Isotopic portrayal of the Earth's upper mantle flow field

It is now well established that oceanic plates sink into the lower mantle at subduction zones, but the reverse process of replacing lost upper-mantle material is not well constrained. Even whether the return flow is strongly localized as narrow upwellings or more broadly distributed remains uncertain. Here we show that the distribution of long-lived radiogenic isotopes along the world's mid-ocean ridges can be used to map geochemical domains, which reflect contrasting refilling modes of the upper mantle. New hafnium isotopic data along the Southwest Indian Ridge delineate a sharp transition between an Indian province with a strong lower-mantle isotopic flavour and a South Atlantic province contaminated by advection of upper-mantle material beneath the lithospheric roots of the Archaean African craton. The upper mantle of both domains appears to be refilled through the seismically defined anomaly underlying South Africa and the Afar plume. Because of the viscous drag exerted by the continental keels, refilling of the upper mantle in the Atlantic and Indian domains appears to be slow and confined to localized upwellings. By contrast, in the unencumbered Pacific domain, upwellings seem comparatively much wider and more rapid.     

Carbon dioxide release from the North Pacific abyss during the last deglaciation

Atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations were significantly lower during glacial periods than during intervening interglacial periods, but the mechanisms responsible for this difference remain uncertain. Many recent explanations call on greater carbon storage in a poorly ventilated deep ocean during glacial periods, but direct evidence regarding the ventilation and respired carbon content of the glacial deep ocean is sparse and often equivocal. Here we present sedimentary geochemical records from sites spanning the deep subarctic Pacific that--together with previously published results--show that a poorly ventilated water mass containing a high concentration of respired carbon dioxide occupied the North Pacific abyss during the Last Glacial Maximum. Despite an inferred increase in deep Southern Ocean ventilation during the first step of the deglaciation (18,000-15,000 years ago), we find no evidence for improved ventilation in the abyssal subarctic Pacific until a rapid transition approximately 14,600 years ago: this change was accompanied by an acceleration of export production from the surface waters above but only a small increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration. We speculate that these changes were mechanistically linked to a roughly coeval increase in deep water formation in the North Atlantic, which flushed respired carbon dioxide from northern abyssal waters, but also increased the supply of nutrients to the upper ocean, leading to greater carbon dioxide sequestration at mid-depths and stalling the rise of atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations. Our findings are qualitatively consistent with hypotheses invoking a deglacial flushing of respired carbon dioxide from an isolated, deep ocean reservoir, but suggest that the reservoir may have been released in stages, as vigorous deep water ventilation switched between North Atlantic and Southern Ocean source regions.     

Coupling substrate and ion binding to extracellular gate of a sodium-dependent aspartate transporter

Secondary transporters are integral membrane proteins that catalyse the movement of substrate molecules across the lipid bilayer by coupling substrate transport to one or more ion gradients, thereby providing a mechanism for the concentrative uptake of substrates. Here we describe crystallographic and thermodynamic studies of Glt(Ph), a sodium (Na+)-coupled aspartate transporter, defining sites for aspartate, two sodium ions and d,l-threo-beta-benzyloxyaspartate, an inhibitor. We further show that helical hairpin 2 is the extracellular gate that controls access of substrate and ions to the internal binding sites. At least two sodium ions bind in close proximity to the substrate and these sodium-binding sites, together with the sodium-binding sites in another sodium-coupled transporter, LeuT, define an unwound alpha-helix as the central element of the ion-binding motif, a motif well suited to the binding of sodium and to participation in conformational changes that accompany ion binding and unbinding during the transport cycle.     

硬件在环测试台模拟车辆电池的电压分布

驾驶辅助系统不仅是为了辅助驾驶员进行一般的驾驶活动,而且要能在关键情况下接管驾驶。使用原型车进行试驾是测试该系统最现实的方式,试驾可使驾驶辅助系统暴露在各种实际环境下,从而检查其可靠性。由于带有原型的测试驱动器成本很高,而且难以完全相同方式复制驾驶活动,因此在系统开发和测试过程中经常使用硬件在环（HiL）测试台。HiL测试台不仅提供相关硬件,还可以为这些被测系统（SUT）提供模拟环境。在实际车辆的试驾过程中,由于不同的环境影响,电气系统的电压会发生变化,这些变化是基于不断变化的电气负载影响。目前,车辆电气系统的电压变化无法在硬件在环测试台上模拟。为了确定电压变化的原因和潜在现象,需要对实际试驾记录数据进行检查,以了解潜在现象。然后将这些结果用于推导唯象激励,该唯象激励可用于模拟测试台上的真实电压曲线。本文分析了车辆测量结果,目的是找出车载电压长期和短期热变化的可能原因,提出一种在HiL测试台上进行虚拟测试驱动的情况下真实模拟电压变化的方法。