Growth and mass wasting of volcanic centers in the northern South Sandwich arc, South Atlantic, revealed by new multibeam mapping

New multibeam (swath) bathymetric sonar data acquired using an EM120 system on the RRS James Clark Ross, supplemented by sub-bottom profiling, reveals the underwater morphology of a not, vert, similar 12,000 km2 area in the northern part of the mainly submarine South Sandwich volcanic arc. The new data extend between 55° 45′S and 57° 20′S and include Protector Shoal and the areas around Zavodovski, Visokoi and the Candlemas islands groups. Each of these areas is a discrete volcanic center. The entirely submarine Protector Shoal area, close to the northern limit of the arc, forms a 55 km long east–west-trending seamount chain that is at least partly of silicic composition. The seamounts are comparable to small subaerial stratovolcanoes in size, with volumes up to 83 km3, indicating that they are the product of multiple eruptions over extended periods. Zavodovski, Visokoi and the Candlemas island group are the summits of three 3–3.5 km high volcanic edifices. The bathymetric data show evidence for relationships between constructional volcanic features, including migrating volcanic centers, structurally controlled constructional ridges, satellite lava flows and domes, and mass wasting of the edifices. Mass wasting takes place mainly by strong erosion at sea level, and dispersal of this material along chutes, probably as turbidity currents and other mass flows that deposit in extensive sediment wave fields. Large scale mass wasting structures include movement of unconsolidated debris in slides, slumps and debris avalanches. Volcanism is migrating westward relative to the underlying plate and major volcanoes are asymmetrical, being steep with abundant recent volcanism on their western flanks, and gently sloping with extinct, eroded volcanic sequences to their east. This is consistent with the calculated rate of subduction erosion of the fore-arc

The Distressed Brain: A Group Blind Source Separation Analysis on Tinnitus

Background: Tinnitus, the perception of a sound without an external sound source, can lead to variable amounts of distress. Methodology: In a group of tinnitus patients with variable amounts of tinnitus related distress, as measured by the Tinnitus Questionnaire (TQ), an electroencephalography (EEG) is performed, evaluating the patients ’ resting state electrical brain activity. This resting state electrical activity is compared with a control group and between patients with low (N = 30) and high distress (N = 25). The groups are homogeneous for tinnitus type, tinnitus duration or tinnitus laterality. A group blind source separation (BSS) analysis is performed using a large normative sample (N = 84), generating seven normative components to which high and low tinnitus patients are compared. A correlation analysis of the obtained normative components ’ relative power and distress is performed. Furthermore, the functional connectivity as reflected by lagged phase synchronization is analyzed between the brain areas defined by the components. Finally, a group BSS analysis on the Tinnitus group as a whole is performed. Conclusions: Tinnitus can be characterized by at least four BSS components, two of which are posterior cingulate based, one based on the subgenual anterior cingulate and one based on the parahippocampus. Only the subgenual component correlates with distress. When performed on a normative sample, group BSS reveals that distress is characterized by two anterior cingulate based components. Spectral analysis of these components demonstrates that distress in tinnitus is relate

Prefrontal Cortex Based Sex Differences in Tinnitus Perception: Same Tinnitus Intensity, Same Tinnitus Distress, Different Mood

BACKGROUND: Tinnitus refers to auditory phantom sensation. It is estimated that for 2% of the population this auditory phantom percept severely affects the quality of life, due to tinnitus related distress. Although the overall distress levels do not differ between sexes in tinnitus, females are more influenced by distress than males. Typically, pain, sleep, and depression are perceived as significantly more severe by female tinnitus patients. Studies on gender differences in emotional regulation indicate that females with high depressive symptoms show greater attention to emotion, and use less anti-rumination emotional repair strategies than males. METHODOLOGY: The objective of this study was to verify whether the activity and connectivity of the resting brain is different for male and female tinnitus patients using resting-state EEG. CONCLUSIONS: Females had a higher mean score than male tinnitus patients on the BDI-II. Female tinnitus patients differ from male tinnitus patients in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) extending to the frontopolar cortex in beta1 and beta2. The OFC is important for emotional processing of sounds. Increased functional alpha connectivity is found between the OFC, insula, subgenual anterior cingulate (sgACC), parahippocampal (PHC) areas and the auditory cortex in females. Our data suggest increased functional connectivity that binds tinnitus-related auditory cortex activity to auditory emotion-related areas via the PHC-sgACC connections resulting in a more depressive state even though the tinnitus intensity and tinnitus-related distress are not different from men. Comparing male tinnitus patients to a control group of males significant differences could be found for beta3 in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). The PCC might be related to cognitive and memory-related aspects of the tinnitus percept. Our results propose that sex influences in tinnitus research cannot be ignored and should be taken into account in functional imaging studies related to tinnitus

Multi-minicore Disease

Multi-minicore Disease (MmD) is a recessively inherited neuromuscular disorder characterized by multiple cores on muscle biopsy and clinical features of a congenital myopathy. Prevalence is unknown. Marked clinical variability corresponds to genetic heterogeneity: the most instantly recognizable classic phenotype characterized by spinal rigidity, early scoliosis and respiratory impairment is due to recessive mutations in the selenoprotein N (SEPN1) gene, whereas recessive mutations in the skeletal muscle ryanodine receptor (RYR1) gene have been associated with a wider range of clinical features comprising external ophthalmoplegia, distal weakness and wasting or predominant hip girdle involvement resembling central core disease (CCD). In the latter forms, there may also be a histopathologic continuum with CCD due to dominant RYR1 mutations, reflecting the common genetic background. Pathogenetic mechanisms of RYR1-related MmD are currently not well understood, but likely to involve altered excitability and/or changes in calcium homeoestasis; calcium-binding motifs within the selenoprotein N protein also suggest a possible role in calcium handling. The diagnosis of MmD is based on the presence of suggestive clinical features and multiple cores on muscle biopsy; muscle MRI may aid genetic testing as patterns of selective muscle involvement are distinct depending on the genetic background. Mutational analysis of the RYR1 or the SEPN1 gene may provide genetic confirmation of the diagnosis. Management is mainly supportive and has to address the risk of marked respiratory impairment in SEPN1-related MmD and the possibility of malignant hyperthermia susceptibility in RYR1-related forms. In the majority of patients, weakness is static or only slowly progressive, with the degree of respiratory impairment being the most important prognostic factor

A review of multi-component maintenance models with economic dependence

In this paper we review the literature on multi-component maintenance models with economic dependence. The emphasis is on papers that appeared after 1991, but there is an overlap with Section 2 of the most recent review paper by Cho and Parlar (1991). We distinguish between stationary models, where a long-term stable situation is assumed, and dynamic models, which can take information into account that becomes available only on the short term. Within the stationary models we choose a classification scheme that is primarily based on the various options of grouping maintenance activities: grouping either corrective or preventive maintenance, or combining preventive-maintenance actions with corrective actions. As such, this classification links up with the possibilities for grouped maintenance activities that exist in practice

GrassPlot - a database of multi-scale plant diversity in Palaearctic grasslands

GrassPlot is a collaborative vegetation-plot database organised by the Eurasian Dry Grassland Group (EDGG) and listed in the Global Index of Vegetation-Plot Databases (GIVD ID EU-00-003). GrassPlot collects plot records (releves) from grasslands and other open habitats of the Palaearctic biogeographic realm. It focuses on precisely delimited plots of eight standard grain sizes (0.0001; 0.001;... 1,000 m(2)) and on nested-plot series with at least four different grain sizes. The usage of GrassPlot is regulated through Bylaws that intend to balance the interests of data contributors and data users. The current version (v. 1.00) contains data for approximately 170,000 plots of different sizes and 2,800 nested-plot series. The key components are richness data and metadata. However, most included datasets also encompass compositional data. About 14,000 plots have near-complete records of terricolous bryophytes and lichens in addition to vascular plants. At present, GrassPlot contains data from 36 countries throughout the Palaearctic, spread across elevational gradients and major grassland types. GrassPlot with its multi-scale and multi-taxon focus complements the larger international vegetationplot databases, such as the European Vegetation Archive (EVA) and the global database " sPlot". Its main aim is to facilitate studies on the scale-and taxon-dependency of biodiversity patterns and drivers along macroecological gradients. GrassPlot is a dynamic database and will expand through new data collection coordinated by the elected Governing Board. We invite researchers with suitable data to join GrassPlot. Researchers with project ideas addressable with GrassPlot data are welcome to submit proposals to the Governing Board

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Search for physics beyond the standard model via a polarization-asymmetry correlation experiment on In-107

We report on a new precision measurement of the longitudinal polarization of positrons emitted by polarized 107In nuclei. If interpreted in the framework of the manifest left-right symmetric model, preliminary results yield a lower limit of 303 GeV/c2 for the mass of a possible, predominantly right-handed W gauge boson

Hedging against biodiversity loss: Forest herbs’ performance in hedgerows across temperate Europe

Questions: How do contrasting environmental conditions among forests and hedgerows affect the vegetative and reproductive performance of understorey forest herbs in both habitats? Can hedgerows support reproductive source populations of forest herbs, thus potentially allowing progressive dispersal of successive generations along these linear habitats? Location: Hedgerows and deciduous forest patches in agricultural landscapes across the European temperate biome. Methods: First, we assessed differences in environmental conditions among forests and hedgerows. Next, we quantified plant performance based on a set of functional life‐history traits for four forest herbs (Anemone nemorosa, Ficaria verna, Geum urbanum, Poa nemoralis) with contrasting flowering phenology and colonisation capacity in paired combinations of forests and hedgerows, and compared these traits among both habitats. Finally, we assessed relationships between plant performance and environmental conditions in both habitats. Results: All study species showed a higher above‐ground biomass in hedgerows than in forests. For Poa nemoralis and Geum urbanum, we also found a higher reproductive output in hedgerows, which was mainly correlated to the higher sub‐canopy temperatures therein. The “ancient forest herb” Anemone nemorosa, however, appeared to have a lower reproductive output in hedgerows than in forests, while for Ficaria verna no reproductive differences were found between the two habitats. Conclusions: This is the first study on such a broad geographical scale to provide evidence of reproductive source populations of forest herbs in hedgerows. Our findings provide key information on strategies by which forest plants grow, reproduce and disperse in hedgerow environments, which is imperative to better understand the dispersal corridor function of these wooded linear structures. Finally, we highlight the urgent need to develop guidelines for preserving, managing and establishing hedgerows in intensive agricultural landscapes, given their potential to contribute to the long‐term conservation and migration of forest herbs in the face of global environmental change