Geologic-Tectonic History of the Area Surrounding the Northern End of the Mississippi Embayment

Since Precambrian time, zones of weakness have been repeatedly but infrequently reactivated in the Mississippi Embayment area. All of the major folds and many of the minor anticlines caused by this activity are associated with faults in the basement rocks. The latest occurrence of major tectonic activity (perhaps Early Cretaceous), however, not only affected the old fault zones but also created a vast new feature, the Pascola arch, which has no Paleozoic antecedent. Severe erosion and subsequent Tertiary subsidence associated with the Pascola arch indicate that this structure alone is the locus of present-day major earthquake activity. Until the time in the geologic future when old established zones of weakness are reactivated regionally, only the relatively young Pascola arch will continue to be the focal point of high intensity earthquake activity in the Embayment area

Geology and Structure of the Rough Creek Area, Western Kentucky

The Rough Creek area is a rectangular area about 113 mi east to west and 35 mi north to south encompassing about 3,900 mi2 in west-central and western Kentucky. The Ohio River delineates most of the western border with Illinois and locally also part of the northern border with Indiana. The northeast corner of the area is about 27 mi southwest of Louisville. The principal cities are Owensboro and Henderson. The Precambrian basement has been penetrated in only two wells in western Kentucky at depths somewhat greater than 14,000 ft. Basement is projected to underlie much of the area at a depth of more than 25,000 ft, and perhaps locally even more than 30,000 ft, in this, the deepest part of the Illinois Basin. Rocks of all geologic ages from Cambrian to Quaternary, except those of Mesozoic age, are present within the Rough Creek area; Upper Cretaceous strata occur as close as 20 mi south of the southeastern corner, however. All Paleozoic rocks older than Early Mississippian are restricted to the subsurface, so that the exposed rocks are dominantly of Mississippian (Meramecian and Chesterian) and Pennsylvanian ages. Strata of the Fort Payne Formation (Osagean) are present locally in the Rough Creek Fault Zone. Also, rocks of Early Permian age have been identified in a graben in the fault zone. Although no Pleistocene ice sheets penetrated south of the Ohio River in the Rough Creek area, the river valley was a major sluiceway for glacial debris from the Wisconsinan ice sheet, so the valley is filled with outwash, and loess blown from the valley blankets the area adjacent on the south. Remnants of Tertiary and Quarternary stream terraces are present in the Ohio and Green River Valleys, and thick lacustrine deposits covered by younger alluvium fill the larger stream valleys tributary to the Ohio River. The Rough Creek area is in the southern part of the Illinois Basin, and the principal structural features of the region that are present within or close to the study area, and at times influenced depositional patterns during the Paleozoic, include the Rough Creek–Shawneetown Fault System, the Moorman–Eagle Valley Syncline, the Pennyrile Fault System, and faults of the Illinois-Kentucky Fluorspar District. The Rough Creek–Shawneetown Fault System, which extends from western Kentucky into southeastern Illinois, where it is called the Shawneetown Fault Zone, is defined on its northern and western margins in Illinois by a southward-dipping, high-angle reverse fault with as much as 3,500 ft of reverse displacement. The frontal fault extends into Kentucky, but the degree of displacement is less than in Illinois; eastward along the structure, the frontal fault is broken into several long, arcuate segments by high-angle normal faults, and is displaced southward until it is no longer the frontal fault. In Kentucky, the Rough Creek zone is characterized by many steeply dipping fault blocks bounded by high-angle normal and reverse faults. The Moorman–Eagle Valley Syncline lies immediately south of the Rough Creek–Shawneetown Fault System, and that structure forms its steep northern and western limbs; the Kentucky part is the Moorman Syncline. The Pennyrile Fault System defines the gentle southern limb of the Moorman Syncline. In the deepest part of the composite syncline, which is close to its northern limb, structural relief on the Precambrian basement is more than 30,000 ft. The Moorman–Eagle Valley Syncline overlies the Rough Creek Graben in the basement. The Pennyrile Fault System, which lies mostly south of the Rough Creek area, is a broad feature composed of three branches of east- to northeast-trending, high-angle normal faults in an en echelon pattern that break the gently dipping strata into a series of fault blocks. Displacement on the faults generally increases to the west toward the junction of the fault system with faults of the Illinois-Kentucky Fluorspar District. The Pennyrile overlies the southern margin of the Rough Creek Graben, a structural feature in basement rocks

Meteorological satellites

An overview is presented of the meteorological satellite programs that have been evolving from 1958 to the present, and plans for the future meteorological and environmental satellite systems that are scheduled to be placed into service in the early 1980's are reviewed. The development of the TIROS family of weather satellites, including TIROS, ESSA, ITOS/NOAA, and the present TIROS-N (the third generation operational system) is summarized. The contribution of the Nimbus and ATS technology satellites to the development of the operational-orbiting and geostationary satellites is discussed. Included are descriptions of both the TIROS-N and the DMSP payloads currently under development to assure a continued and orderly growth of these systems into the 1980's

Updating the TSP Quality Plan Using Monte Carlo Simulation

Humphrey tries to answer one of software management’s biggest questions, showing how one naval organization with large system projects, over a 15-year period, used the TSP to help them with planning and tracking, meeting schedules, and understanding knowledge work. by Watts S. Humphrey An Interview with Watts S. Humphrey Who else can boast more than a half-century in the software industry? Humphrey sits down with CrossTalk to reflect on some of his most illuminating experiences in the software industry and discusses the past, present, and future of his innovations—including the TSP

Charged pions from Ni on Ni collisions between 1 and 2 AGeV

Charged pions from Ni + Ni reactions at 1.05, 1.45 and 1.93 AGeV are measured with the FOPI detector. The mean $\pi^{\pm}$ multiplicities per mean number of participants increase with beam energy, in accordance with earlier studies of the Ar + KCl and La + La systems. The pion kinetic energy spectra have concave shape and are fitted by the superposition of two Boltzmann distributions with different temperatures. These apparent temperatures depend only weakly on bombarding energy. The pion angular distributions show a forward/backward enhancement at all energies, but not the $\Theta = 90^0$ enhancement which was observed in case of the Au + Au system. These features also determine the rapidity distributions which are therefore in disagreement with the hypothesis of one thermal source. The importance of the Coulomb interaction and of the pion rescattering by spectator matter in producing these phenomena is discussed.Comment: 22 pages, Latex using documentstyle[12pt,a4,epsfig], to appear in Z. Phys.

Potential medicinal value of some South African seaweeds

Eleven macroalgae were collected from the KwaZulu-Natal coast and nineteen species from the cooler Western Cape coast in March and April 2000. Ethanolic and aqueous extracts were made and tested for biological activity in the Cox-1 anti-inflammatory assay, in a nematode mortality bioassay for anthelminthic activity, an IC50 anticancer assay and a MIC antimicrobial assay. The ethanolic extracts were very active in the Cox-1 anti-inflammatory assay for almost all of the species tested. The aqueous extracts were not active. No anthelminthic mortality was detected in extracts from any of the species tested. Many of the extracts had cytotoxic activity against three cancer cell lines tested, with those from representative species of the Chlorophyta and Rhodophyta being the most effective. The extracts had much lower cytotoxic activity when tested on normal mouse fibroblasts (NIH3T3). Extracts from only a few species had antimicrobial activity with those of the Chlorophyta tested being the most effective against both the Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria

Magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound treatment for essential tremor shows sustained efficacy: a meta-analysis

Although magnetic resonance-guided focused ultrasound (MRgFUS) is a viable treatment option for essential tremor, some studies note a diminished treatment benefit over time. A PubMed search was performed adhering to Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. Studies were included if hand tremor scores (HTS), total Clinical Rating Scale for Tremor (CRST) scores, or Quality of Life in Essential Tremor Questionnaire (QUEST) scores at regular intervals following MRgFUS treatment for essential tremor were documented. Data analyses included a random effects model of meta-analysis and mixed-effects model of meta-regression. Twenty-one articles reporting HTS for 395 patients were included. Mean pre-operative HTS was 19.2 ± 5.0. Mean HTS at 3 months post-treatment was 7.4 ± 5.0 (61.5% improvement, p \u3c 0.001). Treatment effect was mildly decreased at 36 months at 9.1 ± 5.4 (8.8% reduction). Meta-regression of time since treatment as a modifier of HTS revealed a downward trend in effect size, though this was not statistically significant (p = 0.208). Only 4 studies included follow-up ≥ 24 months. Thirteen included articles reported total CRST scores with standardized follow-up for 250 patients. Mean pre-operative total CRST score decreased by 46.2% at 3 months post-treatment (p \u3c 0.001). Additionally, mean QUEST scores at 3 months post-treatment significantly improved compared to baseline (p \u3c 0.001). HTS is significantly improved from baseline ≥ 24 months post-treatment and possibly ≥ 48 months post-treatment. There is a current paucity of long-term CRST and QUEST score reporting in the literature

Neutral Pions and Eta Mesons as Probes of the Hadronic Fireball in Nucleus-Nucleus Collisions around 1A GeV

Chemical and thermal freeze-out of the hadronic fireball formed in symmetric collisions of light, intermediate-mass, and heavy nuclei at beam energies between 0.8A GeV and 2.0A GeV are discussed in terms of an equilibrated, isospin-symmetric ideal hadron gas with grand-canonical baryon-number conservation. For each collision system the baryochemical potential mu_B and the chemical freeze-out temperature T_c are deduced from the inclusive neutral pion and eta yields which are augmented by interpolated data on deuteron production. With increasing beam energy mu_B drops from 800 MeV to 650 MeV, while T_c rises from 55 MeV to 90 MeV. For given beam energy mu_B grows with system size, whereas T_c remains constant. The centrality dependence of the freeze-out parameters is weak as exemplified by the system Au+Au at 0.8A GeV. For the highest beam energies the fraction of nucleons excited to resonance states reaches freeze-out values of nearly 15 %, suggesting resonance densities close to normal nuclear density at maximum compression. In contrast to the particle yields, which convey the status at chemical freeze-out, the shapes of the related transverse-mass spectra do reflect thermal freeze-out. The observed thermal freeze-out temperatures T_th are equal to or slightly lower than T_c, indicative of nearly simultaneous chemical and thermal freeze-out.Comment: 42 pages, 12 figure

Diatom metabarcoding and microscopic analyses from sediment samples at Lake Nam Co, Tibet: The effect of sample-size and bioinformatics on the identified communities

Diatoms (Bacillariophyceae) are characterized by silicified cell walls that favor their long-term preservation in sediments, therefore widely used as bioindicators of present and past water conditions. Alongside with traditional morphological analyses, metabarcoding has become a valuable tool to study the community structures of various organisms, including diatoms. Here, we test whether the quantity of sediment sample used for DNA extraction affects the results obtained from high-throughput sequencing (metabarcoding) of the diatom rbcL region by isolating DNA from 10 g and 0.5 g (wet weight) of lake surface sediment samples. Because bioinformatics processing of metabarcoding data may affect the outcome, we also tested the consistency of the results from three different pipelines: 1) ESVs (exact sequence variants) pipeline; 2) clustering sequences at 95% sequence identity to form OTUs (operational taxonomic units; 95% OTUs); and 3) 97% OTUs pipeline. Additionally, the agreement between metabarcoding data and morphological inventories of corresponding samples were compared. Our results demonstrate highly uniform patterns between the diatom rbcL amplicons from 10 g and 0.5 g of sedimentary DNA (sedDNA) extracts (HTS 10 and HTS 0.5, respectively). Furthermore, after the careful curation of the sequencing data, metabarcoding results were highly consistent among the data sets produced by different bioinformatics pipelines. Comparing results from metabarcoding and microscopy, we identified some taxonomic mismatches: morphological analyses identified 59 diatom genera, whereas metabarcoding 49 to 54 genera. These mismatches are related to incompleteness of the sequence databases, but also to inconsistencies in diatom taxonomy in general and potential dissolution effects of diatom valves caused by high alkalinity of the investigated lake waters. Nevertheless, multivariate community analysis revealed consistent results between data sets identified by microscopy and metabarcoding – water depth and conductivity as the most significant variables in driving diatom communities in Lake Nam Co – further confirming that metabarcoding is a viable method for identifying diatom-environment relationships