Spatial differences in rock uplift rates inferred from channel steepness indices along the northern flank of the Qilian Mountain, northeast Tibetan Plateau

The rate and distribution of deformation along the Qilian Mountain, on the northeastern Tibetan Plateau, is needed to understand the evolution of high topography associated with the plateau. Recently, a number of empirical studies have provided support for the contention, common to most models of fluvial incision, that rock uplift rate exerts a first-order control on the gradient of longitudinal river profiles. Along the northern Qilian Mountain, this method is used to extract information about the spatial patterns of differential rock uplift. Analysis of the longitudinal profiles of bedrock channels reveals systematic differences in the channel steepness index along the trend of the frontal ranges. Local comparisons of channel steepness reveal that lithology and precipitation have limited influence on channel steepness. Similarly, there is little evidence suggesting that channel steepness is influenced by differences in the sediment loads. We argue that the distribution of channel steepness in the Qilian Mountain is mostly the result of differential rates of rock uplift. Thus, channel steepness indices reveal a lower rock uplift rate in the eastern portion of the Qilian Mountain and a higher rate in the middle and west. The highest rates appear to occur in the middle-west portions of the range, just to the west of the Yumu Shan.     

Soft sediment benthic macroinvertebrate communities of the Green River at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, Uintah County, Utah

Benthic macroinvertebrates from four habitat types (river channel, ephemeral side channel, river backwater, and seasonally inundated wetland) were examined from the Green River at the Ouray National Wildlife Refuge, Uintah County, UT, June-August 1991. For major taxa (Nematoda, Oligochaeta, Diptera: Ceratopogonidea, and Chironomidae) were quantified. Chuster analysis of densities showed that habitat types with comparable flow conditions were the most similar. Highest to lowest overall benthic invertebrate densities of the four habitats were as follows: ephemeral side channel, river backwater, seasonally inundated wetland, and river channel. Nematodes were the most abundant taxon in all habitat types and sample dates except the August sample of the river channel and river backwater and the July sample of the seasonally inundated wetland.     

Electrophoretic study of cutthroat trout populations in Utah

Thirty - nine Utah streams were sampled for cutthroat trout. Of these, 31 contain cutthroat or cutthroat / rainbow hybrid populations. By using starch gel electrophoresis, these populations were segregated into three groups. One group consisted predominately of fish from the Sevier River (of the Bonneville Basin) and Colorado drainages. A second was primarily populations from the Bear River Drainage (Bonneville Basin) as well as some scattered populations along the Wasatch Front (Bonneville Basin). The third consisted of Wasatch Front populations and populations that have hybridized with rainbow trout. Since different subspecies of cutthroat trout are native to the Colorado and Bonneville drainages, one would expect the populations from within the Bonneville Basin to be more similar to one another and less similar to the Colorado River populations. That this did not occur raises questions concerning the evolutionary relationships of the subspecies and the populations. It is clear that at least a northern (Bear River) and southern (Sevier River) form of the Bonneville cutthroat exists. The Wasatch Front may represent an intermediate zone where these two forms intergrade.         

Developmental regulation of p70 S6 kinase by a G protein-coupled receptor dynamically modelized in primary cells

The mechanisms whereby G protein-coupled receptors (GPCR) activate signalling pathways involved in mRNA translation are ill-defined, in contrast to tyrosine kinase receptors (TKR). We compared a GPCR and a TKR, both endogenously expressed, for their ability to mediate phosphorylation of 70-kDa ribosomal S6 kinase p70S6K in primary rat Sertoli cells at two developmental stages. In proliferating cells stimulated with follicle-stimulating hormone (FSH), active p70S6K was phosphorylated on T389 and T421/S424, through cAMP-dependent kinase (PKA) and phosphatidyl-inositide-3 kinase (PI3K) antagonizing actions. In FSH-stimulated differentiating cells, active p70S6K was phosphorylated solely on T389, PKA and PI3K independently enhancing its activity. At both developmental stages, insulin-induced p70S6K regulation was consistent with reported data. Therefore, TKR and GPCR trigger distinct p70S6K active conformations. p70S6K developmental regulation was formalized in a dynamic mathematical model fitting the data, which led to experimentally inaccessible predictions on p70S6K phosphorylation rate.     

The correspondence between James Hutton (1726–1797) and James Watt (1736–1819) with two letters from Hutton to George Clerk-Maxwell (1715–1784): Part I

In the collection of Watt's papers at Doldowlod, home of Lord Gibson-Watt, there are seven previously unpublished letters from James Hutton to James Watt, and four letters from Watt to Hutton, also unpublished. The letters were written between 1774 and 1795. Very little of Hutton's other correspondence survives, so these letters add significantly to our knowledge. The earliest letters, together with two letters to George Clerk-Maxwell (in the Scottish Record Office), describe geological tours that Hutton made through Wales, the Midlands, and the south-west of England in 1774. The correspondence after 1774, which will appear in a later edition of Annals of Science, reveals Watt's expertise in geology, and also discusses meteorology, varnish making, Symington's steam engines, the first experiments with steam navigation, pneumatic medicine, and other topics.     

Newtonian Emanation, Spinozism, Measurement and the Baconian Origins of the Laws of Nature

The first two sections of this paper investigate what Newton could have meant in a now famous passage from “De Graviatione” (hereafter “DeGrav”) that “space is as it were an emanative effect of God.” First it offers a careful examination of the four key passages within DeGrav that bear on this. The paper shows that the internal logic of Newton’s argument permits several interpretations. In doing so, the paper calls attention to a Spinozistic strain in Newton’s thought. Second it sketches four interpretive options: (i) one approach is generic neo-Platonic; (ii) another approach is associated with the Cambridge Platonist, Henry More; a variant on this (ii*) emphasizes that Newton mixes Platonist and Epicurean themes; (iii) a necessitarian approach; (iv) an approach connected with Bacon’s efforts to reformulate a useful notion of form and laws of nature. Hitherto only the second and third options have received scholarly attention in scholarship on DeGrav. The paper offers new arguments to treat Newtonian emanation as a species of Baconian formal causation as articulated, especially, in the first few aphorisms of part two of Bacon’s New Organon. If we treat Newtonian emanation as a species of formal causation then the necessitarian reading can be combined with most of the Platonist elements that others have discerned in DeGrav, especially Newton’s commitment to doctrines of different degrees of reality as well as the manner in which the first existing being ‘transfers’ its qualities to space (as a kind of causa-sui). This can clarify the conceptual relationship between space and its formal cause in Newton as well as Newton’s commitment to the spatial extended-ness of all existing beings. While the first two sections of this paper engage with existing scholarly controversies, in the final section the paper argues that the recent focus on emanation has obscured the importance of Newton’s very interesting claims about existence and measurement in “DeGrav”. The paper argues that according to Newton God and other entities have the same kind of quantities of existence; Newton is concerned with how measurement clarifies the way of being of entities. Newton is not claiming that measurement reveals all aspects of an entity. But if we measure something then it exists as a magnitude in space and as a magnitude in time. This is why in DeGrav Newton’s conception of existence really helps to “lay truer foundations of the mechanical sciences.”     

Purity and Danger of an Information Infrastructure

We critically assess deep-seated assumptions and images of an information infrastructure, namely, that it needs to be uniform, tidy, and nonfragmented. This is necessary because our perception of order is socially constructed and, more importantly, because it has implications. Based on an historical reconstruction of the establishment of a Lotus Notes-based infrastructure in an internationally oriented oil company with 17,000 employees, we describe and analyze the productive role that appeals to an orderly infrastructure play. We trace its sources and describe how it operates. We also identify the implications in terms of choice of technological solution, delegation of organizational roles, and making organizational actors (in)visible.