Clinker, pumice, scoria, or paralava? Vesicular artifacts of the lower Missouri basin

Abrading artifacts made of vesicular (porous) rock are not uncommon at archaeological sites along the Missouri River and adjacent areas. Various terms have been used to describe this material including pumice, scoria, clinker, and floatstone. Each of these terms implies different geologic origins (volcanic vs. non-volcanic) and affects interpretation of the potential modes of transport. Identification of the source area of these materials may provide significant information regarding past human movements and activities. This study focuses on vesicular artifacts in the central Plains and in particular from the Leary site (25RH1) in the southeastern corner of Nebraska. Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) was used to identify the chemical compositions of a subset of the Leary artifacts and comparative geologic samples of volcanic and metasedimentary origin. The results imply that the Leary (and likely many other) vesicular artifacts from the central Plains are non-volcanic in origin. The raw material from which these artifacts were made is more properly termed "paralava" and derives from outcrops in the northern Plains. Historical documents suggest that this buoyant material was transported naturally be the Missouri River as "floatstone"

Identification of genes required for eye development by high-throughput screening of mouse knockouts.

Despite advances in next generation sequencing technologies, determining the genetic basis of ocular disease remains a major challenge due to the limited access and prohibitive cost of human forward genetics. Thus, less than 4,000 genes currently have available phenotype information for any organ system. Here we report the ophthalmic findings from the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium, a large-scale functional genetic screen with the goal of generating and phenotyping a null mutant for every mouse gene. Of 4364 genes evaluated, 347 were identified to influence ocular phenotypes, 75% of which are entirely novel in ocular pathology. This discovery greatly increases the current number of genes known to contribute to ophthalmic disease, and it is likely that many of the genes will subsequently prove to be important in human ocular development and disease

Author Correction: Identification of genes required for eye development by high-throughput screening of mouse knockouts (Communications Biology, (2018), 1, 1, (236), 10.1038/s42003-018-0226-0).

This is a U.S. government work and not under copyright protection in the U.S.; foreign copyright protection may apply. In the original published version of the article, Valerie Vancollie was mistakenly omitted from the list of members of the International Mouse Phenotyping Consortium. In addition, recognition of funding from Wellcome Trust grant WT098051 was mistakenly omitted from the Acknowledgements.The errors have been corrected in both the PDF and HTML versions of the paper