ALBERT

Description: Human alterations to nutrient cycles and herbivore communities are affecting global biodiversity dramatically. Ecological theory predicts these changes should be strongly counteractive: nutrient addition drives plant species loss through intensified competition for light, whereas herbivores prevent competitive exclusion by increasing ground-level light, particularly in productive systems. Here we use experimental data spanning a globally relevant range of conditions to test the hypothesis that herbaceous plant species losses caused by eutrophication may be offset by increased light availability due to herbivory. This experiment, replicated in 40 grasslands on 6 continents, demonstrates that nutrients and herbivores can serve as counteracting forces to control local plant diversity through light limitation, independent of site productivity, soil nitrogen, herbivore type and climate. Nutrient addition consistently reduced local diversity through light limitation, and herbivory rescued diversity at sites where it alleviated light limitation. Thus, species loss from anthropogenic eutrophication can be ameliorated in grasslands where herbivory increases ground-level light.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Borer, Elizabeth T -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Gruner, Daniel S -- Harpole, W Stanley -- Hillebrand, Helmut -- Lind, Eric M -- Adler, Peter B -- Alberti, Juan -- Anderson, T Michael -- Bakker, Jonathan D -- Biederman, Lori -- Blumenthal, Dana -- Brown, Cynthia S -- Brudvig, Lars A -- Buckley, Yvonne M -- Cadotte, Marc -- Chu, Chengjin -- Cleland, Elsa E -- Crawley, Michael J -- Daleo, Pedro -- Damschen, Ellen I -- Davies, Kendi F -- DeCrappeo, Nicole M -- Du, Guozhen -- Firn, Jennifer -- Hautier, Yann -- Heckman, Robert W -- Hector, Andy -- HilleRisLambers, Janneke -- Iribarne, Oscar -- Klein, Julia A -- Knops, Johannes M H -- La Pierre, Kimberly J -- Leakey, Andrew D B -- Li, Wei -- MacDougall, Andrew S -- McCulley, Rebecca L -- Melbourne, Brett A -- Mitchell, Charles E -- Moore, Joslin L -- Mortensen, Brent -- O'Halloran, Lydia R -- Orrock, John L -- Pascual, Jesus -- Prober, Suzanne M -- Pyke, David A -- Risch, Anita C -- Schuetz, Martin -- Smith, Melinda D -- Stevens, Carly J -- Sullivan, Lauren L -- Williams, Ryan J -- Wragg, Peter D -- Wright, Justin P -- Yang, Louie H -- England -- Nature. 2014 Apr 24;508(7497):517-20. doi: 10.1038/nature13144. Epub 2014 Mar 9.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA. ; Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. ; Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von- Ossietzky University, 26382 Wilhelmshaven, Oldenburg, Germany. ; Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA. ; Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC), Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas (CONICET), Mar del Plata 7600 , Argentina. ; Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27109, USA. ; School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. ; Agricultural Research Service (ARS), United States Department of Agriculture, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526, USA. ; Deptartment of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. ; Department of Plant Biology, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan 48824, USA. ; 1] ARC Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto Scarborough, Ontario M1C 1A4, Canada. ; State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, Research Station of Alpine Meadow and Wetland Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou, 730000 Gansu, China. ; Division of Biological Sciences, University of California, San Diego, California 92093, USA. ; Department of Biology, Imperial College at Silwood Park, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK. ; Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder Colorado 80309, USA. ; US Geological Survey, Forest and Rangeland Ecosystem Science Center, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA. ; Queensland University of Technology, Biogeosciences, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia. ; Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27599, USA. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA. ; Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology, University of California, Berkeley 94704, USA. ; Department of Plant Biology, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, llinois 61820, USA. ; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. ; Department of Plant & Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546, USA. ; Australian Research Center for Urban Ecology, c/o School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia, and School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia. ; Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA. ; CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Wembley, West Australia 6913, Australia. ; Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Birmensdorf 8903, Switzerland. ; Lancaster Environment Center, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK. ; Department of Biology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27708, USA. ; Department of Entomology, University of California, Davis, California 95616, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24670649" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Studies of experimental grassland communities have demonstrated that plant diversity can stabilize productivity through species asynchrony, in which decreases in the biomass of some species are compensated for by increases in others. However, it remains unknown whether these findings are relevant to natural ecosystems, especially those for which species diversity is threatened by anthropogenic global change. Here we analyse diversity-stability relationships from 41 grasslands on five continents and examine how these relationships are affected by chronic fertilization, one of the strongest drivers of species loss globally. Unmanipulated communities with more species had greater species asynchrony, resulting in more stable biomass production, generalizing a result from biodiversity experiments to real-world grasslands. However, fertilization weakened the positive effect of diversity on stability. Contrary to expectations, this was not due to species loss after eutrophication but rather to an increase in the temporal variation of productivity in combination with a decrease in species asynchrony in diverse communities. Our results demonstrate separate and synergistic effects of diversity and eutrophication on stability, emphasizing the need to understand how drivers of global change interactively affect the reliable provisioning of ecosystem services in real-world systems.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Hautier, Yann -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Borer, Elizabeth T -- Adler, Peter B -- Harpole, W Stanley -- Hillebrand, Helmut -- Lind, Eric M -- MacDougall, Andrew S -- Stevens, Carly J -- Bakker, Jonathan D -- Buckley, Yvonne M -- Chu, Chengjin -- Collins, Scott L -- Daleo, Pedro -- Damschen, Ellen I -- Davies, Kendi F -- Fay, Philip A -- Firn, Jennifer -- Gruner, Daniel S -- Jin, Virginia L -- Klein, Julia A -- Knops, Johannes M H -- La Pierre, Kimberly J -- Li, Wei -- McCulley, Rebecca L -- Melbourne, Brett A -- Moore, Joslin L -- O'Halloran, Lydia R -- Prober, Suzanne M -- Risch, Anita C -- Sankaran, Mahesh -- Schuetz, Martin -- Hector, Andy -- England -- Nature. 2014 Apr 24;508(7497):521-5. doi: 10.1038/nature13014. Epub 2014 Feb 16.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉1] Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA [2] Institute of Evolutionary Biology and Environmental Studies, University of Zurich, 8057 Zurich, Switzerland. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA. ; Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322, USA. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, Ames, Iowa 50011, USA. ; Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg, D-26111 Oldenburg, Germany. ; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. ; Lancaster Environment Centre, Lancaster University, Lancaster LA1 4YQ, UK. ; School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington 98195, USA. ; 1] Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Environmental Decisions, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Queensland, Queensland 4072, Australia [2] School of Natural Sciences, Department of Zoology, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ; State Key Laboratory of Grassland and Agro-Ecosystems, Research Station of Alpine Meadow and Wetland Ecosystems, School of Life Sciences, Lanzhou University, Lanzhou 730000, China. ; Department of Biology, MSC03-2020, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87131, USA. ; Instituto de Investigaciones Marinas y Costeras (IIMyC) (CONICET-UNMdP), Mar del Plata 7600, Argentina. ; Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA. ; United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Grassland Soil and Water Research Lab, Temple, Texas 76502, USA. ; Queensland University of Technology, School of Biological Sciences, Brisbane 4000, Australia. ; Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. ; United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, Agroecosystem Management Research Unit, Lincoln, Nebraska 68583, USA. ; Department of Forest, Rangeland and Watershed Stewardship, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, Colorado 80523, USA. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA. ; Berkeley Initiative for Global Change Biology, University of California, Berkeley, California 94720, USA. ; Yunnan Academy of Biodiversity, Southwest Forestry University, Kunming 650224, China. ; Department of Plant and Soil Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky 40546, USA. ; 1] Australian Research Centre for Urban Ecology, Melbourne, c/o School of Botany, University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010, Australia [2] School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Victoria 3800, Australia. ; Department of Zoology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon 97331, USA. ; CSIRO Ecosystem Sciences, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia. ; Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland. ; 1] School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK [2] National Centre for Biological Sciences, GKVK Campus, Bangalore 560065, India. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24531763" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Fraser et al. (Reports, 17 July 2015, p. 302) report a unimodal relationship between productivity and species richness at regional and global scales, which they contrast with the results of Adler et al. (Reports, 23 September 2011, p. 1750). However, both data sets, when analyzed correctly, show clearly and consistently that productivity is a poor predictor of local species richness.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Tredennick, Andrew T -- Adler, Peter B -- Grace, James B -- Harpole, W Stanley -- Borer, Elizabeth T -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Anderson, T Michael -- Bakker, Jonathan D -- Biederman, Lori A -- Brown, Cynthia S -- Buckley, Yvonne M -- Chu, Chengjin -- Collins, Scott L -- Crawley, Michael J -- Fay, Philip A -- Firn, Jennifer -- Gruner, Daniel S -- Hagenah, Nicole -- Hautier, Yann -- Hector, Andy -- Hillebrand, Helmut -- Kirkman, Kevin -- Knops, Johannes M H -- Laungani, Ramesh -- Lind, Eric M -- MacDougall, Andrew S -- McCulley, Rebecca L -- Mitchell, Charles E -- Moore, Joslin L -- Morgan, John W -- Orrock, John L -- Peri, Pablo L -- Prober, Suzanne M -- Risch, Anita C -- Schutz, Martin -- Speziale, Karina L -- Standish, Rachel J -- Sullivan, Lauren L -- Wardle, Glenda M -- Williams, Ryan J -- Yang, Louie H -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2016 Jan 29;351(6272):457. doi: 10.1126/science.aad6236.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, 5230 Old Main, Logan, UT 84322, USA. atredenn@gmail.com. ; Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, 5230 Old Main, Logan, UT 84322, USA. ; U.S. Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, 700 Cajundome Boulevard, Lafayette, LA 70506, USA. ; Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. ; Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, St. Paul, MN 55108, USA. ; Department of Biology, Wake Forest University, Box 7325 Reynolda Station, Winston-Salem, NC 27109, USA. ; School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, 3501 NE 41st Street, Box 354115, Seattle, WA 98195, USA. ; Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology, Iowa State University, 251 Bessey Hall, Ames, IA 50010, USA. ; Department of Bioagricultural Sciences and Pest Management, Colorado State University, 307 University Avenue, Fort Collins, CO 80523, USA. ; School of Natural Sciences, Trinity College Dublin, University of Dublin, Zoology, Dublin 2, Ireland. ; School of Life Sciences, Sun Yat-sen University, Xingang Xi Road 135, Guangzhou, 510275, China. ; Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA. ; Department of Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Ascot, SL5 7PY, UK. ; Grassland, Soil, and Water Research Laboratory, USDA-ARS, 808 East Blackland Road, Temple, TX 76502, USA. ; School of Earth, Environmental and Biological 42 Sciences, Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Gardens Point, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 4001. ; Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, 4112 Plant Sciences, College Park, MD 20742, USA. ; School of Life Sciences, University of KwaZulu-Natal, 1 Carbis Road, Pietermaritzburg, 3201, South Africa. ; Department of Biology, Ecology and Biodiversity group, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, 3584 CH Utrecht, Netherlands. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, OX1 3RB, UK. ; Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, Carl-von-Ossietzky University Oldenburg, Schleusenstrasse 1, 26382 Wihlhemshaven, Germany. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Nebraska, 211 Manter Hall, Lincoln, NE 68588, USA. ; Biology Department, Doane College, 1014 Boswell Avenue, Crete, NE 68333, USA. ; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, 50 Stone Road, Guelph, Ontario, Canada N1G 2W1. ; Department of Plant and Soil Science, University of Kentucky, N-222D Ag Science North, Lexington, KY 40546-0091, USA. ; Department of Biology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, CB#3280, Chapel Hill, NC 27599, USA. ; School of Biological Sciences, Monash University, Clayton Campus, Wellington Road, Clayton 3800, Victoria, Australia. ; Department of Ecology, Environment and Evolution, La Trobe University, Kingsbury Drive, Bundoora 3086, Victoria, Australia. ; Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA. ; Department of Forestry, Agriculture and Water, Southern Patagonia National University-INTA-CONICET, CC 332 (CP 9400), Rio Gallegos, Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina. ; Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation Land and Water, Private Bag 5, Wembley, WA 6913, Australia. ; Community Ecology, Swiss Federal Institute for Forest, Snow and Landscape Research, Zuercherstrasse 111, 8903 Birmensdorf, Switzerland. ; Department of Ecology, INIBIOMA (CONICET-UNCO), Quintral 1250, Bariloche (8400), Rio Negro, Argentina. ; School of Veterinary and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, Perth, Western Australia, 90 South Street, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150. ; School of Biological Sciences, University of Sydney, Heydon-Laurence Building, A08, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia. ; Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, Iowa State University, Ames, IA, USA. ; Department of Entomology and Nematology, University of California, Davis, One Shields Avenue, Davis, CA 95616, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26823418" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: How ecosystem productivity and species richness are interrelated is one of the most debated subjects in the history of ecology. Decades of intensive study have yet to discern the actual mechanisms behind observed global patterns. Here, by integrating the predictions from multiple theories into a single model and using data from 1,126 grassland plots spanning five continents, we detect the clear signals of numerous underlying mechanisms linking productivity and richness. We find that an integrative model has substantially higher explanatory power than traditional bivariate analyses. In addition, the specific results unveil several surprising findings that conflict with classical models. These include the isolation of a strong and consistent enhancement of productivity by richness, an effect in striking contrast with superficial data patterns. Also revealed is a consistent importance of competition across the full range of productivity values, in direct conflict with some (but not all) proposed models. The promotion of local richness by macroecological gradients in climatic favourability, generally seen as a competing hypothesis, is also found to be important in our analysis. The results demonstrate that an integrative modelling approach leads to a major advance in our ability to discern the underlying processes operating in ecological systems.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Grace, James B -- Anderson, T Michael -- Seabloom, Eric W -- Borer, Elizabeth T -- Adler, Peter B -- Harpole, W Stanley -- Hautier, Yann -- Hillebrand, Helmut -- Lind, Eric M -- Partel, Meelis -- Bakker, Jonathan D -- Buckley, Yvonne M -- Crawley, Michael J -- Damschen, Ellen I -- Davies, Kendi F -- Fay, Philip A -- Firn, Jennifer -- Gruner, Daniel S -- Hector, Andy -- Knops, Johannes M H -- MacDougall, Andrew S -- Melbourne, Brett A -- Morgan, John W -- Orrock, John L -- Prober, Suzanne M -- Smith, Melinda D -- England -- Nature. 2016 Jan 21;529(7586):390-3. doi: 10.1038/nature16524. Epub 2016 Jan 13.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉US Geological Survey, Wetland and Aquatic Research Center, 700 Cajundome Boulevard, Lafayette, Louisiana 70506, USA. ; Department of Biology, 206 Winston Hall, Wake Forest University, Box 7325 Reynolda Station, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27109, USA. ; Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, 1987 Upper Buford Circle, St Paul, Minnesota 55108, USA. ; Department of Wildland Resources and the Ecology Center, Utah State University, 5230 Old Main, Logan, Utah 84322, USA. ; Department of Physiological Diversity, Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research - UFZ, Permoserstrasse 15, 04318 Leipzig, Germany. ; German Centre for Integrative Biodiversity Research (iDiv), Deutscher Platz 5e, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany. ; Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, Am Kirchtor 1, 06108 Halle (Saale), Germany. ; Ecology and Biodiversity Group, Department of Biology, Utrecht University, Padualaan 8, Utrecht 3584 CH, The Netherlands. ; Institute for Chemistry and Biology of the Marine Environment, University of Oldenburg, Schleusenstrasse 1, Wilhelmshaven D-26381, Germany. ; Institute of Ecology and Earth Sciences, University of Tartu, Lai 40, Tartu 51005, Estonia. ; School of Environmental and Forest Sciences, University of Washington, Box 354115, Seattle, Washington 98195-4115, USA. ; School of Natural Sciences, Zoology, Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Dublin 2, Ireland. ; Department of Biological Sciences, Imperial College London, Silwood Park, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK. ; Department of Zoology, University of Wisconsin, 430 Lincoln Drive, Madison, Wisconsin 53706, USA. ; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, UCB 334, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, USA. ; Grassland Soil and Water Research Laboratory, United States Department of Agriculture Agricultural Research Service, 808 East Blackland Road, Temple, Texas 76502, USA. ; #15 Queensland University of Technology, School of Earth, Environment and Biological Sciences, Brisbane, Queensland 4001, Australia. ; Department of Entomology, University of Maryland, College Park, 4112 Plant Sciences, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA. ; Department of Plant Sciences, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3RB, UK. ; School of Biological Sciences, 348 Manter Hall, University of Nebraska, Lincoln, Nebraska 68588, USA. ; Department of Integrative Biology, University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario N1G 2W1, Canada. ; Department of Ecology, Environment, and Evolution, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Victoria 3083, Australia. ; CSIRO Land and Water, Private Bag 5, Wembley, Western Australia, 6913, Australia. ; Department of Biology, Colorado State University, 1878 Campus Delivery, Fort Collins, Colorado 80526, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/26760203" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: A consideration of some unexplained physical features of both Devon and Cornwall does not hitherto appear to have been regarded as a line of approach towards various problems of Devono-Cornish geology still awaiting solution. Although the attempt is not yet by any means advanced, the results so far obtained appear of sufficient interest to communicate.

Description: The area examined occupies about 12 square miles in South Cardiganshire bounded inland by a line joining the hamlets of Sarnau and Nanternis, and extending along the coast from the stream crossing Penbryn Sands in the south to New Quay in the north.

Description: Previous opinion sums up in favour of the continuity of the three boundaries, the entire line being one of dislocation in the east, dislocation and intrusion in the west. Previous opinion also favours the view that, inside the boundary-zone, not only are the Start-Lizard schists continuous, but they have features comparable with some of the Alpine “Schistes lustrés”, with recumbent folding at the Lizard.The boundary-zone is defined as a belt of variolite (ophiolite), exotic blocks, and serpentine intrusive in, and contemporaneous with, a great thrust.Recent work by the writer has shown that some of the beds outside the boundary-zone are a “facies flysch”. Younger beds come in towards the west, in association with the westerly pitch visible in the older beds in South Devonshire; geanticlines occur in the Lower and Middle Devonian respectively, of South Devon and South Cornwall. In an area further north some of the beds show an accumulation of folds comparable with those of the “autochthonous sedimentary” in front of some of the great Alpine nappes; recumbent folding is prevalent in both Devon and Cornwall. The Cornish Flysch was deposited under conditions such as might have preceded a great nappe movement; it is described in relation to the exotic blocks and serpentine in the fracture.The much younger Alpine Flysch also includes ophiolites and exotic blocks, with serpentine intrusive in the fractures upon which the great nappes advanced. According to some authors, the nappes arose from recumbent folds based on geanticlines.The similar direction of both the Cornish (Variscan) and the Alpine movements makes possible a comparison in certain effects as, for instance, the southward increase in albitization and metamorphism, between the great Alps and the similar but older, comparatively tiny, flattened, and denuded relic in south-west England.These cases are also strikingly paralleled by a zone of basic igneous rocks and exotic blocks which overlies the Himalayas.The evidence appears sufficient basis for the suggestion that the Start-Dodman-Lizard boundary-zone may be the relic of a great Variscan nappe, associated with the fan-structure of Cornwall.

Description: X-ray fluorescence (XRF) core scanning is a relatively new arrangement of a classic analytical technique which allows for non-destructive, in situ XRF analysis of sediment cores from submillimetre resolution upwards. In this contribution we explore the use of XRF core scanning for tephrochronology based on the analysis of three gyttja-rich sediment cores from the Faroe Islands. Using a combination of optical and radiographic images, analytical parameters and elemental profiles (Si, K, Ca, Ti, Mn, Fe, Sr and Zr), higher concentration basaltic tephra layers (〉1000 shards/cm 3 ) were positively identified. The XRF core scanning did not capture the lower concentration (〈850 shards/cm 3 ) rhyolitic layers found in the core. The elemental data generated for the detected tephra layers using XRF core scanning was not comparable to individual shard analysis by electron microprobe. We recommend using XRF core scanning for tephra screening in order to localize depths for high-resolution subsampling and to avoid depths where sediment mixing has caused tailing/mixing of the tephra signal. At the studied site the basaltic Saksunarvatn ash as well as a tephra belonging to the Askja-S/10 ka eruption were identified.

Description: Although loss of epithelial integrity is a hallmark of advanced cancer, it remains poorly understood whether genetic alterations corrupting this integrity causally facilitate tumorigenesis. We show that conditional deletion of tumor suppressor gene Lkb1 (Par-4) in the mammary gland compromises epithelial integrity manifested by mislocalization of cell polarity markers, lateralization of tight junctions, deterioration of desmosomes and basement membrane (BM), and hyperbranching of the mammary ductal tree. We identify the desmosomal BM remodelling serine protease Hepsin as a key factor mediating Lkb1 loss-induced structural alterations in mammary epithelium and BM fragmentation. Although loss of Lkb1 alone does not promote mammary tumorigenesis, combination of Lkb1 deficiency with oncogenic c-Myc leads to dramatic acceleration in tumor formation. The results coupling Lkb1 loss-mediated epithelial integrity defects to mislocalization of serine protease Hepsin and to oncogenic synergy with c-Myc imply that Lkb1 loss facilitates oncogenic proliferation by releasing epithelial cells from structural BM boundaries.