Elaborate plumage patterning in a Cretaceous bird

Integumentary patterns and colors can differentiate species, sexes, and life changes and can inform on habitat and ecology. However, they are rarely preserved in the fossil record. Here, we report on an extremely well-preserved specimen of the Cretaceous bird Confuciusornis with unprecedented complexity, including small spots on the wings, crest, and throat. Morphological and chemical evidence suggest that these patterns are produced by melanin, but unusual preservation prevents assignment of specific colors. Based on comparisons with extant birds, these patterns were likely used for camouflage, although other functions including sexual signaling cannot be ruled out. Our data show that even more elaborate plumage patterns than the spangles in Anchiornis and stripes in Sinosauropteryx were present at a relatively early stage of avian evolution, showing the significance of coloration and patterning to feather evolution

Performance Analysis of Magnetostrictive Cantilever Beam with Modeling

A magnetostrictive cantilever beam model is established by combining an energy-based constitutive magnetostrictive model with the classical Euler-Bernoulli beam theory constitutive relations that describe the material behavior are based on energy minimization techniques. We use the saturation magnetization, the magnetostrictive constant and the 4th and 6th order anisotropy constants to calculate the Zeeman, stress-induced anisotropy and magnetocrystalline anisotropy energies per unit volume. The stress of the magnetostrictive cantilever beam is solved by classical beam theory. Experiments and simulations are conducted to study performance of the cantilever. The results demonstrated the sensing is primarily due to the dominating effect of compression over tension. A critical bias magnetic field is required below which the magnetostrictive sensing cannot be observed under bending

Understanding Water Level Changes in the Great Lakes by an ICA-Based Merging of Multi-Mission Altimetry Measurements

Accurately monitoring spatio-temporal changes in lake water levels is important for studying the impacts of climate change on freshwater resources, and for predicting natural hazards. In this study, we applied multi-mission radar satellite altimetry data from the Laurentian Great Lakes, North America to optimally reconstruct multi-decadal lake-wide spatio-temporal changes of water level. We used the results to study physical processes such as teleconnections of El Niño and southern oscillation (ENSO) episodes over approximately the past three-and-a-half decades (1985–2018). First, we assessed three reconstruction methods, namely the standard empirical orthogonal function (EOF), complex EOF (CEOF), and complex independent component analysis (CICA), to model the lake-wide changes of water level. The performance of these techniques was evaluated using in-situ gauge data, after correcting the Glacial Isostatic Adjustment (GIA) process using a contemporary GIA forward model. While altimeter-measured water level was much less affected by GIA, the averaged gauge-measured water level was found to have increased up to 14 cm over the three decades. Our results indicate that the CICA-reconstructed 35-year lake level was more accurate than the other two techniques. The correlation coefficients between the CICA reconstruction and the in situ water-level data were 0.96, 0.99, 0.97, 0.97, and 0.95, for Lake Superior, Lake Michigan, Lake Huron, Lake Erie, and Lake Ontario, respectively; ~7% higher than the original altimetry data. The root mean squares of errors (RMSE) were 6.07 cm, 4.89 cm, 9.27 cm, 7.71 cm, and 9.88 cm, respectively, for each of the lakes, and ~44% less than differencing with the original altimetry data. Furthermore, the CICA results indicated that the water-level changes in the Great Lakes were significantly correlated with ENSO, with correlation coefficients of 0.5–0.8. The lake levels were ~25 cm higher (~30 cm lower) than normal during EI Niño (La Niña) events

A bony-crested Jurassic dinosaur with evidence of iridescent plumage highlights complexity in early paravian evolution

The Jurassic Yanliao theropods have offered rare glimpses of the early paravian evolution and particularly of bird origins, but, with the exception of the bizarre scansoriopterygids, they have shown similar skeletal and integumentary morphologies. Here we report a distinctive new Yanliao theropod species bearing prominent lacrimal crests, bony ornaments previously known from more basal theropods. It shows longer arm and leg feathers than Anchiornis and tail feathers with asymmetrical vanes forming a tail surface area even larger than that in Archaeopteryx. Nanostructures, interpreted as melanosomes, are morphologically similar to organized, platelet-shaped organelles that produce bright iridescent colours in extant birds. The new species indicates the presence of bony ornaments, feather colour and flight- related features consistent with proposed rapid character evolution and significant diversity in signalling and locomotor strategies near bird origins

Magnetic Iron Oxide Nanoparticles: Synthesis and Surface Functionalization Strategies

Surface functionalized magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles (NPs) are a kind of novel functional materials, which have been widely used in the biotechnology and catalysis. This review focuses on the recent development and various strategies in preparation, structure, and magnetic properties of naked and surface functionalized iron oxide NPs and their corresponding application briefly. In order to implement the practical application, the particles must have combined properties of high magnetic saturation, stability, biocompatibility, and interactive functions at the surface. Moreover, the surface of iron oxide NPs could be modified by organic materials or inorganic materials, such as polymers, biomolecules, silica, metals, etc. The problems and major challenges, along with the directions for the synthesis and surface functionalization of iron oxide NPs, are considered. Finally, some future trends and prospective in these research areas are also discussed

Threshold Results for the Existence of Global and Blow-Up Solutions to a Time Fractional Diffusion System with a Nonlinear Memory Term in a Bounded Domain

In this paper, we consider a time fractional diffusion system with a nonlinear memory term in a bounded domain. We mainly prove some blow-up and global existence results for this problem. Moreover, we also give the decay estimates of the global solutions. Our proof relies on the eigenfunction method combined with the asymptotic behavior of the solution of a fractional differential inequality system, the estimates of the solution operators and the asymptotic behavior of the Mittag–Leffler function. In particular, we give the critical exponents of this problem in different cases. Our results show that, in some cases, whether one of the initial values is identically equal to zero has a great influence on blow-up and global existence of the solutions for this problem, which is a remarkable property of time fractional diffusion systems because the classical diffusion systems can not admit this property

Fast Microwave-Assisted Synthesis and Photoluminescence of CaWO4 Nanocrystals

In this work, CaWO4 nanoparticles have been synthesized by microwave-assisted method at a low temperature of 120°C. The as-prepared powders were characterized by X-ray powder diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). It is found that the reaction time played an important role in the morphology controlling and crystallinity level of CaWO4 crystals. The effects of photoluminescent properties have a great relationship with crystallinity

Existence of Solutions for Fractional Boundary Value Problems with a Quadratic Growth of Fractional Derivative

In this paper, we deal with two fractional boundary value problems which have linear growth and quadratic growth about the fractional derivative in the nonlinearity term. By using variational methods coupled with the iterative methods, we obtain the existence results of solutions. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no results on the solutions to the fractional boundary problem which have quadratic growth about the fractional derivative in the nonlinearity term

Efficiently Enhancing Electrocatalytic Activity of α-MnO2 Nanorods/N-Doped Ketjenblack Carbon for Oxygen Reduction Reaction and Oxygen Evolution Reaction Using Facile Regulated Hydrothermal Treatment

Scalable, low-cost and highly efficient catalysis of oxygen electrocatalytic reactions (ORR/OER) are required for the rapid development of clean and renewable energy conversion/storage technologies. Herein, two types of α-MnO2 nanorods were prepared under hydrothermal treatment at 150 °C for 0.5 h (MnO2-150-0.5) or 120 °C for 12 h (MnO2-120-12), then supported on N-doped ketjenblack carbon (N-KB) as bi-functional ORR/OER catalysts. Their electrocatalytic activities toward ORR and OER were investigated systematically. As a result, MnO2-150-0.5/N-KB displays superior ORR catalytic activity, with much more positive half-wave potential and much larger limiting current density (0.76 V and 6.0 mA cm−2), comparable to those of 20 wt. % Pt/C (0.82 V and 5.10 mA cm−2). MnO2-150-0.5/N-KB also shows high electron transfer number (3.86~3.97) and low yield of peroxides (1–7%) during ORR process in the whole potential range of 0–1.0 V (vs. RHE). Meanwhile, the MnO2-150-0.5/N-KB also exhibits better OER activity with low overpotential, comparable to IrO2/N-KB. The excellent electrocatalytic activity of MnO2-150-0.5/N-KB can be attributed to the synergistic effect, relatively smaller size, higher amount of Mn3+, and low charge transfer resistance. This work offers a new strategy for scalable preparation of more efficient and cost-effective α-MnO2 bi-functional oxygen catalysts