273 research outputs found
An autonomous, in situ light-dark bottle device for determining community respiration and net community production
Author Posting. © The Author(s), 2018. This is the author's version of the work. It is posted here under a nonexclusive, irrevocable, paid-up, worldwide license granted to WHOI. It is made available for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Limnology and Oceanography-Methods 16 (2018): 323-338, doi:10.1002/lom3.10247.We describe a new, autonomous, incubation-based instrument that is deployed in situ to
determine rates of gross community respiration and net community production in marine and aquatic
ecosystems. During deployments at a coastal pier and in the open ocean, the PHORCYS
(PHOtosynthesis and Respiration Comparison-Yielding System) captured dissolved oxygen fluxes
over hourly timescales that were missed by traditional methods. The instrument uses fluorescence-quenching optodes fitted into separate light and dark chambers; these are opened and closed with
piston-like actuators, allowing the instrument to make multiple, independent rate estimates in the
course of each deployment. Consistent with other studies in which methods purporting to measure
the same metabolic processes have yielded divergent results, respiration rate estimates from the
PHORCYS were systematically higher than those calculated for the same waters using a traditional
two-point Winkler titration technique. However, PHORCYS estimates of gross respiration agreed
generally with separate incubations in bottles fitted with optode sensor spots. An Appendix describes
a new method for estimating uncertainties in metabolic rates calculated from continuous dissolved
oxygen data. Multiple successful, unattended deployments of the PHORCYS represent a small step
toward fully autonomous observations of community metabolism. Yet the persistence of unexplained
disagreements among aquatic metabolic rate estimates — such as those we observed between rates
calculated with the PHORCYS and two existing, widely-accepted bottle-based methods — suggests
that a new community intercalibration effort is warranted to address lingering sources of error in
these critical measurements.This research was supported by the U.S.
National Science Foundation (awards OCE-1155438 to B.A.S.V.M., J.R.V., and R.G.K., and OCE-
1059884 to B.A.S.V.M.), the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution through a Cecil and Ida Green
Foundation Innovative Technology Award and an Interdisciplinary Science Award, and a U.S.
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) STAR Graduate Fellowship to J.R.C. under Fellowship
Assistance Agreement no. FP-91744301-0
Archaeal Sources of Intact Membrane Lipid Biomarkers in the Oxygen Deficient Zone of the Eastern Tropical South Pacific
Archaea are ubiquitous in the modern ocean where they are involved in the carbon and nitrogen biogeochemical cycles. However, the majority of Archaea remain uncultured. Archaeal specific membrane intact polar lipids (IPLs) are biomarkers of the presence and abundance of living cells. They comprise archaeol and glycerol dibiphytanyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGTs) attached to various polar headgroups. However, little is known of the IPLs of uncultured marine Archaea, complicating their use as biomarkers. Here, we analyzed suspended particulate matter (SPM) obtained in high depth resolution from a coastal and open ocean site in the eastern tropical South Pacific (ETSP) oxygen deficient zone (ODZ) with the aim of determining possible biological sources of archaeal IPL by comparing their composition by Ultra High Pressure Liquid Chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry with the archaeal diversity by 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing and their abundance by quantitative PCR. Thaumarchaeotal Marine Group I (MGI) closely related to Ca. Nitrosopelagicus and Nitrosopumilus dominated the oxic surface and upper ODZ water together with Marine Euryarchaeota Group II (MGII). High relative abundance of hexose phosphohexose- (HPH) crenarchaeol, the specific biomarker for living Thaumarchaeota, and HPH-GDGT-0, dihexose- (DH) GDGT-3 and -4 were detected in these water masses. Within the ODZ, DPANN (Diapherotrites, Parvarchaeota, Aenigmarchaeota, Nanoarchaeota, and Nanohaloarchaea) of the Woesearchaeota DHVE-6 group and Marine Euryarchaeota Group III (MGIII) were present together with a higher proportion of archaeol-based IPLs, which were likely made by MGIII, since DPANN archaea are supposedly unable to synthesize their own IPLs and possibly have a symbiotic or parasitic partnership with MGIII. Finally, in deep suboxic/oxic waters a different MGI population occurred with HPH-GDGT-1, -2 and DH-GDGT-0 and -crenarchaeol, indicating that here MGI synthesize membranes with IPLs in a different relative abundance which could be attributed to the different detected population or to an environmental adaptation. Our study sheds light on the complex archaeal community of one of the most prominent ODZs and on the IPL biomarkers they potentially synthesize
Wannier-function description of the electronic polarization and infrared absorption of high-pressure hydrogen
We have constructed maximally-localized Wannier functions for prototype
structures of solid molecular hydrogen under pressure, starting from LDA and
tight-binding Bloch wave functions. Each occupied Wannier function can be
associated with two paired protons, defining a ``Wannier molecule''. The sum of
the dipole moments of these ``molecules'' always gives the correct macroscopic
polarization, even under strong compression, when the overlap between nearby
Wannier functions becomes significant. We find that at megabar pressures the
contributions to the dipoles arising from the overlapping tails of the Wannier
functions is very large. The strong vibron infrared absorption experimentally
observed in phase III, above ~ 150 GPa, is analyzed in terms of the
vibron-induced fluctuations of the Wannier dipoles. We decompose these
fluctuations into ``static'' and ``dynamical'' contributions, and find that at
such high densities the latter term, which increases much more steeply with
pressure, is dominant.Comment: 17 pages, two-column style with 14 postscript figures embedded. Uses
REVTEX and epsf macro
Enhanced Aquatic Respiration Associated With Mixing of Clearwater Tributary and Turbid Amazon River Waters
When water bodies with unique biogeochemical constituents mix together there is potential for diverse responses by aquatic microbial communities and associated ecosystem functions. Here we evaluate bulk respiration under varying mixtures of turbid Amazon River water and two lowland tributaries—the Tapajós and Xingu rivers—based on O2 drawdown in dark rotating incubation chambers. Experiments containing 5, 17, 33, and 50% tributary water mixed with Amazon River water were performed for the Tapajós and Xingu rivers at three different rotation velocities (0, 0.22, and 0.66 m s−1) during the falling water period. Pseudo first order reaction coefficients (k′), a measure of respiration potential, ranged from −0.15 to −1.10 d−1, corresponding to respiration rates from 1.0 to 8.1 mg O2 L d−1. k′-values consistently increased with the rate of chamber rotation, and also was generally higher in the tributary-mainstem mixtures compared to pure endmembers. For both the Tapajós and Xingu rivers, the 17% mixture of tributary water yielded maximal k′-values, which were up to 2.9 and 2.2 times greater than in the tributary endmembers, respectively. The 50% mixtures, on the other hand, did not result in large increases in k′. We hypothesize that enhanced respiration potential after mixing unique water is driven, in part, by microbial priming effects that have been previously identified on a molecular level for these rivers. The results of this study suggest that there may be an optimal mixture for priming effects to occur in terms of the relative abundance of “priming” and “primed” substrates
Real-time Relaxation and Kinetics in Hot Scalar QED: Landau Damping
The real time evolution of field condensates with soft length scales
k^{-1}>(eT)^{-1} is solved in hot scalar electrodynamics, with a view towards
understanding relaxational phenomena in the QGP and the electroweak plasma. We
find that transverse gauge invariant non-equilibrium expectation values of
fields relax via {\em power laws} to asymptotic amplitudes that are determined
by the quasiparticle poles. The long time relaxational dynamics and relevant
time scales are determined by the behaviour of the retarded self-energy not at
the small frequencies, but at the Landau damping thresholds. This explains the
presence of power laws and not of exponential decay. Furthermore, we derive the
influence functional, the Langevin equation and the fluctuation-dissipation
theorem for the soft modes, identifying the correlation functions that emerge
in the classical limit. We show that a Markovian approximation fails to
describe the dynamics {\em both} at short and long times. We also introduce a
novel kinetic approach that goes beyond the standard Boltzmann equation and
incorporates off-shell processes and find that the distribution function for
soft quasiparticles relaxes with a power law through Landau damping. We also
find an unusual dressing dynamics of bare particles and anomalous (logarithmic)
relaxation of hard quasiparticles.Comment: 41 pages, 5 figures, uses revtex, replaced with version to appear in
Phys. Rev.
Nrf2-interacting nutrients and COVID-19 : time for research to develop adaptation strategies
There are large between- and within-country variations in COVID-19 death rates. Some very low death rate settings such as Eastern Asia, Central Europe, the Balkans and Africa have a common feature of eating large quantities of fermented foods whose intake is associated with the activation of the Nrf2 (Nuclear factor (erythroid-derived 2)-like 2) anti-oxidant transcription factor. There are many Nrf2-interacting nutrients (berberine, curcumin, epigallocatechin gallate, genistein, quercetin, resveratrol, sulforaphane) that all act similarly to reduce insulin resistance, endothelial damage, lung injury and cytokine storm. They also act on the same mechanisms (mTOR: Mammalian target of rapamycin, PPAR gamma:Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor, NF kappa B: Nuclear factor kappa B, ERK: Extracellular signal-regulated kinases and eIF2 alpha:Elongation initiation factor 2 alpha). They may as a result be important in mitigating the severity of COVID-19, acting through the endoplasmic reticulum stress or ACE-Angiotensin-II-AT(1)R axis (AT(1)R) pathway. Many Nrf2-interacting nutrients are also interacting with TRPA1 and/or TRPV1. Interestingly, geographical areas with very low COVID-19 mortality are those with the lowest prevalence of obesity (Sub-Saharan Africa and Asia). It is tempting to propose that Nrf2-interacting foods and nutrients can re-balance insulin resistance and have a significant effect on COVID-19 severity. It is therefore possible that the intake of these foods may restore an optimal natural balance for the Nrf2 pathway and may be of interest in the mitigation of COVID-19 severity
- …