Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Origin of the white shark Carcharodon (Lamniformes: Lamnidae) based on recalibration of the Upper Neogene Pisco Formation of Peru

Abstract: The taxonomic origin of the white shark, Carcharodon, is a highly debated subject. New fossil evidence presented in this study suggests that the genus is derived from the broad‐toothed ‘mako’, Carcharodon (Cosmopolitodus) hastalis, and includes the new species C. hubbelli sp. nov. – a taxon that demonstrates a transition between C. hastalis and Carcharodon carcharias. Specimens from the Pisco Formation clearly demonstrate an evolutionary mosaic of characters of both recent C. carcharias and fossil C. hastalis. Characters diagnostic to C. carcharias include the presence tooth serrations and a symmetrical first upper anterior tooth that is the largest in the tooth row, while those indicative of C. hastalis include a mesially slanted third anterior (intermediate) tooth. We also provide a recalibration of critical fossil horizons within the Pisco Formation, Peru using zircon U‐Pb dating and strontium‐ratio isotopic analysis. The recalibration of the absolute dates suggests that Carcharodon hubbelli sp. nov. is Late Miocene (6–8 Ma) in age. This research revises and elucidates lamnid shark evolution based on the calibration of the Neogene Pisco Formation.
Plasma cholesterol level determines in vivo prion propagation

Transmissible spongiform encephalopathies are fatal neurodegenerative diseases with an urgent need for therapeutic and prophylactic strategies. At the time when the blood-mediated transmission of prions was demonstrated, in vitro studies indicated a high binding affinity of the scrapie prion protein (PrPSc) with apoB-containing lipoproteins, i.e., the main carriers of cholesterol in human blood. The aim of the present study was to explore the relationship between circulating cholesterol-containing lipoproteins and the pathogenicity of prions in vivo. We showed that, in mice with a genetically engineered deficiency for the plasma lipid transporter, phospholipid transfer protein (PLTP), abnormally low circulating cholesterol concentrations were associated with a significant prolongation of survival time after intraperitoneal inoculation of the 22L prion strain. Moreover, when circulating cholesterol levels rose after feeding PLTP-deficient mice a lipid-enriched diet, a significant reduction in survival time of mice together with a marked increase in the accumulation rate of PrPSc deposits in their brain were observed. Our results suggest that the circulating cholesterol level is a determinant of prion propagation in vivo and that cholesterol-lowering strategies might be a successful therapeutic approach for patients suffering from prion diseases.
GEOTAIL observation of magnetospheric convection in the distant tail at 200 RE in quiet times

Magnetic field and plasma observations by GEOTAIL in the distant tail at x = −200 RE are studied for a geomagnetically quiet interval when IMF Bz is predominantly northward and |By| is larger than B on average. In the distant tail during this interval, Bz is northward and Ey is directed dusk-to-dawn on average. This combination of Bz and Ey does not seem to represent the tailward convection of the closed field lines, because Ey is much weaker in the lobe than in the plasma sheet so that the field lines would be piled up at the plasma sheet boundary if they were closed. The observations suggest instead that the plasma and field lines are convected parallel to the neutral sheet across the tail at the same time as they flow tailward. The direction of this cross-tail convection depends on the polarity of IMF By and is antisymmetric with respect to the neutral sheet, which can be twisted by tens of degrees under the influence of IMFBy. A consistent picture is obtained from observations both inside the tail and at the tail magnetopause. This convection profile agrees in topology with the cusp reconnection model, but it occurs mainly in the plasma sheet while only the lobe field lines are expected to be involved according to this model. Observations show that not only the cold-dense ions which can be linked directly with the entrant solar wind plasma but also the hot-tenuous ions in the plasma sheet take part in the convection.
Tidal‐channel deposits on a delta plain from the Upper Miocene Nauta Formation, Marañón Foreland Sub‐basin, Peru

Miocene siliciclastic sediments of the Marañón Foreland Sub‐basin in Peru record the sedimentary response to regional marine incursions into Amazonia. Contrary to previous interpretations, the Late Miocene Nauta Formation provides evidence of the last known marine incursion before the current Amazonia river basin became established. Sedimentological, ichnological and palynological data from well‐exposed outcrops along a ca 100 km road transect suggest that the Nauta Formation represents a shallow, marginal‐marine channel complex dominated by tidal channels developed in the inactive, brackish‐water portions of a delta plain. The main facies associations are: FA1 – slightly bioturbated mud‐draped trough cross‐stratified sand; FA2 – locally, pervasively bioturbated inclined heterolithic stratification (IHS); and FA3 – moderately bioturbated horizontally bedded sand–mud couplets. These identify subtidal compound dunes, tidal point bars and shallow subtidal to intertidal flats, respectively. Bi‐seasonal depositional cycles are ascribed to the abundant metre‐ to decimetre‐scale sand–mud couplets that are found mainly in the IHS association: semi‐monthly to daily tidal rhythmicity is inferred from centimetre‐ and millimetre‐scale couplets in the mud‐dominated parts of the decimetre‐scale couplets. The ichnology of the deposits is consistent with brackish depositional conditions; the presence of Laminites, a variant of Scolicia, attests to episodic normal marine conditions. Trace fossil suites are assigned to the Skolithos, Cruziana and mixed Skolithos–Cruziana ichnofacies. Pollen assemblages related to mangrove environments (e.g. Retitricolporites sp., Zonocostites sp., Psilatricolporites maculosus, Retitricolpites simplex) support a brackish‐water setting. Uplift of the Mérida Andes to the North and the consequent closure of the Proto‐Caribbean connection, and the onset of the transcontinental Amazon drainage, constrain the deposition of the Nauta sediments with around 10 to 8 Ma, probably contemporaneous to similar marine incursions identified in the Cuenca (Ecuador), Acre (Brazil) and Madre de Dios (Southern Peru) (sub)basins, and along the Chaco‐Paranan corridor across Bolivia, Paraguay and Argentina.
Archaeological Investigations at Pikillacta, a Wari Site in Peru

AbstractThe 1989 and 1990 field seasons at the Wari provincial site of Pikillacta in the valley of Cuzco, Peru, comprised the first extensive excavation of the second-largest existing Wari architectural complex. Occupied between A.C. 600 and 900, Pikillacta was built in three successive construction phases and finally abandoned before completion of the final one. Excavations revealed well-preserved architecture in the center of the site, including such features as gypsum-plastered floors and walls; superimposed floor remains collapsed on one another, demonstrating the existence of multi-storied buildings; plastered staircases; plaster-lined niches; and a variety of sub-floor offering pits. Although the interiors of the buildings were largely devoid of artifacts, excavations in the site's principal midden produced an abundance of material: large quantities of ceramic remains, including such foreign styles as Nazca and Cajamarca, as well as objects of bone, shell, metal, obsidian, and worked stone. Evidence.
Synthesis of mixed pixel hyperspectral signatures

The general method of analysing mixed pixel spectral response is to decompose the actual spectra into several pure spectral components representing the signatures of the endmembers. This work suggests a reverse engineering of standardizing the mixed pixel spectrum for a certain spatial distribution of endmembers by synthesizing spectral signatures with varying proportions of standard spectral library data and matching them with the experimentally obtained mixed pixel signature. The idea is demonstrated with hyperspectral ultraviolet–visible–near-infrared (UV–vis–NIR) reflectance measurements on laboratory-generated model mixed pixels consisting of different endmember surfaces: concrete, soil, brick and vegetation and hyperspectral signatures derived from Hyperion satellite images consisting of concrete, soil and vegetation in different proportions. The experimental reflectance values were compared with the computationally generated spectral variations assuming linear mixing of pure spectral signatures. Good matching in the nature of spectral variation was obtained in most cases. It is hoped that using the present concept, hyperspectral signatures of mixed pixels can be synthesized from the available spectral libraries and matched with those obtained from satellite images, even with fewer bands. Thus enhancing the computational job in the laboratory can moderate the keen requirement of high accuracy of remote-sensor and band resolution, thereby reducing data volume and transmission bandwidth.
Concesiones forestales, exclusión y sustentabilidad. Lecciones desde las comunidades de la Sierra Norte de Oaxaca

Mario E. Fuente Carrasco: Instituto de Estudios Ambientales, Universidad de la Sierra Juarez, Sistema de Universidades Estatales de Oaxaca, Ixtlan de Juarez, Oaxaca, Mexicofuente@juppa.unsij. edu.mxDavid Barkin: Departamento de Produccion Economica, Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Unidad Xochimilco, Mexico, Distrito Federalbarkin@correo.xoc. uam.mx
Role of the ocean in the global mercury cycle

Air‐sea exchange of mercury (Hg) is a critical part of the global Hg cycle as it determines, to a large degree, the response time of the biosphere to changes in mercury inputs. Recent measurements have demonstrated that the cycling of Hg between the ocean and atmosphere is complex, principally because of the enhanced oxidation of elemental Hg (Hgo), and the formation of reactive gaseous Hg (RGHg) in the marine boundary layer. We estimate that the dry deposition of RGHg to the ocean, which has not been previously considered in global budgets, is 35% of the total Hg input to the ocean. A further reevaluation of the global Hg cycle suggests that there is a net transfer of Hg from the terrestrial environment to the ocean and that the deep ocean Hg concentration is increasing by a few percent per year. Similarly, anthropogenic inputs on land have increased Hg on the Earth's surface layer with accumulation in the terrestrial environment accounting for nearly 80% of the net input from man's activities. Dry deposition of RGHg is important for the terrestrial realm but because of its relatively short residence time in the atmosphere, it is the oxidation of Hgo over the ocean, rather than RGHg transport offshore, which is primarily contributing to oceanic RGHg deposition.
Sustainable groundwater development

Abstract Estimated annual water availability per person in 2025 is likely to result in at least 400f the world’s 7.2 billion people facing serious problems with obtaining freshwater for agriculture, industry or human health (Gleick 2001). To meet present and future needs with the currently available surface and groundwater resources, while at the same time preserving terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, will require a sustainable approach to managing water. This paper discusses the importance of groundwater resources in industrialized and developing countries, and the associated problems of over-abstraction and groundwater pollution, with the objective of defining sustainable groundwater development. It is concluded that sustainable groundwater development at global and local scales is achieved through the maintenance and protection of groundwater resources balanced against economic, environmental and human (social) benefits. This interpretation of sustainable groundwater development is incorporated into the methodologies currently emerging in Europe (the EU Water Framework Directive) and England and Wales (Catchment Abstraction Management Strategies). However, success in achieving future sustainable groundwater development will require a common understanding at the level of the individual based on information and education within a legislatory framework that promotes co-operation and self-responsibility.
Ar-Ar and U-Pb ages of marble-hosted ruby deposits from central and southeast Asia

To date the formation of ruby deposits and link it to the regional metamorphism associated with Tertiary Himalayan orogenesis, 40Ar39Ar stepwise heating experiments were performed on single grains of phlogopite syngenetic with ruby, and zircon inclusions in ruby and spinel were dated with the UPb method by ion-probe. The ArAr ages of phlogopites associated with ruby are Oligocene (24.7 ± 0.3 Ma) at Jegdalek in Afghanistan; Miocene at Mogok in Myanmar (18.7 ± 0.2 to 17.1 ± 0.2 Ma), at Hunza in Pakistan (10.8 ± 0.3 to 5.4 ± 0.3 Ma), and Chumar in Nepal (5.6 ± 0.4 Ma); and Pliocene (4.6 ± 0.1 Ma) at Ruyil in Nepal. In Vietnam, a zircon included in a ruby from the Quy Chau deposit yielded a 238U206Pb age of 53.8 ± 4.6 Ma, whereas in the Red River shear zone, ruby formed at around 4036 Ma during ductile deformation under peak metamorphic conditions. The ages obtained in this study are in agreement with those previously published for the ruby-bearing metamorphic belts and document extensional tectonics tha.
Visual saliency detection based on modeling the spatial Gaussianity

In this paper, a novel salient object detection method based on modeling the spatial anomalies is presented. The proposed framework is inspired by the biological mechanism that human eyes are sensitive to the unusual and anomalous objects among complex background. It is supposed that a natural image can be seen as a combination of some similar or dissimilar basic patches, and there is a direct relationship between its saliency and anomaly. Some patches share high degree of similarity and have a vast number of quantity. They usually make up the background of an image. On the other hand, some patches present strong rarity and specificity. We name these patches “anomalies”. Generally, anomalous patch is a reflection of the edge or some special colors and textures in an image, and these pattern cannot be well “explained” by their surroundings. Human eyes show great interests in these anomalous patterns, and will automatically pick out the anomalous parts of an image as the salient regions. To better evaluate the anomaly degree of the basic patches and exploit their nonlinear statistical characteristics, a multivariate Gaussian distribution saliency evaluation model is proposed. In this way, objects with anomalous patterns usually appear as the outliers in the Gaussian distribution, and we identify these anomalous objects as salient ones. Experiments are conducted on the well-known MSRA saliency detection dataset. Compared with other recent developed visual saliency detection methods, our method suggests significant advantages.
How important is biological ice nucleation in clouds on a global scale?

The high ice nucleating ability of some biological particles has led to speculations about living and dead organisms being involved in cloud ice and precipitation formation, exerting a possibly significant influence on weather and climate. In the present study, the role of primary biological aerosol particles (PBAPs) as heterogeneous ice nuclei is investigated with a global model. Emission parametrizations for bacteria, fungal spores and pollen based on recent literature are introduced, as well as an immersion freezing parametrization based on classical nucleation theory and laboratory measurements. The simulated contribution of PBAPs to the global average ice nucleation rate is only 10 − 5%, with an uppermost estimate of 0.6%. At the same time, observed PBAP concentrations in air and biological ice nucleus concentrations in snow are reasonably well captured by the model. This implies that ‘bioprecipitation’ processes (snow and rain initiated by PBAPs) are of minor importance on the global scale.
The 2011 Brisbane Floods: Causes, Impacts and Implications

On 13th January 2011 major flooding occurred throughout most of the Brisbane River catchment, most severely in Toowoomba and the Lockyer Creek catchment (where 23 people drowned), the Bremer River catchment and in Brisbane, the state capital of Queensland. Some 56,200 claims have been received by insurers with payouts totalling $2.55 billion. This paper backgrounds weather and climatic factors implicated in the flooding and the historical flood experience of Brisbane. We examine the time history of water releases from the Wivenhoe dam, which have been accused of aggravating damage downstream. The dam was built in response to even worse flooding in 1974 and now serves as Brisbane’s main water supply. In our analysis, the dam operators made sub-optimal decisions by neglecting forecasts of further rainfall and assuming a ‘no rainfall’ scenario. Questions have also been raised about the availability of insurance cover for riverine flood, and the Queensland government’s decision not to insure its infrastructure. These and other questions have led to Federal and State government inquiries. We argue that insurance is a form of risk transfer for the residual risk following risk management efforts and cannot in itself be a solution for poor land-use planning. With this in mind, we discuss the need for risk-related insurance premiums to encourage flood risk mitigating behaviours by all actors, and for transparency in the availability of flood maps. Examples of good flood risk management to arise from this flood are described.
Determination of absolute strengths of N2quadrupole lines from high-resolution ground-based IR solar observations

High-resolution, high signal-to-noise ratio, solar absorption spectra recorded with a Fourier transform spectrometer at the International Scientific Station of the Jungfraujoch, Switzerland, have been analyzed to determine the strengths of several lines belonging to the S branch of the N2 (1–0) electric quadrupole vibration-rotation band centered at 2329.9168 cm−1. The method which was applied here was based on equivalent width measurements of lines observed over a broad range of air masses; extrapolation of these measurements to zero air mass gave the line strengths for the transitions S7 to, S10, independent of half widths, an ambiguity unavoidable with the use of curve-fitting techniques. The resulting absolute accuracies of the line strengths derived here, estimated to be better than ±2.5% for S8, ±2.6% for S10, ±3.4% for S9, and ±5.1% for S7, are due largely to the high quality and quantity of the spectra retained in this analysis and the accuracy with which the observation conditions are known. An important application of the improved values for these N2 transitions, which have low initial ground state energies, is the direct determination of the line-of-sight atmospheric air masses associated with remotely sensed infrared spectroscopic observations. Positions of the N2 transitions studied here have further been redetermined with an absolute accuracy better than 0.0002 cm−1.
O impacto da nova lei de falência na estrutura de capital das empresas brasileiras

The present paper studies the effect of the New Brazilian Bankruptcy Law on firms’ capital structure after three years when the law went in force. Using firms’ balance sheet micro data and fixed effects panel model, our results are in line with theories that predict effects at the capital structure due to changes at creditors expectative (a reduction of moral-hazard cost). We find evidences of an increase in the debt (total, short-term and long-term) portion in the capital
Lower Bajocian ammonites (Middle Jurassic; Soninniidae) from the Newmarracarra Limestone, Western Australia

Three species of sonniniid ammonites, previously described under Fontannesia Buckman, are placed in a new genus, Newmarracarroceras; Dorsetensia clarkei Crick is designated type species. These West Australian species differ from other known Fontannesia by having smooth body chambers, flanks which slope gradually toward the umbilical seam without development of an umbilical edge or wall, and simple septal sutures. Biometric studies show that ‘Fontannesia’ whitehousei Arkell is a smaller and more compressed variant of N. clarkei (Crick), with a complete gradation between the two ‘species’ for most morphological characters. While well-dated European Fontannesia occur in the uppermost Aalenian concavum Zone and lowermost Bajocian discites Zone, new dating of the circum-Pacific Pseudotoites faunas, with which Newmarracarroceras occurs in Western Australia, indicates correlation with the higher ovalis or laeviuscula Zones (lower Bajocian). An associated specimen of Sonninia playfordi Arkell is described.
Late Pleistocene‐Holocene right slip rate and paleoseismology of the Nayband fault, western margin of the Lut block, Iran

The 290 km long Nayband right‐lateral fault cuts across a region seismically quiescent during the last few millennia. Chlorine‐36 and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating of cumulative geomorphic offsets between 9 ± 1 m and 195 ± 15 m with ages from 6.8 ± 0.6 ka to ∼ 100 ka allow deriving a slip rate of 1.8 ± 0.7 mm yr‐1. The paleoseismic record retrieved from the first trench excavated across the fault combined with 18 OSL ages demonstrates the occurrence of at least four large (Mw ∼ 7) earthquakes during the last 17.4 ± 1.3 ka and two older earthquakes (before ∼ 23 ka and 70 ± 5 ka). Sediments from the last ∼ 7 ka contain evidence of the three younger earthquakes. Penultimate and antepenultimate events occurred between 6.5 ± 0.4 ka and 6.7 ± 0.4 ka within at most 1 ka whereas the most recent earthquake occurred within the last millennium. Such an irregular earthquake occurrence may suggest seismic clustering. Therefore, the imminence of an earthquake along the fault cannot be discarded even if the most recent earthquake occurred within the last 800 years. This event went unnoticed in the historical records demonstrating the incompleteness of the historical seismic catalogs in Central Iran, challenging any assessment of seismic hazard without geologic information. Infrequent large earthquakes typify the slow‐slipping strike‐slip faults slicing Central and Eastern Iran. Also, the slip rates summed from the Iran Plateau up to the Afghan lowlands appear in fairly good agreement with the most recent GPS data.
Seismic Efficiency of EXPLOSIVES

The parameters which characterize an explosive are derived from laboratory tests and none is directly usable for seismic purposes. Another one, derived from field experiments is proposed in this paper. It allows the comparison of two different explosives. The test must be conducted with care. Precautions concerning the equipment and the shot point detailed. The first available results suggest that the new parameter does not depend on the size of the charge nor on the shooting conditions, though the experimental data are not numerous enough to allow a general statement. It is shown how a coefficient of seismic efficiency can be used for selecting an explosive; and considerable amounts of money can be saved by the best choice. More studies on the generation of artificial seismic waves would be highly profitable.