A multi-array competitive immunoassay for the detection of broad-range molecular size organic compounds relevant for astrobiology

We have developed antibodies and a multi-array competitive immunoassay (MACIA) for the detection of a wide range of molecular size compounds, from single aromatic ring derivatives or polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), through small peptides, proteins or whole cells (spores). Multiple microarrays containing target molecules are used simultaneously to run several competitive immunoassays. The sensitivity of the MACIA for small organic compounds like naphthalene, 4-phenilphenol or 4-tertbutilphenol is in the range of 100–500 ppb (ng ml⁻¹), for others like the insecticide terbutryn it is at the ppt (ng l⁻¹) level, while for small peptides, as well as for more complex molecules like the protein thioredoxin, the sensitivity is approximately 1–2 ppb, or 10⁴–10⁵ spores of Bacillus subtilis per milliliter. For organic compounds, a water–methanol solution was used in order to achieve a better dissolution of the organics without compromising the antibody–antigen interaction. The above-mentioned compounds were detected by MACIA in water–(10%) methanol extracts from spiked pyrite and hematite-containing rock powder samples, as well as from a spiked-sand sample subjected to organic extraction with dichloromethane–methanol (1/1).     

Origin of tektites: Constraints from heavy noble gas concentrations

Abstract— Heavy noble gas concentrations in tektites (splash-form type) are considerably lower than those in impact glasses. This can not be explained only by high formation temperatures for tektites, as might be expected from low concentrations of water and most volatile elements in tektites, and indicates that tektites solidified in an atmosphere with an ambient pressure of much less than 1 atm. The heavy noble gas concentrations may be an indicator of the height to which tektites were carried by the impact before they solidified.     

Geology and geochemistry of shallow drill cores from the Bosumtwi impact structure,Ghana

Abstract— The 1.07 Ma well‐preserved Bosumtwi impact structure in Ghana (10.5 km in diameter) formed in 2 Ga‐old metamorphosed and crystalline rocks of the Birimian system. The interior of the structure is largely filled by the 8 km diameter Lake Bosumtwi, and the crater rim and region in the environs of the crater is covered by tropical rainforest, making geological studies rather difficult and restricted to road cuts and streams. In early 1999, we undertook a shallow drilling program to the north of the crater rim to determine the extent of the ejecta blanket around the crater and to obtain subsurface core samples for mineralogical, petrological, and geochemical studies of ejecta of the Bosumtwi impact structure. A variety of impactite lithologies are present, consisting of impact glassrich suevite and several types of breccia: lithic breccia of single rock type, often grading into unbrecciated rock, with the rocks being shattered more or less in situ without much relative displacement (autochthonous?), and lithic polymict breccia that apparently do not contain any glassy material (allochtonous?). The suevite cores show that melt inclusions are present throughout the whole length of the cores in the form of vesicular glasses with no significant change of abundance with depth. Twenty samples from the 7 drill cores and 4 samples from recent road cuts in the structure were studied for their geochemical characteristics to accumulate a database for impact lithologies and their erosion products present at the Bosumtwi crater. Major and trace element analyses yielded compositions similar to those of the target rocks in the area (graywacke‐phyllite, shale, and granite). Graywacke‐phyllite and granite dikes seem to be important contributors to the compositions of the suevite and the road cut samples (fragmentary matrix), with a minor contribution of Pepiakese granite. The results also provide information about the thickness of the fallout suevite in the northern part of the Bosumtwi structure, which was determined to be ≤15 m and to occupy an area of ?1.5 km². Present suevite distribution is likely to be caused by differential erosion and does not reflect the initial areal extent of the continuous Bosumtwi ejecta deposits. Our studies allow a comparison with the extent of the suevite at the Ries, another well‐preserved impact structure.     

Brittle deformation in the inner NW Alps: from early orogen-parallel extrusion to late orogen-perpendicular collapse

Internal parts of the Alps have undergone widespread extensional deformation in the course of their Neogene exhumation history. Palaeostress inversion methods are used to map the prevailing stress fields and their evolution through time. Here we present new data from 100 sites with a total of about 2000 faults/striae couples, covering a large portion of the inner north‐western Alps. Palaeostress tensors are mostly extensional, although one‐third of them are transcurrent. The dominant direction of minimum horizontal stress axes (σ3) is in an orogen‐parallel (N30° to N70°) orientation around the bend of the north‐west alpine arc. A comparison between this older (Neogene, post‐metamorphic) stress field with the current stress and strain field determined from seismotectonics and geodesy indicates a change in deformation mode from early orogen‐parallel extrusion to a late and ongoing orogen‐perpendicular spreading.     

Automatic Classification of Subdwarf Spectra using a Neural Network

We apply a multilayer feed-forward back propagation artificial neural network to a sample of 380 subdwarf spectra classified by Drilling et al. (Drilling, J.S., Moehler, S., Jeffery, C.S., Heber, U., and Napiwotzki, R.: in press in: R. Gray (ed.), Probing the Personalities of Stars and Galaxies), showing that it is possible to use this technique on large sets of spectra and obtain classifications in good agreement with the standard. We briefly investigate the impact of training set size, showing that large training sets do not necessarily perform significantly better than small sets.     

Effects of streamflow isotope sampling strategies on the calibration of a tracer-aided rainfall-runoff model

Isotopes are increasingly used in rainfall-runoff models to constrain conceptualisations of internal catchment functioning and reduce model uncertainty. However, there is little guidance on how much tracer data is required to adequately do this, and different studies use data from different sampling strategies. Here, we used a 7-year time series of daily stable water isotope samples of precipitation and streamflow to derive a range of typical stream sampling regimes and investigate how this impacts calibration of a semi-distributed tracer-aided model in terms of flow, deuterium and flux age simulations. Over the 7 years weekly sampling facilitated an almost identical model performance as daily, and there were only slight deteriorations in performance for fortnightly sampling. Monthly sampling resulted in poorer deuterium simulations and greater uncertainty in the derived parameter sets ability to accurately represent catchment functioning, evidenced by unrealistic reductions in the volumes of water available for mixing in the saturation area causing simulated water age decreases. Reducing sampling effort and restricting data collection to 3 years caused reductions in the accuracy of deuterium simulation, though the deterioration did not occur if sampling continued for 5 years. Analysis was also undertaken to consider the effects of reduced sampling effort over the driest and wettest hydrological years to evaluate effects of more extreme conditions. This showed that the model was particularly sensitive to changes in sampling during dry conditions, when the catchment hydrological response is most non-linear. Across all dataset durations, sampling in relation to flow conditions, rather than time, revealed that samples collected at flows >Q50 could provide calibration results comparable to daily sampling. Targeting only extreme high flows resulted in poor deuterium and low flow simulations. This study suggests sufficient characterization of catchment functioning can be obtained through reduced sampling effort over longer timescales and the targeting of flows >Q50.     

Using lumped conceptual rainfall-runoff models to simulate daily isotope variability with fractionation in a nested mesoscale catchment

This paper presents 19 months of stable isotope (δ²H and δ¹⁸O) data to enhance understanding of water and solute transport at two spatial scales (2.3 km² and 122 km²) in the agricultural Lunan catchment, Scotland. Daily precipitation and stream isotope data, weekly lake and spring isotope data and monthly groundwater isotope data revealed important insights into flow pathways and mixing of water at both scales. In particular, a deeper groundwater flow path significantly contributes to total streamflow (25-50%). Upstream lake isotope dynamics, susceptible to evaporative fractionation, also appeared to have an important influence on the downstream isotope composition. This unique tracer data set facilitated the conceptualization of a lumped catchment-scale flow-tracer model. The incorporation of hydrological, mixing and fractionation processes based on these data improved simulations of the stream δ²H isotope response at the catchment outlet from 0.37 to 0.56 for the Nash-Sutcliffe statistic. The stable isotope data successfully aided model conceptualization and calibration in the quest for a simple water and solute transport model with improved representation of process dynamics.     

How important is it to integrate riverine suspended sediment chemical composition with depth? Clues from Amazon River depth-profiles

The vertical variability in mineralogical, chemical and isotopic compositions observed in large river suspended sediments calls for a depth-integration of this variability to accurately determine riverine geochemical fluxes. In this paper, we present a method to determine depth-integrated chemical particulate fluxes of large rivers, based on river sampling along depth-profiles, and applied to the Amazon Basin lowland tributaries. The suspended particulate matter (SPM) concentration data from depth-profiles is modeled for a number of individual grain size fractions using the Rouse model, which allows to predict the grain size distribution of suspended sediment throughout the whole river cross-section. Then, using (1) the relationship between grain size distribution and the Al/Si ratio (2) relationships between the Al/Si ratio and the chemical concentrations, the chemical composition of river sediment is predicted throughout the river cross-section, and integrated to yield the depth-integrated chemical particulate flux for a number of chemical elements (e.g. Si, Al, Fe, Na, REEs, …). For elements such as Al, Fe, REEs, Th, the depth-integrated flux is around twice as high as the one calculated from river surface sample characteristics. For Na and Si, the depth-integrated flux is three times higher than the “surface” estimate, due to the enrichment of albite and quartz at the bottom of the river. Depth-integrated ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr composition of suspended sediment, also predictable using this method, differs by more than 10⁻³ from the surface sample composition.Finally, potential implications of depth-integrated estimates of Amazon sediment chemistry are explored. Depth-integration of particulate ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr isotopic ratios is necessary for a reliable use of Sr isotopes as a provenance tracer. The concept of steady-state weathering of a large river basin is revisited using depth-integrated sediment composition. This analysis shows that, in the Amazon Basin river, the previously observed discrepancy between (1) weathering intensities of channel surface sediment and (2) silicate-derived dissolved fluxes is only slightly accounted for by the vertical variability of suspended sediment weathering intensities. This observation confirms that most large rivers basins are not eroding at steady-state.     

Texture and anisotropy analysis of Qusaiba shales

Scanning and transmission electron microscopy, synchrotron X‐ray diffraction, microtomography and ultrasonic velocity measurements were used to characterize microstructures and anisotropy of three deeply buried Qusaiba shales from the Rub’al‐Khali basin, Saudi Arabia. Kaolinite, illite‐smectite, illite‐mica and chlorite show strong preferred orientation with (001) pole figure maxima perpendicular to the bedding plane ranging from 2.4–6.8 multiples of a random distribution (m.r.d.). Quartz, feldspars and pyrite crystals have a random orientation distribution. Elastic properties of the polyphase aggregate are calculated by averaging the single crystal elastic properties over the orientation distribution, assuming a nonporous material. The average calculated bulk P‐wave velocities are 6.2 km/s (maximum) and 5.5 km/s (minimum), resulting in a P‐wave anisotropy of 12%. The calculated velocities are compared with those determined from ultrasonic velocity measurements on a similar sample. In the ultrasonic experiment, which measures the effects of the shale matrix as well as the effects of porosity, velocities are smaller (P‐wave maximum 5.3 km/s and minimum 4.1 km/s). The difference between calculated and measured velocities is attributed to the effects of anisotropic pore structure and to microfractures present in the sample, which have not been taken into account in the matrix averaging.