The present study was designed to gain insight into the protists and fungi that made up the microbiota in the past, fossilized in two different substrates: amber and sandstone. The amber, dated as Lower Cretaceous, was from Álava in northern Spain, while fossil-bearing sandstone rocks were collected from the Linnaeus terrace and Mount Fleming regions of Antarctica. When examining this type of i...

“Researchers have for the first time taught apes how to speak. Two animals, a pygmy chimp and an orang-utan, have been able to hold conversations with humans.” The report in the Sunday Times on 25 July was crystal clear, its unambiguity strengthened by the headline: “Scientists teach chimpanzees to speak English.” (What next? French? Gaelic?) Contrast this with the Daily Telegraph the next day....

Vicinal surfaces are known to exhibit morphological instabilities during step-flow growth. Through a linear stability analysis of step meandering instabilities, we investigate two effects that are important in many heteroepitaxial systems: elastic monopole-monopole interactions arising from bulk stress and the Ehrlich-Schwoebel (ES) barriers due to the asymmetric adatom incorporation rates. The...

A 6 km long stretch of the coast of Calypsostranda between Skilvika and Joseph− bukta, situated on the western side of Recherchefjorden, was investigated. It is made of an accumulative marine terrace at a height of 2–8 m a.s.l. (terrace 1) and width of 40–180 m, divided by a cliffed section in the frontal moraines of Renardbreen. From the character and intensity of changes, the area was divided...

Acid-sulfide hot springs are analogs of early Earth geothermal systems where microbial metal(loid) resistance likely first evolved. Arsenic is a metalloid enriched in the acid-sulfide hot spring Champagne Pool (Waiotapu, New Zealand). Arsenic speciation in Champagne Pool follows reaction paths not yet fully understood with respect to biotic contributions and coupling to biogeochemical sulfur cy...

[1] Fold deformation in three dimensions involves shortening, uplift, and lateral growth. Fluvial terraces represent strain markers that have been widely applied to constrain a fold’s shortening and uplift. For the lateral growth, however, the utility of fluvial terraces has been commonly ignored. Situated along northern margin of Chinese Pamir, the Mushi anticline preserves, along its northern...

Highly uniform step and termination structures on 4Hand 6H-SiC(0001) surfaces have been prepared via moderate annealing in disilane. Atomic force microscopy and dark-field low-energy electron microscopy imaging indicate single-phase terminations separated solely by half-unit-cell-height steps, driven by stacking fault energy. The atomic structure of 4H-SiC(0001)p 3 p3R30 -Si has been determined...