Sediment source fingerprinting: benchmarking recent outputs, remaining challenges and emerging themes

Abstract: Purpose: This review of sediment source fingerprinting assesses the current state-of-the-art, remaining challenges and emerging themes. It combines inputs from international scientists either with track records in the approach or with expertise relevant to progressing the science. Methods: Web of Science and Google Scholar were used to review published papers spanning the period 2013–2019, inclusive, to confirm publication trends in quantities of papers by study area country and the types of tracers used. The most recent (2018–2019, inclusive) papers were also benchmarked using a methodological decision-tree published in 2017. Scope: Areas requiring further research and international consensus on methodological detail are reviewed, and these comprise spatial variability in tracers and corresponding sampling implications for end-members, temporal variability in tracers and sampling implications for end-members and target sediment, tracer conservation and knowledge-based pre-selection, the physico-chemical basis for source discrimination and dissemination of fingerprinting results to stakeholders. Emerging themes are also discussed: novel tracers, concentration-dependence for biomarkers, combining sediment fingerprinting and age-dating, applications to sediment-bound pollutants, incorporation of supportive spatial information to augment discrimination and modelling, aeolian sediment source fingerprinting, integration with process-based models and development of open-access software tools for data processing. Conclusions: The popularity of sediment source fingerprinting continues on an upward trend globally, but with this growth comes issues surrounding lack of standardisation and procedural diversity. Nonetheless, the last 2 years have also evidenced growing uptake of critical requirements for robust applications and this review is intended to signpost investigators, both old and new, towards these benchmarks and remaining research challenges for, and emerging options for different applications of, the fingerprinting approach

The circulating SARS-CoV-2 spike variant N439K maintains fitness while evading antibody-mediated immunity

SARS-CoV-2 can mutate to evade immunity, with consequences for the efficacy of emerging vaccines and antibody therapeutics. Herein we demonstrate that the immunodominant SARS-CoV-2 spike (S) receptor binding motif (RBM) is the most divergent region of S, and provide epidemiological, clinical, and molecular characterization of a prevalent RBM variant, N439K. We demonstrate that N439K S protein has enhanced binding affinity to the hACE2 receptor, and that N439K virus has similar clinical outcomes and in vitro replication fitness as compared to wild- type. We observed that the N439K mutation resulted in immune escape from a panel of neutralizing monoclonal antibodies, including one in clinical trials, as well as from polyclonal sera from a sizeable fraction of persons recovered from infection. Immune evasion mutations that maintain virulence and fitness such as N439K can emerge within SARS-CoV-2 S, highlighting the need for ongoing molecular surveillance to guide development and usage of vaccines and therapeutics

Hydrodynamic processes in sharp meander bends and their morphological implications

The migration rate of sharp meander bends exhibits large variance and indicates that some sharply curved bends tend to stabilize. These observations remain unexplained. This paper examines three hydrodynamic processes in sharp bends with fixed banks and discusses their morphological implications: secondary flow saturation, outer-banks cells, and inner-bank flow separation. Predictions from a reduced-order hydrodynamic model show that nonlinear hydrodynamic interactions limit the growth of the secondary flow. This process is called the saturation of the secondary flow. For outer-bank cells and inner-bank flow separation, the analysis relies on experimental findings from flume studies in channels with fixed and mobile beds. The experiments reveal that outer-bank cells exist near steep as well as shelving banks and amplify with increasing steepness and roughness of the outer bank, and especially with increasing curvature. The effects of flow separation at the inner bank are found to be strongly conditioned by flow-sediment interactions, which lead to an increased scour depth near the outer bank and increased velocities near the toe of that bank. Overall the results suggest that secondary flow saturation and outer-bank cells tend to inhibit meander migration, whereas inner-bank separation may enhance migration. The relative importance of these three hydrodynamic processes depends on hydraulic, geometric, and sedimentologic conditions, which is consistent with the large variance in observed migration rates. The results suggest that large shallow rivers have the most dynamic meandering behavior, while the occurrence of stabilized meanders seems to be favored in narrow rivers.Civil Engineering and Geoscience

Where have all the (ape) gestures gone?

International audienceComparative analysis of the gestural communica- tion of our nearest animal relatives, the great apes, implies that humans should have the biological potential to produce and understand 60–70 gestures, by virtue of shared common de- scent. These gestures are used intentionally in apes to convey separate requests, rather than as referential items in syntacti- cally structured signals. At present, no such legacy of shared gesture has been described in humans. We suggest that the fate of Bape gestures^ in modern human communication is rele- vant to the debate regarding the evolution of language through a possible intermediate stage of gestural protolanguage

Polymerase chain reaction of peripheral blood as a tool for the diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis in children

The diagnosis of visceral leishmaniasis (VL) generally requires the use of invasive tests for the collection of infected tissue (aspirates of bone marrow, spleen, liver or lymph nodes). This difficulty has led to the search for safer and less painful techniques to confirm the occurrence of the disease in children. Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a method that is advantageous in that it allows the use of peripheral blood samples for diagnosis. This paper reports the utilisation of PCR on peripheral blood samples to diagnose VL in 45 children in Mato Grosso do Sul, Brazil. This technique is compared with methods carried out using tissue collected by invasive procedures, including direct microscopy, culture and detection of Leishmania DNA by PCR in bone marrow aspirates. The results show that PCR of peripheral blood provides great sensitivity (95.6%) that is similar to that from the PCR of bone marrow aspirates (91.1%) and higher than that achieved with microscopy (80%) or culture (26.7%) methods. PCR of peripheral blood proved to be a suitable tool for the diagnosis of VL in children because it is highly sensitive and safe, with tissue collection being less invasive than in traditional tests