The recovery of microalgal production and biomass in a South African temporarily open/closed estuary, following mouth breaching

Mouth breaching is a recurrent event in temporarily open/closed estuaries (TOCEs). Such disturbances result in flushing and sediment scouring, reducing the microalgal biomass stock. The depletion of these microalgae may have negative repercussions in the form of depleted stocks of commercial fish, game fish, crustaceans and mollusks. The aim of this investigation was therefore: (1) to monitor the recovery of microalgal biomass and production following a breaching event; and (2) to determine the key environmental parameters influencing primary production during the open and recovery phases. Phytoplankton and benthic microalgal production was measured (¹⁴C-uptake method) successively during the closed, open and recovery phases of the Mdloti TOCE (South Africa). Upon breaching, 94–99% of microalgal biomass was washed out to sea through flushing and sediment scouring. A temporary recovery of phytoplankton and benthic microalgal biomass was observed during the open phase, but this was not sustained because of continual flushing and scouring of the sediment. During the re-closure (recovery phase), microalgal biomass immediately increased, reaching pre-breaching levels 35–40 days following the breaching event. In contrast to biomass, autochthonous pelagic primary production reached a maximum level (341 mg C m⁻² h⁻¹) during the open phase. Pelagic primary production normalized to biomass (P^B) significantly increased during the open phase. This is attributed to a favorable combination of optimum light conditions, high influx of macronutrients and high water temperatures (33 °C). Similarly, benthic primary production normalized to biomass (P^B) peaked during the open phase (35 mg C mg chl-a⁻¹ h⁻¹). Multivariate analysis showed that major variations in primary production were mainly controlled by temperature, dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) to phosphorus (DIP) molar ratios (water-column and pore-water) and light extinction (K_d), all of which were regulated by the state of the mouth.     

Relationships between garnet shape, rotational inclusion fabrics and strain in some Moine metamorphic rocks of Skye, Scotland

Study of rotational inclusion fabrics in garnet porphyroblasts demonstrates that angles of rotation are dependent not only on the amounts of strain suffered by the host rocks but also on porphyroblast shape: near-spherical crystals suffer considerably more rotation than discoidal for a given amount of strain. Angles ranging from 160° to 0° have been measured but rotation took place during two distinct phases of deformation each associated with the formation of folds and attendant axial planar fabrics.The rotational inclusion fabrics permit a study to be made of the geometry and state of strain around two minor folds and thus suggest that the main mechanism of fold development was flexural flow. The differences in the amounts of strain, as recorded by rotational inclusion fabrics, around the two folds further suggest that there was unequal limb rotation during fold development and that the maximum compressive stress lay obliquely to the layering at the onset of folding.     

Identifying when microbes biosilicify: The interconnected requirements of acidic pH, colloidal SiO2 and exposed microbial surface

This study demonstrates discernible biosilicification of natural microbial mats through batch laboratory experiments. Identification of the geochemical requirements for this process to occur includes thermodynamically favorable, but sluggish silica reaction kinetics associated with acidic conditions, and the necessity for colloidal silica rather than dissolved silicic acid species. This study provides the first results to bridge the apparent literature discrepancy between widespread, in-situ observations of microbial silicification, and the inability to demonstrate a detectable microbial impact in this process under well-constrained laboratory conditions. We compared the silica scavenging abilities of three natural microbial mats collected from Yellowstone National Park (YNP) hotsprings, relative to those of both abiotic particle (TiO₂) and solution controls at constant, near-saturated aqueous silica concentrations, while experimental pH and temperature conditions were varied, using both dissolved and colloidal SiO₂ forms. We specifically evaluated three microbial mats sampled from YNP sites all exhibiting saturation with respect to amorphous SiO₂, but possessing variable pH and temperature conditions that should reflect differential kinetics (and therefore biological opportunity) relative to silica polymerization: (1) most biologically favorable, acidic-mesophile (AM: pH 3, T = 35 °C); (2) biologically possible, but less opportune, alkaline, mesophile (ALK-M: pH 8, T = 35 °C) and (3) unlikely to be biologically favorable, alkaline-thermophile (ALK-T: pH 8, T = 80 °C). Comparison of field and laboratory results substantiates the requirements for thermodynamically favorable, but kinetically slower SiO₂ polymerization conditions. Results show that acidic moderate temperature conditions were required for an observable biosilicification impact. Moreover, they also identified for the first time, the necessity specifically for colloidal silica forms which are surface bound under acidic pH conditions, to distinguish discernible biosilicification compared to mineral particle controls. Results also highlight the important influence of mat surface characteristics in this process, specifically the extent of live, non-mineralized, exposed biological mat surface. Greater colloidal SiO₂ scavenging abilities are associated with non-mineralized microbial mat surfaces than with mineral particle surfaces or microbial mat surfaces encrusted with authigenic silica. These results are the first to demonstrate that biosilicification can be a microbially mediated, discernible geobiological process, shedding new light on the longstanding argument in the literature, and opening the door for more sensitive evaluation of this phenomenon in natural systems.     

Obfuscating spatial point tracks with simulated crowding

ABSTRACT

Spatial point tracks are of concern for an increasing number of analysts studying spatial behaviour patterns and environmental effects. Take an epidemiologist studying the behaviour of cyclists and how their health is affected by the city’s air quality. The accuracy of such analyses critically depends on the positional accuracy of the tracked points. This poses a serious privacy risk. Tracks easily reveal a person’s identity since the places visited function as fingerprints. Current obfuscation-based privacy protection methods, however, mostly rely on point quality reduction, such as spatial cloaking, grid masking or random noise, and thus render an obfuscated track less useful for exposure assessment. We introduce simulated crowding as a point quality preserving obfuscation principle that is based on adding fake points. We suggest two crowding strategies based on extending and masking a track to defend against inference attacks. We test them across various attack strategies and compare them to state-of-the-art obfuscation techniques both in terms of information loss and attack resilience. Results indicate that simulated crowding provides high resilience against home attacks under constantly low information loss.     

N-Body simulations of growth from 1 km planetesimals at 0.4 AU

We present N-body simulations of planetary accretion beginning with 1 km radius planetesimals in orbit about a 1 M_⊙ star at 0.4 AU. The initial disk of planetesimals contains too many bodies for any current N-body code to integrate; therefore, we model a sample patch of the disk. Although this greatly reduces the number of bodies, we still track in excess of 10⁵ particles. We consider three initial velocity distributions and monitor the growth of the planetesimals. The masses of some particles increase by more than a factor of 100. Additionally, the escape speed of the largest particle grows considerably faster than the velocity dispersion of the particles, suggesting impending runaway growth, although no particle grows large enough to detach itself from the power law size-frequency distribution. These results are in general agreement with previous statistical and analytical results. We compute rotation rates by assuming conservation of angular momentum around the center of mass at impact and that merged planetesimals relax to spherical shapes. At the end of our simulations, the majority of bodies that have undergone at least one merger are rotating faster than the breakup frequency. This implies that the assumption of completely inelastic collisions (perfect accretion), which is made in most simulations of planetary growth at sizes 1 km and above, is inappropriate. Our simulations reveal that, subsequent to the number of particles in the patch having been decreased by mergers to half its initial value, the presence of larger bodies in neighboring regions of the disk may limit the validity of simulations employing the patch approximation.     

The formation of the Baptistina family by catastrophic disruption: Porous versus non‐porous parent body

Abstract— In this paper, we present numerical simulations aimed at reproducing the Baptistina family based on its properties estimated by observations. A previous study by Bottke et al. (2007) indicated that this family is probably at the origin of the K/T impactor, is linked to the CM meteorites and was produced by the disruption of a parent body 170 km in size due to the head‐on impact of a projectile 60 km in size at 3 km s^?1. This estimate was based on simulations of fragmentation of non‐porous materials, while the family was assumed to be of C taxonomic type, which is generally interpreted as being formed from a porous body. Using both a model of fragmentation of non‐porous materials, and a model that we developed recently for porous ones, we performed numerical simulations of disruptions aimed at reproducing this family and at analyzing the differences in the outcome between those two models. Our results show that a reasonable match to the estimated size distribution of the real family is produced from the disruption of a porous parent body by the head‐on impact of a projectile 54 km in size at 3 km s^?1. Thus, our simulations with a model consistent with the assumed dark type of the family requires a smaller projectile than previously estimated, but the difference remains small enough to not affect the proposed scenario of this family history. We then find that the break‐up of a porous body leads to different outcomes than the disruption of a non‐porous one. The real properties of the Baptistina family still contain large uncertainties, and it remains possible that its formation did not involve the proposed impact conditions. However, the simulations presented here already show some range of outcomes and once the real properties are better constrained, it will be easy to check whether one of them provides a good match.     

Karin cluster formation by asteroid impact

Insights into collisional physics may be obtained by studying the asteroid belt, where large-scale collisions produced groups of asteroid fragments with similar orbits and spectra known as the asteroid families. Here we describe our initial study of the Karin cluster, a small asteroid family that formed 5.8±0.2 Myr ago in the outer main belt. The Karin cluster is an ideal ‘natural laboratory’ for testing the codes used to simulate large-scale collisions because the observed fragments produced by the 5.8-Ma collision suffered apparently only limited dynamical and collisional erosion. To date, we have performed more than 100 hydrocode simulations of impacts with non-rotating monolithic parent bodies. We found good fits to the size-frequency distribution of the observed fragments in the Karin cluster and to the ejection speeds inferred from their orbits. These results suggest that the Karin cluster was formed by a disruption of an ≈33-km-diameter asteroid, which represents a much larger parent body mass than previously estimated. The mass ratio between the parent body and the largest surviving fragment, (832) Karin, is ≈0.15-0.2, corresponding to a highly catastrophic event. Most of the parent body material was ejected as fragments ranging in size from yet-to-be-discovered sub-km members of the Karin cluster to dust grains. The impactor was ≈5.8 km across. We found that the ejections speeds of smaller fragments produced by the collision were larger than those of the larger fragments. The mean ejection speeds of >3-km-diameter fragments were . The model and observed ejection velocity fields have different morphologies perhaps pointing to a problem with our modeling and/or assumptions. We estimate that ∼5% of the large asteroid fragments created by the collision should have satellites detectable by direct imaging (separations larger than 0.1 arcsec). We also predict a large number of ejecta binary systems with tight orbits. These binaries, located in the outer main belt, could potentially be detected by lightcurve observations. Hydrocode modeling provides important constraints on the interior structure of asteroids. Our current work suggests that the parent asteroid of the Karin cluster may have been an unfractured (or perhaps only lightly fractured) monolithic object. Simulations of impacts into fractured/rubble pile targets were so far unable to produce the observed large gap between the first and second largest fragment in the Karin cluster, and the steep slope at small sizes (≈6.3 differential index). On the other hand, the parent asteroid of the Karin cluster was produced by an earlier disruptive collision that created the much larger, Koronis family some 2-3 Gyr ago. Standard interpretation of hydrocode modeling then suggests that the parent asteroid of the Karin cluster should have been formed as a rubble pile from Koronis family debris. We discuss several solutions to this apparent paradox.     

Metabolic patterning of biosilicification

Here we show a discernibly unique biosilicification pattern for live, metabolically active Synechococcus cyanobacterial cell surfaces compared to dead Synechococcus cells under identical experimental conditions. The live cell treatments showed signs of cell division and the growth of fimbriae indicating metabolic activity during the 5-day silicification experiment. Live treatment cells were also recultivable after the experiments confirming their continued viability. The metabolically active live cyanobacteria treatment bound twice the amount of colloidal SiO₂ and held it more tightly compared to the dead cell treatment. Further, biosilicification of the live, actively metabolizing bacteria was unipolar, leaving the core surface largely unencrusted. In contrast, biosilicification of the dead cells was heterogeneous, occurring across the entire cell surface with no observable localized pattern. The directed biosilicification localization of live cell surfaces is likely a bacterial strategy to protect the cell functionality against the potentially inhibitory effects of mineral encrustation. Localization of silica biominerals to the polar end of the cell is also consistent with reported bacteria regulated cell polarity, which, under the experimental pH of 3, would enable localized differential attraction between the charged colloidal silica (+) particles and the bacterial cell polar surface (−). Our results show a novel metabolically-linked distinct colloidal SiO₂ biomineralization fingerprint, suggesting a putative biomineralization signature.