Explore the vast range of titles available.

A primary objective of the Nautilus Exploration Program is to make data and samples gathered on exploratory expeditions accessible to the oceanographic community. The Lead Scientist works with Watch Leaders, scientists onshore, and the Data Manager to ensure representative samples of organisms, sediment, and rocks are procured from the deep sea. Using ROV Hercules to collect samples is just the beginning of the process; however, once the vehicle is on deck, the samples are meticulously documented and then archived. Samples and data products are made available to scientists on board during the expedition, and ultimately to dozens of researchers participating from shore or others who request the samples from our partners' archives. The 2013 expedition season yielded 656 samples, including over 200 rock and sediment, 150 genomic tissue, and 250 biological voucher samples that are now available to the US and international scientific communities.

Kolumbo submarine volcano, located 7 km northeast of Santorini in the Aegean Sea, last erupted in 1650 AD resulting in significant coastal destruction from tsunamis and about 70 fatalities on nearby Thera from gas discharge. Pyroclastic materials were reported as far south as Crete and as far northeast as Turkey. Tephra from the 1650 AD submarine eruption has been correlated in sediment box cores using a combination of mineralogy and major element composition of glass shards. The biotite-bearing rhyolite of Kolumbo can be readily discriminated from other silicic pyroclastics derived from the main Santorini complex. In general, the tephra deposits are very fine-grained (silt to fine sand), medium gray in color, and covered by ~10 cm of brown hemipelagic sediment. This corresponds to an average background sedimentation rate of 29 cm/kyr in the area. The distribution of the 1650 AD Kolumbo tephra covers at least 446 km2 around the crater, nearly 5 times the approximated 97 km2 previously inferred from seismic profiles on the volcano's slopes and in adjacent basins. Despite the expansion of the inferred deposition area, the estimated eruption volume is not enlarged significantly, and therefore remains a minimum estimate, because the box cores did not penetrate the bases of the tephra units. SEM images reveal particle morphologies attributed to multiple fragmentation mechanisms, including primary volatile degassing and phreatomagmatic activity. It is likely that phreatomagmatic activity became more important in the latter stages of the eruptive sequence when eruptions column broke the surface and a small ephemeral island was formed. We suggest that after the generation of a significant fine ash fraction during submarine and subaerial stages of explosive volcanism, the fines are efficiently removed from the vent area and transported by several mechanisms: (1) dominant local winds; (2) surges over the sea surface from subaerial eruption column collapse; (3) vertical gravity currents driven by Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities; and, (4) sediment gravity flows driven by submarine eruption column collapse. The fine-grained marine tephra deposits surrounding Kolumbo represent the complement to the very fines-poor proximal pumice sequence exposed in the crater walls.

Kick'em Jenny is the only known active submarine volcano in the Caribbean Sea (Devine and Sigurdsson, 1995). It is located on the western flank of the Lesser Antilles arc just offshore of the island of Grenada (Figure 1). The volcano was discovered in 1939 when numerous earthquakes were felt and accompanying tsunamis affected Grenada, the Grenadines, and as far away as Barbados. There have been at least 11 eruptions since that time, with the last event occurring in 2001. Explosive eruptions can pose a hazard to local island populations (e.g., Dondin et al., 2012) when they breach the sea surface, and shallow-water explosions or edifice collapse can potentially generate tsunamis (Lindsay et al., 2005).

Mid-Cayman Rise objectives were built on exciting results from a flurry of recent expeditions that investigated hydrothermal sites in the region (German et al., 2010, 2012). The 2013 E/V Nautilus cruise explored oceanic core complexes (OCCs), tall, smooth-sided hills that rise from the seafloor on the flanks of some mid-ocean ridges. Dives (Figure 1) explored the full extent and nature of life around the Von Damm hydrothermal field, previously discovered there, as well as the geology to further understanding of the vents' origins, and to survey the OCC summits that had never before been investigated by a deep diving vehicle. This 2013 study was the first Nautilus cruise to have more scientists participating in the expedition from locations on shore than from the ship, tripling the size of the science party.

The sleep-wake cycle regulates interstitial fluid (ISF) and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) levels of β-amyloid (Aβ) that accumulates in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Furthermore, chronic sleep deprivation (SD) increases Aβ plaques. However, tau, not Aβ, accumulation appears to drive AD neurodegeneration. We tested whether ISF/CSF tau and tau seeding and spreading were influenced by the sleep-wake cycle and SD. Mouse ISF tau was increased ~90% during normal wakefulness versus sleep and ~100% during SD. Human CSF tau also increased more than 50% during SD. In a tau seeding-and-spreading model, chronic SD increased tau pathology spreading. Chemogenetically driven wakefulness in mice also significantly increased both ISF Aβ and tau. Thus, the sleep-wake cycle regulates ISF tau, and SD increases ISF and CSF tau as well as tau pathology spreading.

AIM: Although urbanization impacts many species, there is little information on the patterns of occurrences of threatened species in urban relative to non‐urban areas. By assessing the extent of the distribution of threatened species across all Australian cities, we aim to investigate the currently under‐utilized opportunity that cities present for national biodiversity conservation. LOCATION: Australian mainland, Tasmania and offshore islands. METHODS: Distributions of Australia's 1643 legally protected terrestrial species (hereafter ‘threatened species’) were compiled. We assessed the extent to which they overlapped with 99 cities (of more than 10,000 people), with all non‐urban areas, and with simulated ‘dummy’ cities which covered the same area and bioregion as the true cities but were non‐urban. We analysed differences between animals and plants, and examined variability within these groups using species accumulation modelling. Threatened species richness of true versus dummy cities was analysed using generalized linear mixed‐effects models. RESULTS: Australian cities support substantially more nationally threatened animal and plant species than all other non‐urban areas on a unit‐area basis. Thirty per cent of threatened species were found to occur in cities. Distribution patterns differed between plants and animals: individual threatened plant species were generally found in fewer cities than threatened animal species, yet plants were more likely to have a greater proportion of their distribution in urban areas than animals. Individual cities tended to contain unique suites of threatened species, especially threatened plants. The analysis of true versus dummy cities demonstrated that, even after accounting for factors such as net primary productivity and distance to the coast, cities still consistently supported a greater number of threatened species. MAIN CONCLUSIONS: This research highlights that Australian cities are important for the conservation of threatened species, and that the species assemblages of individual cities are relatively distinct. National conservation policy should recognize that cities play an integral role when planning for and managing threatened species.

This study looks at the impact of exposure to natural disasters during pregnancy on the educational outcomes of North Carolina children at the third grade level. A broad literature relates negative birth outcomes to poor educational performance, and a number of recent studies have examined the effect of prenatal exposure to natural disasters on birth outcomes. This study takes the next step by considering how prenatal exposure affects later outcomes. Combining North Carolina administrative data on births and school performance with disaster declarations from the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) allows for the identification of children who were exposed to disasters during prenatal development. These children are compared with other children born in the same county who were not exposed to disasters while in utero. Regression results suggest that children exposed to hurricanes prenatally have lower scores on third grade standardized tests in math and reading. Those exposed to flooding or tornadoes also have somewhat lower math scores. Additionally, results suggest that these negative effects are more concentrated among children in disadvantaged subgroups, especially children born to black mothers. However, no evidence exists that these effects are mediated by common measures of birth outcomes, including birth weight and gestational age.

This meta-analysis examined the effects of the Early Start Denver Model (ESDM) for young children with autism on developmental outcome measures. The 12 included studies reported results from 640 children with autism across 44 unique effect sizes. The aggregated effect size, calculated using a robust variance estimation meta-analysis, was 0.357 (p = 0.024), which is a moderate effect size with a statistically significant overall weighted averaged that favored participants who received the ESDM compared to children in control groups, with moderate heterogeneity across studies. This result was largely driven by improvements in cognition (g = 0.412) and language (g = 0.408). There were no significant effects observed for measures of autism symptomology, adaptive behavior, social communication, or restrictive and repetitive behaviors.