Geochemical characterisation of northern Norwegian fjord surface sediments: a baseline for further paleo-environmental investigations

Norwegian fjord sediments are promising archives for very high resolution records of past environmental changes. Recent investigations of the modern depositional environment within fjords revealed that the accurate quantification of the inputs, sources, and sedimentary preservation of organic and inorganic material is crucial to decipher long term past climate signals in the sedimentary record of a certain fjord. Here, we investigate the elemental composition, bulk mineral assemblage and grain size distribution of forty-one surface sediment samples from a northern Norwegian fjord system. We reveal modern geochemical and sedimentological processes that occur within the Vestfjord, Ofotfjord and Tysfjord. Our results indicate a very heterogeneous sediment supply and intricate sedimentation processes. We propose that this is related to the complex fjord bathymetry, a low hydrodynamic energy environment, differences in the hinterland bedrock composition and a relatively small drainage area causing a rather diffuse freshwater inflow. Moreover, we show that marine carbonate productivity is the main calcite and Ca source in all three fjords

Experimental evaluation of the extractability of Fe-bound organic carbon in sediments as a function of carboxyl content

The majority of organic carbon (OC) burial in marine sediments occurs on continental shelves, of which an estimated 10–20% is associated with reactive iron (FeR). The association of OC with FeR (OC-FeR) is thought to facilitate preservation of organic matter (OM) in sediments and therefore represents an important carbon sink. The citrate-bicarbonate-dithionite (CBD) method is used to quantify OC-FeR in marine sediments by reductively dissolving FeR, thereby releasing bound OC. While the CBD method is widely used, it may be less efficient at measuring OC-FeR than currently thought, due to the incomplete reduction of FeR, resulting from the neutral pH conditions required to prevent OM hydrolysis. Additionally, the typical range of values reported for OC-FeR in marine sediments is narrow, despite variation in OM and FeR inputs, OM source types and chemical compositions. This suggests a limitation exists on the amount of OC that can become associated with FeR, and/or that the CBD method is limited in the OC-FeR that it is able to quantify. In assessing the efficiency of the CBD method, we aimed to understand whether methodological errors or (mis)interpretation of these extraction results may contribute to the apparent limitation on OC-FeR values. Here, we synthesised OC-FeR composites with a known FeR phase and known OM moieties, varying in carboxyl content, at neutral pH. These were spiked into OC-free marine sediment, and subject to a CBD extraction to investigate i) the efficiency of CBD for OC extraction; ii) the efficiency of CBD for FeR extraction; ii) how the OC moiety affects the physical parameters of associated FeR minerals; and iii) the impact of OM moiety on OC and Fe release. We show that the CBD method results in only partial dissolution of the most susceptible FeR phase (ferrihydrite) and therefore incomplete removal of bound OC. While as little as ~20% of Fe is released from OC-free ferrihydrite, structural disorder of the mineral phase increases with the inclusion of more OC, resulting in greater losses of up to 62% Fe for carboxyl rich OC-FeR complexes. In addition, our results show that the NaCl control step performed in the CBD method is capable of removing weakly bound OC from FeR, such that inclusion of this OC in the total OC-FeR fraction may increase marine sediments OC-FeR estimates by ~33%. Finally, we suggest that the structure of OC involved in OC-FeR binding can affect quantification of the OC-FeR pool. Our results have important implications for assessing the FeR bound OC fraction in marine sediments and the fate of this OC in the global carbon cycle

Technical note: Uncovering the influence of methodological variations on the extractability of iron-bound organic carbon

Association of organic carbon (OC) with reactive iron (FeR) represents an important mechanism by which OC is protected against remineralisation in soils and marine sediments. Recent studies indicate that the molecular structure of organic compounds and/or the identity of associated FeR phases exert a control on the ability of an OC–FeR complex to be extracted by the citrate–bicarbonate–dithionite (CBD) method. However, many variations of the CBD extraction are used, and these are often uncalibrated to each other, rendering comparisons of OC–FeR values extracted via the different methods impossible. Here, we created synthetic ferrihydrite samples coprecipitated with simple organic structures and subjected these to modifications of the most common CBD method. We altered some of the method parameters (reagent concentration, time of the extraction and sample preparation methods) and measured FeR recovery to determine which (if any) modifications affected the release of FeR from the synthetic sample. We provide an assessment of the reducing capacity of Na dithionite in the CBD method (the amount of Fe reduced by a fixed amount of dithionite) and find that the concentration of dithionite deployed can limit OC–FeR extractability for sediments with a high FeR content. Additionally, we show that extending the length of any CBD extraction offers no benefit in removing FeR. Moreover, we demonstrate that for synthetic OC–FeR samples dominated by ferrihydrite, freeze-drying samples can significantly reduce OC–FeR extractability; this appears to be less of an issue for natural marine sediments where natural ageing mechanisms may mimic the freeze-drying process for more stable Fe phases. While our study is not an all-inclusive method comparison and is not aimed at delivering the “perfect” extraction setup, our findings provide a collected summary of critical factors which influence the efficiency of the CBD extraction for OC–FeR. As such, we provide a platform from which OC–FeR values obtained under different methods can be interpreted and future studies of sediment carbon cycling can build upon

Chosen-ciphertext security from subset sum

We construct a public-key encryption (PKE) scheme whose security is polynomial-time equivalent to the hardness of the Subset Sum problem. Our scheme achieves the standard notion of indistinguishability against chosen-ciphertext attacks (IND-CCA) and can be used to encrypt messages of arbitrary polynomial length, improving upon a previous construction by Lyubashevsky, Palacio, and Segev (TCC 2010) which achieved only the weaker notion of semantic security (IND-CPA) and whose concrete security decreases with the length of the message being encrypted. At the core of our construction is a trapdoor technique which originates in the work of Micciancio and Peikert (Eurocrypt 2012

Fjords as Aquatic Critical Zones (ACZs)

In recent decades, the land-ocean aquatic continuum, commonly defined as the interface, or transition zone, between terrestrial ecosystems and the open ocean, has undergone dramatic changes. On-going work has stressed the importance of treating Aquatic Critical Zones (ACZs) as a sensitive system needing intensive investigation. Here, we discuss fjords as an ACZ in the context of sedimentological, geochemical, and climatic impacts. These diverse physical features of fjords are key in controlling the sources, transport, and burial of organic matter in the modern era and over the Holocene. High sediment accumulation rates in fjord sediments allow for high-resolution records of past climate and environmental change where multiple proxies can be applied to fjord sediments that focus on either marine or terrestrial-derived components. Humans through land-use change and climatic stressors are having an impact on the larger carbon stores in fjords. Sediment delivery whether from accelerating erosion (e.g. mining, deforestation, road building, agriculture) or from sequestration of fluvial sediment behind dams has been seriously altered in the Anthropocene. Climate change affecting rainfall and river discharge into fjords will impact the thickness and extent of the low-salinity layer in the upper reaches of the fjord, slowing the rate of the overturning circulation and deep-water renewal – thereby impacting bottom water oxygen concentrations

Millennial scale persistence of organic carbon bound to iron in Arctic marine sediments

Burial of organic material in marine sediments represents a dominant natural mechanism of long-term carbon sequestration globally, but critical aspects of this carbon sink remain unresolved. Investigation of surface sediments led to the proposition that on average 10-20% of sedimentary organic carbon is stabilised and physically protected against microbial degradation through binding to reactive metal (e.g. iron and manganese) oxides. Here we examine the long-term efficiency of this rusty carbon sink by analysing the chemical composition of sediments and pore waters from four locations in the Barents Sea. Our findings show that the carbon-iron coupling persists below the uppermost, oxygenated sediment layer over thousands of years. We further propose that authigenic coprecipitation is not the dominant factor of the carbon-iron bounding in these Arctic shelf sediments and that a substantial fraction of the organic carbon is already bound to reactive iron prior deposition on the seafloor

Boolean analysis reveals systematic interactions among low-abundance species in the human gut microbiome

The analysis of microbiome compositions in the human gut has gained increasing interest due to the broader availability of data and functional databases and substantial progress in data analysis methods, but also due to the high relevance of the microbiome in human health and disease. While most analyses infer interactions among highly abundant species, the large number of low-abundance species has received less attention. Here we present a novel analysis method based on Boolean operations applied to microbial co-occurrence patterns. We calibrate our approach with simulated data based on a dynamical Boolean network model from which we interpret the statistics of attractor states as a theoretical proxy for microbiome composition. We show that for given fractions of synergistic and competitive interactions in the model our Boolean abundance analysis can reliably detect these interactions. Analyzing a novel data set of 822 microbiome compositions of the human gut, we find a large number of highly significant synergistic interactions among these low-abundance species, forming a connected network, and a few isolated competitive interactions

Dispelling urban myths about default uncertainty factors in chemical risk assessment - Sufficient protection against mixture effects?

© 2013 Martin et al.; licensee BioMed Central LtdThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Assessing the detrimental health effects of chemicals requires the extrapolation of experimental data in animals to human populations. This is achieved by applying a default uncertainty factor of 100 to doses not found to be associated with observable effects in laboratory animals. It is commonly assumed that the toxicokinetic and toxicodynamic sub-components of this default uncertainty factor represent worst-case scenarios and that the multiplication of those components yields conservative estimates of safe levels for humans. It is sometimes claimed that this conservatism also offers adequate protection from mixture effects. By analysing the evolution of uncertainty factors from a historical perspective, we expose that the default factor and its sub-components are intended to represent adequate rather than worst-case scenarios. The intention of using assessment factors for mixture effects was abandoned thirty years ago. It is also often ignored that the conservatism (or otherwise) of uncertainty factors can only be considered in relation to a defined level of protection. A protection equivalent to an effect magnitude of 0.001-0.0001% over background incidence is generally considered acceptable. However, it is impossible to say whether this level of protection is in fact realised with the tolerable doses that are derived by employing uncertainty factors. Accordingly, it is difficult to assess whether uncertainty factors overestimate or underestimate the sensitivity differences in human populations. It is also often not appreciated that the outcome of probabilistic approaches to the multiplication of sub-factors is dependent on the choice of probability distributions. Therefore, the idea that default uncertainty factors are overly conservative worst-case scenarios which can account both for the lack of statistical power in animal experiments and protect against potential mixture effects is ill-founded. We contend that precautionary regulation should provide an incentive to generate better data and recommend adopting a pragmatic, but scientifically better founded approach to mixture risk assessment. © 2013 Martin et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.Oak Foundatio

A Measurement of Rb using a Double Tagging Method

The fraction of Z to bbbar events in hadronic Z decays has been measured by the OPAL experiment using the data collected at LEP between 1992 and 1995. The Z to bbbar decays were tagged using displaced secondary vertices, and high momentum electrons and muons. Systematic uncertainties were reduced by measuring the b-tagging efficiency using a double tagging technique. Efficiency correlations between opposite hemispheres of an event are small, and are well understood through comparisons between real and simulated data samples. A value of Rb = 0.2178 +- 0.0011 +- 0.0013 was obtained, where the first error is statistical and the second systematic. The uncertainty on Rc, the fraction of Z to ccbar events in hadronic Z decays, is not included in the errors. The dependence on Rc is Delta(Rb)/Rb = -0.056*Delta(Rc)/Rc where Delta(Rc) is the deviation of Rc from the value 0.172 predicted by the Standard Model. The result for Rb agrees with the value of 0.2155 +- 0.0003 predicted by the Standard Model.Comment: 42 pages, LaTeX, 14 eps figures included, submitted to European Physical Journal