Pleistocene Bats (Late Irvingtonian and Late Rancholabrean) from Nuckolls and Sherman Counties, Nebraska

We document rare finds of fossil bats from two localities representing the Pleistocene epoch in southern and central Nebraska, Albert Ahrens locality (No-104, late Irvingtonian age, Middle Pleistocene), Nuckolls County, and Litchfield (Sm-102, late Rancholabrean age, latest Pleistocene), Sherman County. The Albert Ahrens local fauna with strong boreal influence has produced two bats, Lasiurus cf. borealis and Cf. Myotis sp. The Litchfield local fauna, also showing a strong boreal influence, has yielded two bats, Eptesicus fuscus and Cf. Myotis, among a diverse Pleistocene fauna of small vertebrates and a pollen record indicating a boreal mixed conifer and deciduous woodland, contrasting with the grassland and mixed grass prairie of the area in historic times prior to anthropogenic conversion. The vertebrate fauna from the Litchfield site can be assigned to the Rancholabrean land mammal age based on the presence of Bison, on faunal correlation, and on several extralimital taxa of small mammals. The fossil bat taxa are widespread in North America and still extant in Nebraska today; their glacial stage occurrences in a nonkarstic (caveless) region is consistent with previous interpretations of the Albert Ahrens and Litchfield local faunas as indicating cool equable climates and wooded parkland environments. These are the first bats to be reported from each of the respective paleofaunas

Asymmetrical Distribution of Quaternary Alluvial Fills, Pumpkin Creek Drainage Basin, Western Nebraska

A remnant alluvial fill of early Pleistocene age exposed in Pumpkin Creek Valley, Banner and Morrill counties, Nebraska, has yielded fossils of Mammuthus meridionalis (Nesti) and Equus sp. cf. E. scotti Gidley. Younger fill remnants of trunk and tributary streams allow a refinement of earlier views on the development of the Pumpkin Creek drainage basin during the Quaternary Period. Ancestral Pumpkin Creek both shifted to the north and entrenched its valley several times during the Quaternary Period leaving alluvial fills at three levels or more south of the present creek. Piracy of the headwaters of ancestral Pumpkin Creek took place after the last of these erosional events, probably in middle or late Pleistocene time. Asymmetrical distribution of alluvial fills occurs in Pumpkin Creek Valley, along the north side of parts of the North Platte River in western Nebraska, and along streams east of the Black Hills. The asymmetrical distribution of these deposits may have been due to structural warping, which could have caused these streams to shift their courses laterally and to entrench their valleys repeatedly

Asymmetrical Distribution of Quaternary Alluvial Fills, Pumpkin Creek Drainage Basin, Western Nebraska

A remnant alluvial fill of early Pleistocene age exposed in Pumpkin Creek Valley, Banner and Morrill counties, Nebraska, has yielded fossils of Mammuthus meridionalis (Nesti) and Equus sp. cf. E. scotti Gidley. Younger fill remnants of trunk and tributary streams allow a refinement of earlier views on the development of the Pumpkin Creek drainage basin during the Quaternary Period. Ancestral Pumpkin Creek both shifted to the north and entrenched its valley several times during the Quaternary Period leaving alluvial fills at three levels or more south of the present creek. Piracy of the headwaters of ancestral Pumpkin Creek took place after the last of these erosional events, probably in middle or late Pleistocene time. Asymmetrical distribution of alluvial fills occurs in Pumpkin Creek Valley, along the north side of parts of the North Platte River in western Nebraska, and along streams east of the Black Hills. The asymmetrical distribution of these deposits may have been due to structural warping, which could have caused these streams to shift their courses laterally and to entrench their valleys repeatedly

Nonlinear Harmonic Distortion of Complementary Golay Codes

Recent advances in electronics miniaturization have led to the development of low-power, low-cost, point-of-care ultrasound scanners. Low-cost systems employing simple bi-level pulse generation devices need only utilize binary phase modulated coded excitations to significantly improve sensitivity; however the performance of complementary codes in the presence of nonlinear harmonic distortion has not been thoroughly investigated. Through simulation, it was found that nonlinear propagation media with little attenuative properties can significantly deteriorate the Peak Sidelobe Level (PSL) performance of complementary Golay coded pulse compression, resulting in PSL levels of -62 dB using nonlinear acoustics theory contrasted with -198 dB in the linear case. Simulations of 96 complementary pairs revealed that some pairs are more robust to sidelobe degradation from nonlinear harmonic distortion than others, up to a maximum PSL difference of 17 dB between the best and worst performing codes. It is recommended that users consider the effects of nonlinear harmonic distortion when implementing binary phase modulated complementary Golay coded excitations.</p

Wall shear stress measurement in carotid artery phantoms with variation in degree of stenosis using plane wave vector doppler

Wall shear stress (WSS) plays an important role in the formation, growth, and rupture of atherosclerotic plaques in arteries. This study measured WSS in diseased carotid artery phantoms with degrees of stenosis varying from 0 to 60% with both steady and pulsatile flow. Experiments were performed using in silico and real flow phantoms. Blood velocities were estimated using plane wave (PW) vector Doppler. Wall shear stress was then estimated from the velocity gradient near the wall multiplied by the viscosity of a blood-mimicking fluid. The estimated WSS using the in silico phantom agreed within 10% of the ground-truth values (root-mean-square error). The phantom experiment showed that the mean WSS and maximum WSS increased with the increasing degree of stenosis. The simulation and experiment results provide the necessary validation data to give confidence in WSS measurements in patients using the PW vector Doppler technique