Acoustically coupled volumes in the cathedrals of Murcia and Seville

Cathedrals are complex monuments built through the repetition of volumes separated by arches, vaults, and columns, in addition to a great variety of lateral chapels. In the so-called "Spanish mode" the choir is situated in the centre of the main nave and generally constitutes a more absorbent volume connected by an acoustically transparent opening with the rest of the cathedral. This space, together with the lateral chapels, can present the phenomenon of acoustic coupling. In this work, as a manifestation of this coupling, an analysis is performed, by means of standardised parameters and through the application of Bayesian methods, on the non-linearity of the energy decay curves of the impulse responses registered in situ in the Vélez Chapel of the Cathedral of Murcia, the Royal Chapel of the Cathedral of Seville, and in their respective choirsLas catedrales son monumentos complejos construidos mediante la repetición de volúmenes separados por arcos, bóvedas, columnas..., así como gran variedad de capillas laterales. En el denominado “modo español” el coro se sitúa en el centro de la nave principal y constituye generalmente un volumen más absorbente conectado mediante una apertura acústicamente transparente con el resto de la catedral. Este espacio, así como las capillas laterales, pueden presentar el fenómeno de acoplamiento acústico. En este trabajo, como manifestación de este acoplamiento, se analiza la no linealidad de las curvas de decaimiento energético mediante parámetros estandarizados y utilizando métodos bayesianos, de las respuestas al impulso registradas in situ en la Capilla de los Vélez de la Catedral de Murcia, la Capilla Real de la Catedral de Sevilla y en sus respectivos coro

Palaeontology meets metacommunity ecology: The Maastrichtian dinosaur fossil record of North America as a case study.

Documenting the patterns and potential associated processes of ancient biotas has always been a central challenge in palaeontology. Over the last decades, intense debate has focused on the organisation of dinosaur–dominated communities, yet no general consensus has been reached on how these communities were organised in a spatial context and if primarily affected by abiotic or biotic agents. Here, we used analytical routines typically applied in metacommunity ecology to provide novel insights into dinosaurian distributions across the latest Cretaceous of North America. To do this, we combined fossil occurrences with functional, phylogenetic and palaeoenvironmental modelling, and adopted the perspective that more reasonable conclusions on palaeoecological reconstructions can be gained from studies that consider the organisation of biotas along ecological gradients at multiple spatial scales. Our results showed that dinosaurs were restricted in range to different parts of the Hell Creek Formation, prompting the recognition of discrete and compartmentalised faunal areas during the Maastrichtian at fine-grained scales, whereas taxa ranges formed quasi–nested groups when combining data from various geological formations across the Western Interior of North America. Although groups of dinosaurs had coincident range boundaries, their communities responded to multiple ecologically–important gradients when compensating for differences in sampling effort. Metacommunity structures of both ornithischians and theropods were correlated with climatic barriers and potential trophic relationships between herbivores and carnivores, thereby suggesting that dinosaurian faunas were shaped by physiological constraints and a combination of bottom-up and top-down forces across multiple spatial grains and extents.Additional Supporting files include the following Appendices: Appendix S1. Body mass distributions based on product partition models with Markov sampling computations. Appendix S2. Functional and phylogenetic features for each spatial scale and study clade. Appendix S3. R packages and statistical routines. Appendix S4. Elements of metacommunity structure for the conservative fixed–fixed null model. Appendix S5. Results for the forward selection of explanatory variables. Appendix S6. Results for ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models. Appendix S7. Results for commonality analysis (CA) for each spatial scale and study clade. Appendix S8. Measuring the spatial autocorrelation of OLS model residuals. The Excel file includes occurrence data, palaeoenvironmental reconstructions, and functional features: Sheets 1 and 2 contain raw information on each study site for the Hell Creek and other North American geological formations, respectively. Sheet 1 includes palaeoenvironmental information for the Hell Creek Formation (i.e. lithofacies -C, channel; FP, floodplain- and palaeotopography -m.a.s.l. after log-transformation). Raw PalaeoDEM data (Scotese and Wright, 2018) are also available here: https://www.earthbyte.org/paleodem-resource-scotese-and-wright-2018/ Sheet 2 contains raw information on the log-transformed palaeoenvironmental reconstructions for the Maastrichtian of North America (Palaeotopography -m.a.s.l., TempMean and TempSDann in K; Prec and PrecSDann in kgm-2). Raw palaeoclimate GCMs (Valdés et al., 2017) can also be obtained here: https://www.paleo.bristol.ac.uk/ummodel/scripts/papers/ Sheet 3 includes a taxon-specific classification into several functional guilds (see the main text for details): These files may be opened and edited in Excel. For details or further queries, please contact Jorge García-Girón ([email protected]). Funding provided by: University of León*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 2017Funding provided by: Spanish Ministry of Economy and Industry*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: CGL2017–84176RFunding provided by: Junta de Castilla y LeónCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100014180Award Number: LE004G18Funding provided by: Academy of FinlandCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002341Award Number: 331957Funding provided by: Academy of FinlandCrossref Funder Registry ID: http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/501100002341Award Number: 322652Funding provided by: European Research Council Starting Grant*Crossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: ERC StG 2017, 756226, PalMFunding provided by: University of LeónCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: 2017Funding provided by: Spanish Ministry of Economy and IndustryCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: CGL2017–84176RFunding provided by: European Research Council Starting GrantCrossref Funder Registry ID: Award Number: ERC StG 2017, 756226, PalMDinosaur occurrences for the Maastrichtian of North America were retrieved from the Palaeobiology Database on May 2020, using the taxon name 'Dinosauria' and a time span of 72.1 – 66.0 Ma. Critically, although studies on modern community associations are limited to relatively brief periods of sampling time, fossil assemblages are windows on the faunas of ancient worlds occurring within particular chronostratigraphic units (Benson et al. 2018). Although this coarse temporal resolution will undoubtedly confound the data (which is addressed in detail below), it would be problematic to subdivide the time bins further, not least because only a handful of fossil assemblages are sufficiently informative to provide confident community-level estimates so far (Vavrek & Larsson 2010). Additionally, due to an insufficient amount of comparative data within high–resolution time bins (Dean et al. 2020) and the inherent errors in radiometric dating (Gates et al. 2010), the creation of a more tightly constrained correlative window is presently impractical. Here, we only retained occurrences belonging to Ornithischia and Theropoda since these two clades were the most diverse and abundant non–avian dinosaur groups in the latest Cretaceous of North America (Brusatte et al. 2015). Generic–level identifications were used in our study, and all avian taxa were excluded when delineating community types to keep our data more comparable to previous works (e.g. Vavrek & Larsson 2010; Dean et al. 2020). While birds are phylogenetically part of the dinosaurian clade, the different habits and habitats of latest Cretaceous Avialae (either diving or volant taxa) separates these faunas enough from ground-dwelling dinosaurs to justify their functional distinction in the context of the communities modelled here (see Heino et al. 2015b for an example on present-day biotas). Although the value of generic taxonomic ranks in community analyses has been debated, palaeontologists have used generic–level clades to investigate distributional patterns and variation in community composition of fossil taxa (e.g. Vavrek & Larsson 2010; Chiarenza et al. 2019; Dean et al. 2020). Indeed, generic–level identifications are preferred over species taxonomic ranks in dinosaur palaeobiology studies as most dinosaur genera (c. 87%) are easily diagnosed and monospecific (Weishampel et al. 2004; Mannion et al. 2012). Moreover, genus-level and species–level diversity patterns generally appear to track each other for Mesozoic tetrapods (Barrett et al. 2009), and genera are more taxonomically stable than species for many groups (Robeck et al. 2000). Here, however, taxa with unclear genus identification were discarded (i.e. we did not incorporate 'cryptic' diversity represented by taxonomically undiagnostic fossil remains that potentially represent distinct taxa, nor we did infer ghost lineages based on phylogenetic diversity estimates; Barrett et al. 2009; Mannion et al. 2011), and so were collections lacking formational assignment. If questionable ages appeared (e.g. ages notably deviating from ages of other collections from the same formation), they were either revised or excluded. These data are an up–to–date record of North American dinosaur faunas and therefore incorporate new Late Cretaceous fossils discovered over the past few years. Overall, our pruned dataset comprised 43 dinosaur genera, and consisted of 11 formations across the WIB of North America and 17 well–sampled locations across the Hell Creek landscape. Palaeoclimatic general circulation model. In this study, we used palaeoclimatic model outputs (here, near-surface [1.5 m] mean annual temperature (TempMean), near-surface [1.5 m] annual temperature standard deviation (TempSDann), annual average precipitation (PrecMean) and annual precipitation standard deviation (PrecSDann)) from the fully coupled atmosphere-ocean GCM HadCM3L v. 4.5 Atmospheric–Ocean General Circulation Model (Valdes et al. 2017). More specifically, we followed the nomenclature of Valdes et al. (2017) and applied the HadCM3BL–M2.1aE version of the model. The conditions of the model simulations for the Maastrichtian consist of an atmospheric CO2 concentration of 1120 ppmv, which is within the range of uncertainty provided by the recent proxy pCO2 reconstructions of Foster et al. (2017). The model simulations were run for a total of 1422 years, and the climate variables used in our analyses were an annual average of the last 30 years of these simulations. HadCM3L has contributed to the Coupled Mode Intercomparison Project experiments demonstrating skill when it comes to reproducing present-day climates (Collins et al. 2001; Valdes et al. 2017) and has also been used for an array of different palaeoclimate evaluations during the Eocene (Lunt et al. 2012), the Oligocene (Li et al. 2018) and the Miocene (Bradshaw et al. 2012). Detailed information on this palaeoclimatic model, including large–scale circulation (and associated energy and momentum fluxes) and temporal fluctuations, as well as the impacts of fine-scale orographic features on climate signals, are available elsewhere (e.g. Lunt et al. 2016; Chiarenza et al. 2019). Palaeogeographical digital elevation models (DEMs). The Maastrichtian palaeogeography for this study is that of Scotese & Wright (2018), which has been compiled as a palaeo-digital elevation model to facilitate grid-based analyses. In brief, these maps were created from publicly available stratigraphic literature, supplemented by fieldwork, including lithology, palaeoenvironmental information and broad-scale facies identification. For large–scale analyses, these palaeogeographies were upscaled to the palaeoclimatic model resolution (3.75° x 2.5°). This means that topographic and bathymetric information was broadly conserved, as it was resolved at a lower resolution (see Chiarenza et al. 2019 for a similar approach). Functional features. Each dinosaur taxon was classified into several functional guilds based on body mass (very small, small, medium, large and very large), locomotor mode (bipeds, facultative bipeds –capable of both quadrupedal and bipedal motion– and quadrupeds) and trophic habits (carnivores, omnivores and herbivores, and for the latter, low and high browsers). Body mass is perhaps the single most important and meaningful functional trait for animals, as it ultimately affects many aspects of their biology including metabolic rates, mechanical constraints, ecological performance and lifestyle strategies related to feeding, locomotion and reproduction (Loeuille & Loreau 2006; Iossa et al. 2008). Here, we used body mass estimates (very small ≤ 10 kg; 10 kg 10000 kg; Noto & Grossman 2010) based on adult representatives from the comprehensive dataset of Benson et al. (2014), which provides a wide list of dinosaur taxa using the scaling relationship of limb bone robustness (stylopodial circumference; Campione & Evans 2012). To obtain a more comprehensive understanding of body mass distributions in our data, we further applied an inflection point criterion based on the Barry & Hartigan (1993) product partition model with Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC). More specifically, this algorithm used the posterior probability of changes over 10000 MCMC iterations, excluding the first 1000 as burn in, to distinguish among different body mass categories in the latest Cretaceous dinosaurs of North America. Interestingly, this Bayesian analysis roughly identified most of the original body mass categories used in our study, with each category broadly representing an order of magnitude (García–Girón et al. 2020b, appendix S1, fig. S1). Trophic habits refer to the food processing strategies and diet of an animal, and it generally includes three primary categories, i.e. carnivores, herbivores and omnivores. Further subdivisions depend on the biological knowledge of the morphology (e.g. teeth morphology and skull) and behaviour of the study organismal group. Here, we assigned herbivores to categories of browse height rather than plant type due to the virtually unknown nature of plant preferences in dinosaurs. More specifically, we roughly assigned a simple maximum browsing limit (low ≤ 2 m; high > 2 m) based on characters such as limb length and neck posture using Noto & Grossman (2010) and Mallon et al. (2013). We further divided locomotor mode into two major categories: quadrupeds and bipeds. For those taxa with intermediate axial and limb morphologies in proportions between those of bipeds and obligate quadrupeds (e.g. Hadrosauridae), we included an additional locomotor division, i.e. facultative bipeds (see Noto & Grossman, 2010 for a similar approach). For the following analyses, we applied the mixed–variables coefficient of distance (i.e. a generalisation of Gower's distance; Pavoine et al. 2009) to extract a functional distance matrix, which described the functional differences between all taxon pairs based on body mass, trophic habits and locomotor mode (e.g. Heino & Tolonen 2017). Thereafter, the pairwise output values for the functional distance matrix were synthesised into separate axes using principal coordinate analysis (PCO) and following Duarte et al. (2012). See the main text for References

Beneficial Effects of Bovine Milk Exosomes in Metabolic Interorgan Cross-Talk

Extracellular vesicles are membrane-enclosed secreted vesicles involved in cell-to-cell communication processes, identified in virtually all body fluids. Among extracellular vesicles, exosomes have gained increasing attention in recent years as they have unique biological origins and deliver different cargos, such as nucleic acids, proteins, and lipids, which might mediate various health processes. In particular, milk-derived exosomes are proposed as bioactive compounds of breast milk, which have been reported to resist gastric digestion and reach systemic circulation, thus being bioavailable after oral intake. In the present manuscript, we critically discuss the available evidence on the health benefits attributed to milk exosomes, and we provide an outlook for the potential future uses of these compounds. The use of milk exosomes as bioactive ingredients represents a novel avenue to explore in the context of human nutrition, and they might exert important beneficial effects at multiple levels, including but not limited to intestinal health, bone and muscle metabolism, immunity, modulation of the microbiota, growth, and development

Little evidence of range size conservatism in freshwater plants across two continents

Aim: Range size conservatism suggests that closely-related species maintain geographic ranges of similar extent. However, consensus regarding this suggestion has not been reached. To shed more light on this phenomenon, we studied freshwater plant range size conservatism, range overlap and environmental niche conservatism using congeneric species comparison in two continents. In addition, we investigated whether a phylogenetic signal is found in the range sizes of aquatic plants. Location: Europe and North America. Taxon: Freshwater plants. Methods: Across spatial resolutions (50 km2, 100 km2 and 200 km2), we applied Spearman correlations among 347 and 730 pairs of congeneric species in Europe and North America, respectively, and 63 pairs shared between them. In addition, Spearman correlations were used to evaluate how the degree of spatial overlap influences range sizes and which environmental variables explain variation in range sizes. Brownian evolutionary model was used to assess the phylogenetic signal in species range sizes. Results: We found no evidence of range size conservatism across spatial resolutions for any species and species shared between the continents. In addition, range sizes of more closely related species did not overlap geographically more than those of distantly related ones and no support for environmental niche conservatism was evidenced. Main conclusions: We found that aquatic plants show no range size conservatism in the Northern Hemisphere. This means that it is challenging to define different range sizes of freshwater plants through species traits. Furthermore, we are unable to predict unknown distributions of extant aquatic plant species based on known distributional attributes of closely related species. However, our findings suggest that the interpretations of previous investigations on the range sizes of aquatic plants remain valid due to lack of range size conservatism. These practical implications encourage studying range size conservatism across realms and regions, especially for understudied organismal groups

Pigmentos vegetales y compuestos naturales aplicados en productos cárnicos como colorantes y/o antioxidantes: revisión

La necesidad de encontrar productos naturales que tengan aplicación funcional como colorantes y/o antioxidantes en los productos cárnicos es una temática que hoy por hoy tiene una gran acogida, debido al interés social de consumir productos saludables y nutritivos. Es por esto que en este artículo de revisión se presentan algunas de las principales investigaciones que se han adelantado a nivel nacional e internacional sobre esta temática de estudio. Es de resaltar que a la fecha existen un gran número de productos y subproductos vegetales que son tema de investigación como fuente de colorantes y antioxidantes naturales en productos cárnicos. En dichos productos hay presencia de compuestos bioactivos de interés como lo son el licopeno, la capsantina, antocianinas, luteína, betalaínas, curcumina y entre otros como flores de litchi, hojas de M.Oleifera, extracto de zanahoria, etc

Stochasticity overrides deterministic processes in structuring macroinvertebrate communities in a plateau aquatic system

Deterministic and stochastic processes are two major factors shaping community dynamics, but their relative importance remains unknown for many aquatic systems, including those in the high-elevation Qinghai–Tibet Plateau. Here, we explored the causes of multidimensional beta diversity patterns (i.e., taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic) of a macroinvertebrate metacommunity in this large aquatic system by using multiple approaches (i.e., null models, phylogenetic signal testing, and ordination-based approaches). To obtain insights into community assembly mechanisms, we also analyzed beta diversity in two deconstructed sub-metacommunities (e.g., different tributaries and the main lake body). We found that most functional traits showed significant phylogenetic signals, indicating that the functional traits were profoundly influenced by evolutionary history. The null models showed randomness of functional and phylogenetic beta diversities for the whole basin and its tributaries, confirming the importance of stochasticity over deterministic processes in controlling community structure. However, both phylogenetic and functional community structures were clustered in the Qinghai Lake, probably reflecting the importance of environmental filtering. Ordination-based approaches also revealed that both environmental factors and spatial processes accounted for variation in taxonomic, functional, and phylogenetic beta diversity. More specifically, environmental filtering was more important than spatial processes for the functional dimension, but the opposite was true for the taxonomic and phylogenetic dimensions. The paleogeographic history of the Qinghai Lake basin may have contributed substantially to the prevalence of stochastic processes. Overall, this study provides a better understanding of ecological patterns and assembly mechanisms of macroinvertebrate communities across this poorly known high-elevation aquatic system that is highly sensitive to climate warming

Shifts in food webs and niche stability shaped survivorship and extinction at the end-Cretaceous

It has long been debated why groups such as non-avian dinosaurs became extinct whereas mammals and other lineages survived the Cretaceous/Paleogene mass extinction 66 million years ago. We used Markov networks, ecological niche partitioning, and Earth System models to reconstruct North American food webs and simulate ecospace occupancy before and after the extinction event. We find a shift in latest Cretaceous dinosaur faunas, as medium-sized species counterbalanced a loss of megaherbivores, but dinosaur niches were otherwise stable and static, potentially contributing to their demise. Smaller vertebrates, including mammals, followed a consistent trajectory of increasing trophic impact and relaxation of niche limits beginning in the latest Cretaceous and continuing after the mass extinction. Mammals did not simply proliferate after the extinction event; rather, their earlier ecological diversification might have helped them survive

Measurement and analysis of the acoustics of the Roman theatre of Segobriga (Spain)

Segobriga (Cuenca) was the capital of the Celtiberia region. The specular gypsum of its mines, used as glass in windows, was exported across the whole Empire through the port of Cartago Nova (Cartagena). Its Roman theatre has one of the best conserved cavea of Hispania, although there is no scaenae frons. Its construction dates back to the year 79 A.D. In this work, experimental results and analysis are presented of impulse responses and of the values of the monaural and binaural acoustic parameters recorded in situ. These results correspond to the source-receiver combinations of three positions of the source, located in the proscaenium(2), and in the orchestra (1), and of 19 reception points, distributed across the cavea, the proedria, and the proscaenium. This theatre features as part of one of the study cases of a research project that aims to evaluate and revalue the acoustics of the principal Roman theatres of Spain

Riesgos hidrometeorológicos en el Corredor Seco Centroamericano: Investigación, acción social y docencia dentro del Espacio de Estudios Avanzados de la Universidad de Costa Rica

Aunque América Central está localizada en zonas tropicales donde el estrés hídrico es relativamente bajo en gran parte de su territorio, hay ciertas regiones donde las sequías son frecuentes. En especial, la aridez climatológica en la zona denominada como «Corredor Seco Centroamericano» (csc), donde las sequías son recurrentes (Quesada-Hernández, Calvo-Solano, Hidalgo, Pérez-Briceño y Alfaro, 2019) (figura 1). El csc es un espacio geográfico con límites imprecisos que se entiende como una zona con características climáticas de bosque tropical seco, con una marcada y prolongada época seca y en el que, durante el reducido periodo de lluvias, existe un latente riesgo de sequías recurrentes que pueden ocurrir por una entrada tardía de la época lluviosa o una prolongación de la canícula con una suspensión prematura de la época lluviosa (Peralta-Rodríguez et al., 2012).Universidad de Costa Rica/[805-B7-286]/UCR/Costa RicaUCR::Vicerrectoría de Investigación::Unidades de Investigación::Ciencias Básicas::Centro de Investigaciones Geofísicas (CIGEFI

Characteristic function of impulse responses in churches

The tool presented enables the sound behaviour of a room to be objectified on the basis of the representation of the characteristic function (CF) of said room.In this paper, we study characteristic functions, defined from the impulsive responses measured at different points in the room, that are obtained in churchesand cathedrals. These CFs show a variation that correlates with the distance from the point of measurement and the source. An analysis is carried out on the relationship between this variation with those acoustic parameters that depend on the distance to the source: C50, C80,and G. In addition, the differentiating features between these types of spaces are shown,therebyallowing the characteristic function to offer an overall assessment of the room, which in turnenables the classification of similar sound space