Wet periods in northeastern Brazil over the past 210 kyr linked to distant climate anomalies

The tropics are the main source of the atmosphere's sensible and latent heat, and water vapour, and are therefore important for reconstructions of past climate. But long, accurately dated records of southern tropical palaeoclimate, which would allow the establishment of climatic connections to distant regions, have not been available. Here we present a 210,000-year (210-kyr) record of wet periods in tropical northeastern Brazil--a region that is currently semi-arid. The record is obtained from speleothems and travertine deposits that are accurately dated using the U/Th method. We find wet periods that are synchronous with periods of weak East Asian summer monsoons, cold periods in Greenland, Heinrich events in the North Atlantic and periods of decreased river runoff to the Cariaco basin. We infer that the wet periods may be explained with a southward displacement of the Intertropical Convergence Zone. This widespread synchroneity of climate anomalies suggests a relatively rapid global reorganization of the ocean-atmosphere system. We conclude that the wet periods probably affected rainforest distribution, as plant fossils show that forest expansion occurred during these intermittent wet intervals, and opened a forest corridor between the Amazonian and Atlantic rainforests.     

Interaction of catechins with aluminum in vitro

Tea is one of the most popular beverages, consumed by over two thirds of the world's population; but the aluminum accumulation property of tea plant is becoming the focus of many researches because of aluminum's known adverse effect on human health. Investigation of the interactions of catechins with Al(3+) showed that during the interaction of catechins with Al(3+), the UV-vis spectrum of catechins was changed. Absorption of EGCG at 274 nm decreased and increased at 322 nm; EC and C's at 278 nm changed little. The ratio of Al(3+) to EGCG was 1:1 in pH 5.0 buffer solution; in pH 6.2 buffer solution, the ratio in the Al-EGCG complex was 1:1. Interestingly, while the ratio reached to over 2, after the complex of Al-EGCG started polymerization, the ratio in the polymer was 2:1. In pH 6.2 buffer solution, the complex behavior of C with Al(3+) was the same as that of EGCG, with a little difference for EC. When the ratio of Al(3+) to EC was <1, the complex in ratio was 1:2, but, the complex polymerized when the ratio of Al(3+) to EC was >1. It was found that the ratio of Al(3+) to EC in the polymer was 1:1. Polymerization of Al-catechin complexes might reduce aluminum absorption in the intestine. Kow value was also employed to study the properties of aluminum species in tea infusion (at gastric and intestine pH condition) and the effect of catechins and tea polyphenols on Kow in buffer solution. Results showed that Kow value rose much higher at the intestine pH than at the gastric pH. Tea polyphenols and catechins could greatly reduce aluminum Kow value in acetic buffer, indicating that these compounds may reduce aluminum absorption during tea intake.     

Evidence for ubiquitous strong electron-phonon coupling in high-temperature superconductors

Coupling between electrons and phonons (lattice vibrations) drives the formation of the electron pairs responsible for conventional superconductivity. The lack of direct evidence for electron-phonon coupling in the electron dynamics of the high-transition-temperature superconductors has driven an intensive search for an alternative mechanism. A coupling of an electron with a phonon would result in an abrupt change of its velocity and scattering rate near the phonon energy. Here we use angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy to probe electron dynamics-velocity and scattering rate-for three different families of copper oxide superconductors. We see in all of these materials an abrupt change of electron velocity at 50-80 meV, which we cannot explain by any known process other than to invoke coupling with the phonons associated with the movement of the oxygen atoms. This suggests that electron-phonon coupling strongly influences the electron dynamics in the high-temperature superconductors, and must therefore be included in any microscopic theory of superconductivity.     

Analysis of nuclear apoptotic process in a cell-free system

We report an analysis of the apoptotic process of mouse liver nuclei induced in a cell-free carrot cytosol system by cytochrome c. Typical characteristics of apoptosis were observed, such as chromatin condensation, margination, apoptotic bodies and DNA ladders. Furthermore, transmission and scanning electron microscope analysis of the apoptotic nuclei detected chromatin-free nuclear vesicles before apoptotic bodies appeared at a comparatively late phase. When AC-YVAD-CHO, an inhibitor of caspase 6, was introduced into the system, these vesicles and apoptotic bodies disappeared completely within our study sections. We confirmed the results using whole-mount electron microscopy, and found that although the nuclear lamina was destroyed early, the nuclear matrix largely remained intact during the course of apoptosis. The nuclear matrix played an important role in maintaining the integrity of apoptotic cells and connecting the apoptotic bodies and apoptotic nucleus. Received 29 September 2000; revised 10 December 2000; accepted 13 December 2000     

Temperature trends over the past five centuries reconstructed from borehole temperatures

For an accurate assessment of the relative roles of natural variability and anthropogenic influence in the Earth's climate, reconstructions of past temperatures from the pre-industrial as well as the industrial period are essential. But instrumental records are typically available for no more than the past 150 years. Therefore reconstructions of pre-industrial climate rely principally on traditional climate proxy records, each with particular strengths and limitations in representing climatic variability. Subsurface temperatures comprise an independent archive of past surface temperature changes that is complementary to both the instrumental record and the climate proxies. Here we use present-day temperatures in 616 boreholes from all continents except Antarctica to reconstruct century-long trends in temperatures over the past 500 years at global, hemispheric and continental scales. The results confirm the unusual warming of the twentieth century revealed by the instrumental record, but suggest that the cumulative change over the past five centuries amounts to about 1 K, exceeding recent estimates from conventional climate proxies. The strength of temperature reconstructions from boreholes lies in the detection of long-term trends, complementary to conventional climate proxies, but to obtain a complete picture of past warming, the differences between the approaches need to be investigated in detail.     

Neural correlation of item recognition and voice source retrieval

An experiment was conducted using event-related potentials to investigate the old/new effects of the item recognition and the voice source retrieval tasks on drawing. The results indicated that (1) the old/new effect for the voice source retrieval task was much wider than that of the item recognition task; (2) the distributive characteristics of the voice source memory effect were different from those in previous studies; (3) the old/new effects for target and non-target-old drawings were similar. These results demonstrated that the voice source retrieval task is more difficult than the item recognition task for drawing, which supports the dual-process model. The experimental material and the source characteristic regulate the spatial and temporal distributions of the old/new effect for the voice source retrieval task together.     

Active Vibration Isolation System for Sub-microultra-precision Turning Machine

Now vibration isolation of ultra-precision machine tool is usually achieved through air-springs systems. As far as HCM-I sub-micro turning machine developed by HIT, an active vibration isolation system that consists of air-springs and electro-magnetic actuators was presented. The primary function of air-springs is to support the turning machine and to isolate the high-frequency vibration. The electro-magnetic actuators controlled by fuzzy-neural networks isolate the low-frequency vibration. The experiment indicates that active vibration isolation system isolates base-vibration effectively in all the frequency range. So the vibration of the machine bed is controlled under 10-6g and the surface roughness is improved.     

Monitoring the secretion from single cells with temporal and spatial resolution

The secretion from cells plays a significant role in life activites and in the fields of neurobiology, cell biology, clinic, pathology, pharmacology etc. Thus to investigate the secretion at the single cell level with the developing methods is a frontier cross-discipline research activity. The contents, methods and new progress of this research have been reviewed by electrochemical monitoring combined with patch-clamp techniques, fluorescent detection and immunoassay, and the prospects on the frontier of the research area have been discussed.