2,112 research outputs found

    Terrigenous Fe input and biogenic sedimentation in the glacial and interglacial equatorial Pacific Ocean

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    Many ocean regions important to the global carbon budget, including the equatorial Pacific Ocean, have low chlorophyll concentrations despite high levels of conventional nutrients. Iron may instead be the limiting nutrient, and elevated input of terrigenous Fe during windy glacial episodes has been hypothesized to stimulate oceanic productivity through time and thus regulate the oceanic and atmospheric CO2 balance. To test whether particulate Fe input is related to the accumulation of biogenic matter in one important low chlorophyll‐high nutrient area, that is, the equatorial Pacific Ocean, we present results from a suite of sediment cores that collectively record biogenic deposition through the last six glacial‐interglacial cycles (∌600,000 years). Our data set includes new chemical data on total Fe, terrigenous, and biogenic components in three cores as well as previously published mineralogic records of eolian input to the region. Chemical, spectral, and stratigraphic analysis indicates that (1) terrigenous input to the region shows no consistent pattern of either glacial or interglacial maxima, (2) the accumulation of particulate Fe is closely related to the accumulation of terrigenous matter (linear r2 = 0.81–0.98), (3) there are no coherent spectral relationships between Fe input and glacial periodicity (i.e., ÎŽ18O) in any of the orbital frequency bands, (4) the linear and cross‐spectral correlations between Fe or eolian input and CaCO3 concentration are most commonly the strongest observed relationships between Fe and any biogenic component, yet indicate a largely inverse pattern, with higher Fe being associated with low CaCO3, (5) there is no consistent linear r2 correlation or spectral coherence between the accumulation of Fe and that of CaCO3, Corg, or opal. Thus in total there is no relationship between terrigenous Fe input and sedimentary sequestering of carbon. Additionally, although we cannot specifically address the potential for changes in solubility of the terrigenous fraction that may be driven by a terrigenous compositional change, the Fe/Ti ratio (which monitors first‐order mineralogic changes) records only slight variations that also are linearly and spectrally unrelated to glacial periodicity, the bulk Fe flux, and the accumulation of any biogenic component. Finally, we find that the paleoceanographic flux of Fe is several order‐of‐magnitudes larger than modern observations of eolian Fe input, suggesting that the long‐term importance of Fe input by dust storms (which deliver Fe on the order of the sedimentary burial) may be underestimated. The removal of particulate terrigenous Fe from the recently discovered source within the Equatorial Undercurrent, however, remains unquantified and may also prove significant

    The Behavior of Granular Materials under Cyclic Shear

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    The design and development of a parallel plate shear cell for the study of large scale shear flows in granular materials is presented. The parallel plate geometry allows for shear studies without the effects of curvature found in the more common Couette experiments. A system of independently movable slats creates a well with side walls that deform in response to the motions of grains within the pack. This allows for true parallel plate shear with minimal interference from the containing geometry. The motions of the side walls also allow for a direct measurement of the velocity profile across the granular pack. Results are presented for applying this system to the study of transients in granular shear and for shear-induced crystallization. Initial shear profiles are found to vary from packing to packing, ranging from a linear profile across the entire system to an exponential decay with a width of approximately 6 bead diameters. As the system is sheared, the velocity profile becomes much sharper, resembling an exponential decay with a width of roughly 3 bead diameters. Further shearing produces velocity profiles which can no longer be fit to an exponential decay, but are better represented as a Gaussian decay or error function profile. Cyclic shear is found to produce large scale ordering of the granular pack, which has a profound impact on the shear profile. There exist periods of time in which there is slipping between layers as well as periods of time in which the layered particles lock together resulting in very little relative motion.Comment: 10 pages including 12 figure

    Enskog Theory for Polydisperse Granular Mixtures. I. Navier-Stokes order Transport

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    A hydrodynamic description for an ss-component mixture of inelastic, smooth hard disks (two dimensions) or spheres (three dimensions) is derived based on the revised Enskog theory for the single-particle velocity distribution functions. In this first portion of the two-part series, the macroscopic balance equations for mass, momentum, and energy are derived. Constitutive equations are calculated from exact expressions for the fluxes by a Chapman-Enskog expansion carried out to first order in spatial gradients, thereby resulting in a Navier-Stokes order theory. Within this context of small gradients, the theory is applicable to a wide range of restitution coefficients and densities. The resulting integral-differential equations for the zeroth- and first-order approximations of the distribution functions are given in exact form. An approximate solution to these equations is required for practical purposes in order to cast the constitutive quantities as algebraic functions of the macroscopic variables; this task is described in the companion paper.Comment: 36 pages, to be published in Phys. Rev.

    Decoding Continuous Variables from Neuroimaging Data: Basic and Clinical Applications

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    The application of statistical machine learning techniques to neuroimaging data has allowed researchers to decode the cognitive and disease states of participants. The majority of studies using these techniques have focused on pattern classification to decode the type of object a participant is viewing, the type of cognitive task a participant is completing, or the disease state of a participant's brain. However, an emerging body of literature is extending these classification studies to the decoding of values of continuous variables (such as age, cognitive characteristics, or neuropsychological state) using high-dimensional regression methods. This review details the methods used in such analyses and describes recent results. We provide specific examples of studies which have used this approach to answer novel questions about age and cognitive and disease states. We conclude that while there is still much to learn about these methods, they provide useful information about the relationship between neural activity and age, cognitive state, and disease state, which could not have been obtained using traditional univariate analytical methods

    Evaluation Capacity Building in Pretrial Diversion Services: A Case Study

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    Despite increasing use of adult pretrial diversion programs in recent years, the limited capacity to produce, analyze, and translate evaluation data in pretrial diversion programs has frequently resulted in policy and programmatic decisions being made on the basis of little or no empirical information. This paper presents a case study of the development of an evaluation system for the Alaska Pretrial Intervention (PTI) program of the Alaska Department of Law which can generate timely results for policymaking as well as monitor staff productivity.Alaska Department of LawIntroduction / Alaska Pretrial Program / Development of an Evaluation Effort / Conclusions / Note / Bibliography / Map of PTI program location

    Decoding Developmental Differences and Individual Variability in Response Inhibition Through Predictive Analyses Across Individuals

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    Response inhibition is thought to improve throughout childhood and into adulthood. Despite the relationship between age and the ability to stop ongoing behavior, questions remain regarding whether these age-related changes reflect improvements in response inhibition or in other factors that contribute to response performance variability. Functional neuroimaging data shows age-related changes in neural activity during response inhibition. While traditional methods of exploring neuroimaging data are limited to determining correlational relationships, newer methods can determine predictability and can begin to answer these questions. Therefore, the goal of the current study was to determine which aspects of neural function predict individual differences in age, inhibitory function, response speed, and response time variability. We administered a stop-signal task requiring rapid inhibition of ongoing motor responses to healthy participants aged 9–30. We conducted a standard analysis using GLM and a predictive analysis using high-dimensional regression methods. During successful response inhibition we found regions typically involved in motor control, such as the ACC and striatum, that were correlated with either age, response inhibition (as indexed by stop-signal reaction time; SSRT), response speed, or response time variability. However, when examining which variables neural data could predict, we found that age and SSRT, but not speed or variability of response execution, were predicted by neural activity during successful response inhibition. This predictive relationship provides novel evidence that developmental differences and individual differences in response inhibition are related specifically to inhibitory processes. More generally, this study demonstrates a new approach to identifying the neurocognitive bases of individual differences

    Rapid recovery of genetic diversity of stomatopod populations on Krakatau : temporal and spatial scales of marine larval dispersal

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    Author Posting. © Royal Society, 2002. This article is posted here by permission of Royal Society for personal use, not for redistribution. The definitive version was published in Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 269 (2002): 1591-1597, doi:10.1098/rspb.2002.2026.Although the recovery of terrestrial communities shattered by the massive eruption of Krakatau in 1883 has been well chronicled, the fate of marine populations has been largely ignored. We examined patterns of genetic diversity in populations of two coral reef-dwelling mantis shrimp, Haptosquilla pulchella and Haptosquilla glyptocercus (Stomatopoda: Protosquillidae) , on the islands of Anak Krakatau and Rakata. Genetic surveys of mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase c (subunit 1) in these populations revealed remarkably high levels of haplotypic and nucleotide diversity that were comparable with undisturbed populations throughout the Indo-Pacific. Recolonization and rapid recovery of genetic diversity in the Krakatau populations indicates that larval dispersal from multiple and diverse source populations contributes substantially to the demographics of local populations over intermediate temporal (tens to hundreds of years) and spatial scales (tens to hundreds of kilometres). Natural experiments such as Krakatau provide an excellent mechanism to investigate marine larval dispersal and connectivity. Results from stomatopods indicate that marine reserves should be spaced no more than 50-100 km apart to facilitate ecological connectivity via larval dispersal.P.H.B. acknowledges support of a NSF Minority Postdoctoral Fellowship. Research was funded by grants to S.R.P. A Putnam grant supported fieldwork
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