Geodesy and metrology with a transportable optical clock

partially_open24openGrotti, Jacopo; Koller, Silvio; Vogt, Stefan; Häfner, Sebastian; Sterr, Uwe; Lisdat, Christian; Denker, Heiner; Voigt, Christian; Timmen, Ludger; Rolland, Antoine; Baynes, Fred N.; Margolis, Helen S.; Zampaolo, Michel; Thoumany, Pierre; Pizzocaro, Marco; Rauf, Benjamin; Bregolin, Filippo; Tampellini, Anna; Barbieri, Piero; Zucco, Massimo; Costanzo, Giovanni A.; Clivati, Cecilia; Levi, Filippo; Calonico, DavideGrotti, Jacopo; Koller, Silvio; Vogt, Stefan; Häfner, Sebastian; Sterr, Uwe; Lisdat, Christian; Denker, Heiner; Voigt, Christian; Timmen, Ludger; Rolland, Antoine; Baynes, Fred N.; Margolis, Helen S.; Zampaolo, Michel; Thoumany, Pierre; Pizzocaro, Marco; Rauf, Benjamin; Bregolin, Filippo; Tampellini, Anna; Barbieri, Piero; Zucco, Massimo; Costanzo, Giovanni A.; Clivati, Cecilia; Levi, Filippo; Calonico, David

The role of natural science collections in the biomonitoring of environmental contaminants in apex predators in support of the EU's zero pollution ambition

The chemical industry is the leading sector in the EU in terms of added value. However, contaminants pose a major threat and significant costs to the environment and human health. While EU legislation and international conventions aim to reduce this threat, regulators struggle to assess and manage chemical risks, given the vast number of substances involved and the lack of data on exposure and hazards. The European Green Deal sets a 'zero pollution ambition for a toxic free environment' by 2050 and the EU Chemicals Strategy calls for increased monitoring of chemicals in the environment. Monitoring of contaminants in biota can, inter alia: provide regulators with early warning of bioaccumulation problems with chemicals of emerging concern; trigger risk assessment of persistent, bioaccumulative and toxic substances; enable risk assessment of chemical mixtures in biota; enable risk assessment of mixtures; and enable assessment of the effectiveness of risk management measures and of chemicals regulations overall. A number of these purposes are to be addressed under the recently launched European Partnership for Risk Assessment of Chemicals (PARC). Apex predators are of particular value to biomonitoring. Securing sufficient data at European scale implies large-scale, long-term monitoring and a steady supply of large numbers of fresh apex predator tissue samples from across Europe. Natural science collections are very well-placed to supply these. Pan-European monitoring requires effective coordination among field organisations, collections and analytical laboratories for the flow of required specimens, processing and storage of specimens and tissue samples, contaminant analyses delivering pan-European data sets, and provision of specimen and population contextual data. Collections are well-placed to coordinate this. The COST Action European Raptor Biomonitoring Facility provides a well-developed model showing how this can work, integrating a European Raptor Biomonitoring Scheme, Specimen Bank and Sampling Programme. Simultaneously, the EU-funded LIFE APEX has demonstrated a range of regulatory applications using cutting-edge analytical techniques. PARC plans to make best use of such sampling and biomonitoring programmes. Collections are poised to play a critical role in supporting PARC objectives and thereby contribute to delivery of the EU's zero-pollution ambition.Non peer reviewe

Catalases Are NAD(P)H-Dependent Tellurite Reductases

Reactive oxygen species damage intracellular targets and are implicated in cancer, genetic disease, mutagenesis, and aging. Catalases are among the key enzymatic defenses against one of the most physiologically abundant reactive oxygen species, hydrogen peroxide. The well-studied, heme-dependent catalases accelerate the rate of the dismutation of peroxide to molecular oxygen and water with near kinetic perfection. Many catalases also bind the cofactors NADPH and NADH tenaciously, but, surprisingly, NAD(P)H is not required for their dismutase activity. Although NAD(P)H protects bovine catalase against oxidative damage by its peroxide substrate, the catalytic role of the nicotinamide cofactor in the function of this enzyme has remained a biochemical mystery to date. Anions formed by heavy metal oxides are among the most highly reactive, natural oxidizing agents. Here, we show that a natural isolate of Staphylococcus epidermidis resistant to tellurite detoxifies this anion thanks to a novel activity of its catalase, and that a subset of both bacterial and mammalian catalases carry out the NAD(P)H-dependent reduction of soluble tellurite ion (TeO(3) (2−)) to the less toxic, insoluble metal, tellurium (Te°), in vitro. An Escherichia coli mutant defective in the KatG catalase/peroxidase is sensitive to tellurite, and expression of the S. epidermidis catalase gene in a heterologous E. coli host confers increased resistance to tellurite as well as to hydrogen peroxide in vivo, arguing that S. epidermidis catalase provides a physiological line of defense against both of these strong oxidizing agents. Kinetic studies reveal that bovine catalase reduces tellurite with a low Michaelis-Menten constant, a result suggesting that tellurite is among the natural substrates of this enzyme. The reduction of tellurite by bovine catalase occurs at the expense of producing the highly reactive superoxide radical

Disease: A Hitherto Unexplored Constraint on the Spread of Dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) in Pre-Columbian South America

Although debate continues, there is agreement that dogs (Canis lupus familiaris) were first domesticated in Eurasia, spreading from there to other parts of the world. However, while that expansion already extended as far as Europe, China, and North America by the early Holocene, dogs spread into (and south of) the tropics only much later. In South America, for example, the earliest well attested instances of their presence do not reach back much beyond 3000 cal. BC, and dogs were still absent from large parts of the continent – Amazonia, the Gran Chaco, and much of the Southern Cone – at European contact. Previous explanations for these patterns have focused on cultural choice, the unsuitability of dogs for hunting certain kinds of tropical forest prey, and otherwise unspecified environmental hazards, while acknowledging that Neotropical lowland forests witness high rates of canine mortality. Building on previous work in Sub-Saharan Africa (Mitchell 2015) and noting that the dog’s closest relatives, the grey wolf (C. lupus) and the coyote (C. latrans), were likewise absent from South and most of Central America in Pre- Columbian times, this paper explores instead the possibility that infectious disease constrained the spread of dogs into Neotropical environments. Four diseases are considered, all likely to be native and/or endemic to South America: canine distemper, canine trypanosomiasis, canine rangeliosis, and canine visceral leishmaniasis caused by infection with Leishmania amazonensis and L. colombiensis. The paper concludes by suggesting ways in which the hypothesis that disease constrained the expansion of dogs into South America can be developed further

Compensation for matrix effects in ICP-AES by using air segmented liquid microsample introduction. The role of the spray chamber

The combination of sample injection into an air carrier stream (i.e., air segmentation) with a low sample consumption system has been evaluated for the analysis of microsamples through ICP-AES. A PFA micronebulizer has been coupled to: (i), a double pass spray chamber; (ii), a Cinnabar cyclonic spray chamber; and (iii), a torch integrated sample introduction system, TISIS. Three matrices have been studied: in addition to water two concentrated acid solutions (2 mol l–1 nitric acid and 1.7 mol l–1 acetic acid) and Na 5,000 µg ml–1. A simulation of the evolution of the drop size distributions of the aerosols with time was carried out in order to evaluate the extent of solvent evaporation inside the chamber. The total mass of solvent evaporated inside the chamber was estimated and it was concluded that, at 25 °C, about 4–6 s residence time were required to promote the maximum evaporation of the solvent. In order to ensure this, discrete sample introduction into an air carrier stream (i.e., air segmentation) was used. Narrow peaks (i.e., with a full width at half maximum, FWHM, as short as 10 s) were obtained for a 10 µl injected sample. The peaks found for the Cinnabar and TISIS were narrower than those for the double pass spray chamber. More importantly, the interferences caused by inorganic as well as organic matrices were less severe in discrete than in continuous mode. The theoretical simulations allowed explanation of these results in terms of the enhancement of the solvent evaporation both for water and matrices in this operating mode. The enhanced solvent evaporation with respect to the situation in continuous mode minimized differences in analyte transport towards the plasma induced by these compounds. Despite this, in discrete mode a residual matrix effect was found that was attributed to the aerosol transport process. Internal standardization (IS) was applied to transient signals and the interferences were compensated for in virtually all the cases. Good results were obtained for the four emission lines taken as internal standards (i.e., Mg 280.270, Co 228.616, Cr 205.552 and Cu 324.754). However, for acetic acid and a few lines, IS was not efficient for removing interferences. The methodology was validated by analyzing two reference solid samples of foods (i.e., bovine liver and mussel tissue). By using Cd 214.438 as internal standard and under discrete mode 100% recoveries were found

Influence of organic complexation on dissolved iron distribution in East Antarctic pack ice (SIPEX-2)

Since Antarctic sea ice covers an area larger than the Antarctic continent itself, the discovery that it can fertilize the Southern Ocean with iron (Fe) has fostered a new breadth of research in recent years. In order to test the hypothesis that Fe-binding organic ligands control the distribution of dissolved iron (DFe) in Antarctic pack ice, iron organic speciation was investigated in samples collected during the Sea Ice Physics and Ecosystem eXperiment-2 (SIPEX-2) voyage in Austral winter/spring 2012. Dissolved Fe was measured using sector field inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry, and iron organic speciation parameters were determined by competitive ligand equilibration - adsorptive cathodic stripping voltammetry method, using 1-nitroso-2-naphthol (NN) as the added ligand. The concentration of Fe-binding organic ligands (Lt) ranged from 4.9 nM to 41 nM (average of 14.9 ± 8.4 nM, n = 34), and was always higher than the corresponding DFe (average of 7.5 ± 4.5 nM, n = 34). Conditional stability constants (log K′Fe’L = 11.7–13.0) were similar to those previously observed in land-fast ice. Concentrations of DFe and Lt displayed similar depth profiles; their strong correlation (Spearman's ρ = 0.80, p 1). Estimates showed that pack ice would have released 0.45 μmol/m2/d of Lt during spring melt, 0.21 μmol/m2/d of which are free from Fe binding, and hence available for further complexation. Therefore, it is suggested that this excess of Fe-free ligands may play a key role in controlling the solubility of free or newly formed Fe in surface waters before the peak of primary production, outcompeting the Fe-binding organic ligands already present in seawater