Actinobacteria > Nitrospirae > Firmicutes > Planctomycetes > Chloroflexi > Gemmatimonadetes > Bacteroidetes > Latescibacteria. Numerous less-represented taxonomic groups (< 1%), as well as unclassified ones, were also detected. From an ecological point of view, all the groups co-participate in the biogeochemical cycles in these underground environments, mediating oxidation-reduction reactions, promoting host rock dissolution and secondary mineral precipitation, and enriching the matrix in organic matter. Confocal laser scanning microscopy and field emission scanning electron microscopy brought evidence of a strong interaction between the biotic community and the abiotic matrix, supporting the role of microbial communities in the formation process of vermiculations

Geomicrobiology of a seawater-influenced active sulfuric acid cave.

Fetida Cave is an active sulfuric acid cave influenced by seawater, showing abundant microbial communities that organize themselves under three main different morphologies: water filaments, vermiculations and moonmilk deposits. These biofilms/deposits have different cave distribution, pH, macro- and microelement and mineralogical composition, carbon and nitrogen content. In particular, water filaments and vermiculations had circumneutral and slightly acidic pH, respectively, both had abundant organic carbon and high microbial diversity. They were rich in macro- and microelements, deriving from mineral dissolution, and, in the case of water filaments, from seawater composition. Vermiculations had different color, partly associated with their mineralogy, and unusual minerals probably due to trapping capacities. Moonmilk was composed of gypsum, poor in organic matter, had an extremely low pH (0\u20131) and low microbial diversity. Based on 16S rRNA gene analysis, the microbial composition of the biofilms/deposits included autotrophic taxa associated with sulfur and nitrogen cycles and biomineralization processes. In particular, water filaments communities were characterized by bacterial taxa involved in sulfur oxidation and reduction in aquatic, aphotic, microaerophilic/anoxic environments (Campylobacterales, Thiotrichales, Arenicellales, Desulfobacterales, Desulforomonadales) and in chemolithotrophy in marine habitats (Oceanospirillales, Chromatiales). Their biodiversity was linked to the morphology of the water filaments and their collection site. Microbial communities within vermiculations were partly related to their color and showed high abundance of unclassified Betaproteobacteria and sulfur-oxidizing Hydrogenophilales (including Sulfuriferula), and Acidiferrobacterales (including Sulfurifustis), sulfur-reducing Desulfurellales, and ammonia-oxidizing Planctomycetes and Nitrospirae. The microbial community associated with gypsum moonmilk showed the strong dominance (>60%) of the archaeal genus Thermoplasma and lower abundance of chemolithotrophic Acidithiobacillus, metal-oxidizing Metallibacterium, Sulfobacillus, and Acidibacillus. This study describes the geomicrobiology of water filaments, vermiculations and gypsum moonmilk from Fetida Cave, providing insights into the microbial taxa that characterize each morphology and contribute to biogeochemical cycles and speleogenesis of this peculiar seawater-influenced sulfuric acid cave

All-sky search for short gravitational-wave bursts in the first Advanced LIGO run

We present the results from an all-sky search for short-duration gravitational waves in the data of the first run of the Advanced LIGO detectors between September 2015 and January 2016. The search algorithms use minimal assumptions on the signal morphology, so they are sensitive to a wide range of sources emitting gravitational waves. The analyses target transient signals with duration ranging from milliseconds to seconds over the frequency band of 32 to 4096 Hz. The first observed gravitational-wave event, GW150914, has been detected with high confidence in this search; the other known gravitational-wave event, GW151226, falls below the search\u27s sensitivity. Besides GW150914, all of the search results are consistent with the expected rate of accidental noise coincidences. Finally, we estimate rate-density limits for a broad range of non-binary-black-hole transient gravitational-wave sources as a function of their gravitational radiation emission energy and their characteristic frequency. These rate-density upper limits are stricter than those previously published by an order of magnitude

SUPPLEMENT: THE RATE OF BINARY BLACK HOLE MERGERS INFERRED FROM ADVANCED LIGO OBSERVATIONS SURROUNDING GW150914 (2016, ApJL, 833, L1)

This article provides supplemental information for a Letter reporting the rate of (BBH) coalescences inferred from 16 days of coincident Advanced LIGO observations surrounding the transient (GW) signal GW150914. In that work we reported various rate estimates whose 90% confidence intervals fell in the range 2-600. Gpc(-3). yr(-1). Here we give details on our method and computations, including information about our search pipelines, a derivation of our likelihood function for the analysis, a description of the astrophysical search trigger distribution expected from merging BBHs, details on our computational methods, a description of the effects and our model for calibration uncertainty, and an analytic method for estimating our detector sensitivity, which is calibrated to our measurements

Effects of data quality vetoes on a search for compact binary coalescences in Advanced LIGO\u27s first observing run

The first observing run of Advanced LIGO spanned 4 months, from 12 September 2015 to 19 January 2016, during which gravitational waves were directly detected from two binary black hole systems, namely GW150914 and GW151226. Confident detection of gravitational waves requires an understanding of instrumental transients and artifacts that can reduce the sensitivity of a search. Studies of the quality of the detector data yield insights into the cause of instrumental artifacts and data quality vetoes specific to a search are produced to mitigate the effects of problematic data. In this paper, the systematic removal of noisy data from analysis time is shown to improve the sensitivity of searches for compact binary coalescences. The output of the PyCBC pipeline, which is a python-based code package used to search for gravitational wave signals from compact binary coalescences, is used as a metric for improvement. GW150914 was a loud enough signal that removing noisy data did not improve its significance. However, the removal of data with excess noise decreased the false alarm rate of GW151226 by more than two orders of magnitude, from 1 in 770 yr to less than 1 in 186 000 yr

The basic physics of the binary black hole merger GW150914

The first direct gravitational-wave detection was made by the Advanced Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory on September 14, 2015. The GW150914 signal was strong enough to be apparent, without using any waveform model, in the filtered detector strain data. Here, features of the signal visible in the data are analyzed using concepts from Newtonian physics and general relativity, accessible to anyone with a general physics background. The simple analysis presented here is consistent with the fully general-relativistic analyses published elsewhere, in showing that the signal was produced by the inspiral and subsequent merger of two black holes. The black holes were each of approximately 35M(circle dot), still orbited each other as close as similar to 350 km apart and subsequently merged to form a single black hole. Similar reasoning, directly from the data, is used to roughly estimate how far these black holes were from the Earth, and the energy that they radiated in gravitational waves

Prospects for observing and localizing gravitational-wave transients with Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA

We present possible observing scenarios for the Advanced LIGO, Advanced Virgo and KAGRA gravitational-wave detectors over the next decade, with the intention of providing information to the astronomy community to facilitate planning for multi-messenger astronomy with gravitational waves. We estimate the sensitivity of the network to transient gravitational-wave signals, and study the capability of the network to determine the sky location of the source. We report our findings for gravitational-wave transients, with particular focus on gravitational-wave signals from the inspiral of binary neutron star systems, which are the most promising targets for multi-messenger astronomy. The ability to localize the sources of the detected signals depends on the geographical distribution of the detectors and their relative sensitivity, and 90% credible regions can be as large as thousands of square degrees when only two sensitive detectors are operational. Determining the sky position of a significant fraction of detected signals to areas of 5-20 deg(2) requires at least three detectors of sensitivity within a factor of similar to 2 of each other and with a broad frequency bandwidth. When all detectors, including KAGRA and the third LIGO detector in India, reach design sensitivity, a significant fraction of gravitational-wave signals will be localized to a few square degrees by gravitational-wave observations alone