Techniques for the non-destructive and continuous analysis of sediment cores. Application in the Iberian continental margin

Sediment sequences are the most valuable record of long-term environmental conditions at local, regional and/or global scales. Consequently, they are amongst the best archives of the climatic and oceanographic history of the Earth. In the last few decades a strong effort has been made, both in terms of quantity and quality, to improve our knowledge regarding the evolution of our planet from marine and lake sediment records, and also from other records such as ice cores. Such an effort requires reinforcing the geographical coverage and achieving the highest possible robustness in the reconstruction of past environments. Such a target requires the optimization of the time resolution of the records and reconstructions so that fast, high frequency shifts, such as those occurring nowadays due to the on-going global warming, can be disentangled. Beyond paleoenvironmental research, other disciplines have also contributed significantly to the fast growing number of sediment cores already available worldwide. Knowing the physical state and the chemical composition of sedimentary deposits is essential for land management purposes and for many industrial applications. A number of key technological developments are now allowing the acquisition for the first time of massive amounts of multiple parameters from sediment cores in a non-destructive, fast, continuous, repetitive and high-resolution form. In this paper we provide an overview of the state-of-the-art continuous and non-destructive analytical techniques used by the geoscientific community for the study of sediment cores and we present some examples of the application of these methods in several studies carried out around the Iberian Margin

Bioerosion and palaeoecological association of osteophagous insects in the Maastrichtian dinosaur Arenysaurus ardevoli

Bioerosions produced by the osteophagous diet of animals that fed on dinosaur bones are very scarce in the European fossil record. Herein we present bioerosion on hadrosaurid remains from the Maastrichtian Tremp Formation of the Pyrenean Basin, which is only the second such case recorded from the Iberian-Occitan Plate besides a sauropod from the Jurassic-Cretaceous of Valencia. The hadrosaurid fossil record is particularly rich in the Blasi sites of the Tremp Formation located in the municipality of Arén (Huesca, Spain). In this article, bones referred to the hadrosaurid Arenysaurus ardevoli from the Blasi-3 site are analysed to shed light on the palaeoenvironment and on the presence of a palaeoecological interaction between the hadrosaurid carcase and osteophagous tracemakers. Bioerosions recorded on the bones comprise tunnels, roundish holes, and straight notches, similar to the traces attributed to necrophagous insects (cf. Cuniculichnus seilacheri). Here, we record the first instance of the activity of these animals on dinosaur bones in the Upper Cretaceous of the Ibero-Occitan Plate. The results presented lead us to infer that the Arenysaurus bones were possibly transported by a storm or similar event to the Blasi-3 site, where they were exposed to post-mortem biotic interactions (eaten and partially decomposed by dermestid beetles) for a prolonged time period before they were completely buried. © 2021 The Authors. Lethaia published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Lethaia Foundatio

Optimización de la determinación por polarografía diferencial de impulsos de ácido ascórbico en fórmulas para lactantes

El objeto del estudio es la selección de las condiciones adecuadas para la preparación de la muestra y las instrumentalespara la determinación de ácido ascórbico en fórmulas de base láctea para lactantes por polarografía diferencial deimpulsos. La bondad del método se estima determinando los parámetros analíticos. Se obtiene un límite de detecciónequivalente a 15 mg de ácido ascórbico por 100 g de fórmula, una respuesta lineal en el intervalo de 15 a 550 mgde ácido ascórbico por 100g de muestra, una precisión interdía del 4,33% y una recuperación del 95%, valores queindican la bondad del método para el fin propuesto

Optimization of a differential pulse polarography determination of ascorbic acid in infant formulas

El objeto del estudio es la selección de las condiciones adecuadas para la preparación de la muestra y las instrumentales para la determinación de ácido ascórbico en fórmulas de base láctea para lactantes por polarografía diferencial de impulsos. La bondad del método se estima determinando los parámetros analíticos. Se obtiene un límite de detección equivalente a 15 mg de ácido ascórbico por 100 g de fórmula, una respuesta lineal en el intervalo de 15 a 550 mg de ácido ascórbico por 100g de muestra, una precisión interdía del 4,33% y una recuperación del 95%, valores que indican la bondad del método para el fin propuesto.The aim of the study was to select the adequate sample treatment and instrumental conditions to measure, by means of differential pulse polarography, ascorbic acid content in milk-based infant formulas. Once selected the quality of the method was estimated through the analytical parameters. A detection limit equivalent to 15 mg of ascorbic acid per 100g formula, a linear response in the range from 15 to 550 mg of ascorbic acid per 100g sample, an intra day precision of 4.33% and an a recovery of 95%, indicated the method was appropriate for achieving the purpose mentioned.Este trabajo forma parte del proyecto financiado por FEDER + ID (Ref. 1FD97-0284)

Was there a common hydrological pattern in the Iberian Peninsula region during the medieval Climate anomaly?

Climate variability reconstructions for the last millennium from several Iberian lake and marine records shed light on the spatial and temporal hydroclimate and associated climate mechanisms during the Medieval Climate Anomaly

Bridging topological and functional information in protein interaction networks by short loops profiling

Protein-protein interaction networks (PPINs) have been employed to identify potential novel interconnections between proteins as well as crucial cellular functions. In this study we identify fundamental principles of PPIN topologies by analysing network motifs of short loops, which are small cyclic interactions of between 3 and 6 proteins. We compared 30 PPINs with corresponding randomised null models and examined the occurrence of common biological functions in loops extracted from a cross-validated high-confidence dataset of 622 human protein complexes. We demonstrate that loops are an intrinsic feature of PPINs and that specific cell functions are predominantly performed by loops of different lengths. Topologically, we find that loops are strongly related to the accuracy of PPINs and define a core of interactions with high resilience. The identification of this core and the analysis of loop composition are promising tools to assess PPIN quality and to uncover possible biases from experimental detection methods. More than 96% of loops share at least one biological function, with enrichment of cellular functions related to mRNA metabolic processing and the cell cycle. Our analyses suggest that these motifs can be used in the design of targeted experiments for functional phenotype detection.This research was supported by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BB/H018409/1 to AP, ACCC and FF, and BB/J016284/1 to NSBT) and by the Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research (to NSBT and FF). SSC is funded by a Leukaemia & Lymphoma Research Gordon Piller PhD Studentship