High resolution stable isotope analysis of a Tasmanian speleothem

High resolution oxygen and carbon isotope analyses of part of a uniform diameter stalagmite from a cave in northern Tasmania have been used to study the climatic transition from stadial to interstadial conditions during the early Last Glacial (109-95 ka). A significant change in oxygen isotope values suggests that temperature warmed rapidly by approximately 2°-3°C between 100 and 97 ka. A decrease in carbon isotope values between 101 and 98 ka indicates that moisture availability was increasing slightly in advance of rising temperature

Discontinuous gullying of the Tea Tree Rivulet, Buckland, eastern Tasmania

The recent development of discontinuous gullying appears to be largely due to clearing of the natural floodplain vegetation in the first half of the 19th century although climatic factors may have contributed in a minor way. Rate of headcut migration is related to the frequency of flood flows. which in turn is a function of the frequency of occurrence of large rains. The upward trend in the number of small rains at least since 1915 is thought to have reduced sediment yields through its beneficial influence on the catchment vegetation and may be another factor favouring acclerated erosion of the floodplain. In future studies of unstable stream channels in alluvial deposits a distinction should be made between continuous trenches and discontinuous gullies. When discussing the effect Of vegetation changes on stream behaviour a distinction should always be made between the vegetation of the catchment slopesandi that of theffnodplaln or alluvial fan in which the channel under study is situated since the same change in both may have opposite effects on the behaviour of the stream

Late Pleistocene bone deposits from a cave in the Florentine Valley, Tasmania

A limestone shelter cave in the Florentine Valley, south-central Tasmania, has yielded vertebrate remains. Two of the three sites excavated have yielded evidence of the presence of elements of the Pleistocene megafauna. The morphology and stratigraphy of the cave is described. Pleistocene deposits are shown to consist of two units. A lower unit laid down by water with an admixture of roof fall and an upper unit of angular limestone detritus derived from physical weathering within the cave entrance. C-14 dating indicates a late Pleistocene age for material collected from one of the sites. Its stratigraphic relationship to the other sites is discussed

A reconnaissance survey of the glaciation of Macquarie Island

The paper reviews previous ideas on the glaciation of Macquarie Island and gives an account of glacial landforms observed during a brief visit in 1972. The field evidence indicates that Macquarie Island was not completely overridden in an easterly direction by an ice sheet which developed on a broad submarine shelf to the west as advocated by L.R. Blake (in Mawson 1943). Local plateau, valley and cirque glaciers accumulated in depressions, basins and valleys on the surface of the plateau and at their maximum extent occupied about 40% of the island. A migration of the Antarctic Convergence from 150 - 200 km south of the island to north, of the island would depress sea level temperatures by 3-4 degrees; an amount adequate to account for the modest glaciation of the plateau surface. The majority of plant and animal species probably immigrated prior to the last glaciation, which is of Wisconsin age, and survived in non-glaciated areas of the present island and adjacent shelf to the west

SL2: an interactive webtool for modeling of missing segments in proteins

SuperLooper2 (SL2) (http://proteinformatics.charite.de/sl2) is the updated version of our previous web-server SuperLooper, a fragment based tool for the prediction and interactive placement of loop structures into globular and helical membrane proteins. In comparison to our previous version, SL2 benefits from both a considerably enlarged database of fragments derived from high-resolution 3D protein structures of globular and helical membrane proteins, and the integration of a new protein viewer. The database, now with double the content, significantly improved the coverage of fragment conformations and prediction quality. The employment of the NGL viewer for visualization of the protein under investigation and interactive selection of appropriate loops makes SL2 independent of third-party plug-ins and additional installations