Centre for Arctic Gas Hydrate, Environment and Climate

Greenland's bed topography is a primary control on ice flow, grounding line migration, calving dynamics, and subglacial drainage. Moreover, fjord bathymetry regulates the penetration of warm Atlantic water (AW) that rapidly melts and undercuts Greenland's marine-terminating glaciers. Here we present a new compilation of Greenland bed topography that assimilates seafloor bathymetry and ice thickness data through a mass conservation approach. A new 150 m horizontal resolution bed topography/bathymetric map of Greenland is constructed with seamless transitions at the ice/ocean interface, yielding major improvements over previous data sets, particularly in the marine-terminating sectors of northwest and southeast Greenland. Our map reveals that the total sea level potential of the Greenland ice sheet is 7.42 ± 0.05 m, which is 7 cm greater than previous estimates. Furthermore, it explains recent calving front response of numerous outlet glaciers and reveals new pathways by which AW can access glaciers with marine-based basins, thereby highlighting sectors of Greenland that are most vulnerable to future oceanic forcing.

Automatic detection of diseases by use of computers is an important, but still unexplored field of research. Such innovations may improve medical practice and refine health care systems all over the world. However, datasets containing medical images are hardly available, making reproducibility and comparison of approaches almost impossible. In this paper, we present KVASIR, a dataset containing images from inside the gastrointestinal (GI) tract. The collection of images are classified into three important anatomical landmarks and three clinically significant findings. In addition, it contains two categories of images related to endoscopic polyp removal. Sorting and annotation of the dataset is performed by medical doctors (experienced endoscopists). In this respect, KVASIR is important for research on both single- and multi-disease computer aided detection. By providing it, we invite and enable multimedia researcher into the medical domain of detection and retrieval.

This paper integrates research on child simultaneous bilingual acquisition more directly into the heritage language acquisition literature. The child simultaneous bilingual literature mostly focuses on development in childhood, whereas heritage speakers are often tested at an endstate in adulthood. However, insights from child simultaneous bilingual acquisition must be considered in heritage language acquisition theorizing precisely because many heritage speakers demonstrate the adult outcomes of child simultaneous bilingual acquisition. Data from child simultaneous bilingual acquisition raises serious questions for the construct of incomplete acquisition, a term broadly used in heritage language acquisition studies to describe almost any difference heritage speakers display from baseline controls (usually monolinguals). We offer an epistemological discussion related to incomplete acquisition, highlighting the descriptive and theoretical inaccuracy of the term. We focus our discussion on two of several possible causal factors that contribute to variable competence outcomes in adult heritage speakers: input and formal instruction in the heritage language. We conclude by offering alternative terminology for heritage speaker outcomes.

The Eurasian ice sheet complex (EISC) was the third largest ice mass during the Last Glacial Maximum with a span of over 4500 km and responsible for around 20 m of eustatic sea-level lowering. Whilst recent terrestrial and marine empirical insights have improved understanding of the chronology, pattern and rates of retreat of this vast ice sheet, a concerted attempt to model the deglaciation of the EISC honouring these new constraints is conspicuously lacking. Here, we apply a first-order, thermomechanical ice sheet model, validated against a diverse suite of empirical data, to investigate the retreat of the EISC after 23 ka BP, directly extending the work of Patton et al. (2016) who modelled the build-up to its maximum extent. Retreat of the ice sheet complex was highly asynchronous, reflecting contrasting regional sensitivities to climate forcing, oceanic influence, and internal dynamics. Most rapid retreat was experienced across the Barents Sea sector after 17.8 ka BP when this marine-based ice sheet disintegrated at a rate of ∼670 gigatonnes per year (Gt a<sup>−1</sup>) through enhanced calving and interior dynamic thinning, driven by oceanic/atmospheric warming and exacerbated by eustatic sea-level rise. From 14.9 to 12.9 ka BP the EISC lost on average 750 Gt a<sup>−1</sup>, peaking at rates >3000 Gt a<sup>−1</sup>, roughly equally partitioned between surface melt and dynamic losses, and potentially contributing up to 2.5 m to global sea-level rise during Meltwater Pulse 1A. Independent glacio-isostatic modelling constrained by an extensive inventory of relative sea-level change corroborates our ice sheet loading history of the Barents Sea sector. Subglacial conditions were predominately temperate during deglaciation, with over 6000 subglacial lakes predicted along with an extensive subglacial drainage network. Moreover, the maximum EISC and its isostatic footprint had a profound impact on the proglacial hydrological network, forming the Fleuve Manche mega-catchment which had an area of ∼2.5 × 10<sup>6</sup> km2 and drained the present day Vistula, Elbe, Rhine and Thames rivers through the Seine Estuary. During the Bølling/Allerød oscillation after c. 14.6 ka BP, two major proglacial lakes formed in the Baltic and White seas, buffering meltwater pulses from eastern Fennoscandia through to the Younger Dryas when these massive proglacial freshwater lakes flooded into the North Atlantic Ocean. Deglaciation temporarily abated during the Younger Dryas stadial at 12.9 ka BP, when remnant ice across Svalbard, Franz Josef Land, Novaya Zemlya, Fennoscandia and Scotland experienced a short-lived but dynamic re-advance. The final stage of deglaciation converged on present day ice cover around the Scandes mountains and the Barents Sea by 8.7 ka BP, although the phase-lagged isostatic recovery still continues today.

Daniel Zeman, Martin Popel, Milan Straka, Jan Hajič, Joakim Nivre, Filip Ginter, Juhani Luotolahti, Sampo Pyysalo, Slav Petrov, Martin Potthast, Francis Tyers, Elena Badmaeva, Memduh Gokirmak, Anna Nedoluzhko, Silvie Cinková, Jan Hajič jr., Jaroslava Hlaváčová, Václava Kettnerová, Zdeňka Urešová, Jenna Kanerva, Stina Ojala, Anna Missilä, Christopher D. Manning, Sebastian Schuster, Siva Reddy, Dima Taji, Nizar Habash, Herman Leung, Marie-Catherine de Marneffe, Manuela Sanguinetti, Maria Simi, Hiroshi Kanayama, Valeria de Paiva, Kira Droganova, Héctor Martínez Alonso, Çağrı Çöltekin, Umut Sulubacak, Hans Uszkoreit, Vivien Macketanz, Aljoscha Burchardt, Kim Harris, Katrin Marheinecke, Georg Rehm, Tolga Kayadelen, Mohammed Attia, Ali Elkahky, Zhuoran Yu, Emily Pitler, Saran Lertpradit, Michael Mandl, Jesse Kirchner, Hector Fernandez Alcalde, Jana Strnadová, Esha Banerjee, Ruli Manurung, Antonio Stella, Atsuko Shimada, Sookyoung Kwak, Gustavo Mendonça, Tatiana Lando, Rattima Nitisaroj, Josie Li. Proceedings of the CoNLL 2017 Shared Task: Multilingual Parsing from Raw Text to Universal Dependencies. 2017.

A key element in any seismic hazard analysis is the selection of appropriate ground-motion prediction equations (GMPEs). In an earlier paper, focused on the selection and adjustment of ground-motion models for probabilistic seismic hazard analysis

1. States, Movements, and Democracy 2. Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion in the Four Countries 3. Cooptive or Effective Inclusion? Movement Aims and State Imperatives 4. The Perils of Political Inclusion: Moderation and Bureaucratization 5. The Dynamics of Democratization 6. Evaluating Movement Effectiveness and Strategy 7. Ecological Modernization, Risk Society, and the Green State Conclusion

Aims and Objectives: The main goal of the present study is to investigate effects of crosslinguistic influence in third language acquisition by simultaneous bilinguals. We address the following research questions: Do both languages contribute to crosslinguistic influence in third language acquisition, or is one of them chosen as the sole source of influence? Is crosslinguistic influence always from the typologically more similar language? Is crosslinguistic influence always facilitative, or can it also be non-facilitative? Methodology: The paper reports on a grammaticality judgment task with two word order conditions, both related to verb movement (verb-second in Norwegian and subject-auxiliary inversion in English). Data and Analysis: An experiment was carried out with three groups of 11-14-year-old participants, Norwegian-Russian bilinguals ( n=22), Norwegian-speaking monolinguals ( n=46), and Russian-speaking monolinguals ( n=31). The data were analyzed using a generalized linear mixed effects logistic regression allowing us to estimate the effects of condition ( Adv-V, Aux-S), language (Norwegian, Norwegian-Russian, Russian) and their interaction on the correctness of judgments. Findings: The analysis reveals that while L1 Norwegian children over-accept ungrammatical sentences in English with a word order that reflects verb movement (V2), bilingual Norwegian-Russian children notice these errors significantly more often, just like L1 Russians. At the same time, the bilinguals score lower than L1 Russian children on grammatical trials, suggesting the presence of non-facilitative influence from Norwegian. Originality: This study argues for the Linguistic Proximity Model, which proposes incremental property-by-property learning and allows for both facilitative and non-facilitative influence from one or both of the previously acquired languages. Significance: The Linguistic Proximity Model and supporting experimental data contribute to existing models in third language acquisition by indicating that not just typological proximity but also structural similarity at an abstract level should be considered an important factor in third language acquisition.

BACKGROUND: Although sun exposure is an established cause of cutaneous malignant melanoma, possible interactions with host factors remain incompletely understood. Here we report the first results from a large prospective cohort study of pigmentation factors and sun exposure in relation to melanoma risk. METHODS: The Women's Lifestyle and Health Cohort Study included 106 379 women from Norway and Sweden who were aged 30-50 years in 1991 or 1992 when they completed an extensive questionnaire on personal characteristics and exposures. Linkages to national registries ensured complete follow-up through December 31, 1999. Poisson regression models were used to estimate relative risks (RRs). All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS: During an average follow-up of 8.1 years, 187 cases of melanoma were diagnosed. Risk of melanoma was statistically significantly associated with increasing body surface area (RR for > or =1.79 m2 versus < or =1.61 m2 = 1.60, 95% confidence interval [CI] = 1.03 to 2.48; P(trend) =.02), number of large asymmetric nevi on the legs (RR for > or =7 nevi versus 0 nevi = 5.29, 95% CI = 2.33 to 12.01; P(trend)<.001), hair color (RR for red versus dark brown or black = 4.05, 95% CI = 2.11 to 7.76; P(trend)<.001), sunburns per year at ages 10-19, 20-29, and 30-39 years (P(trend)<.001, P(trend) =.03, and P(trend) =.05, respectively), and use of a device that emits artificial light (solarium) one or more times per month (P =.04). CONCLUSIONS: Our results confirm previous findings that hair color, number of nevi on the legs, and history of sunburn are risk factors for melanoma and suggest that use of a solarium is also associated with melanoma risk. Adolescence and early adulthood appear to be among the most sensitive age periods for the effects of sunburn and solarium use on melanoma risk. However, it may be too early to see the full effect of adult exposures in this cohort.

Accumulation of ubiquitinated proteins in cytoplasmic and/or nuclear inclusions is a hallmark of several diseases associated with premature cell death. SQSTM1/p62 is known to bind ubiquitinated substrates and aid their aggregation and degradation by macroautophagy. We show here that p62 is required to recruit the large phosphoinositide-binding protein ALFY to cytoplasmic p62 bodies generated upon amino acid starvation or puromycin-treatment. ALFY, as well as p62, is required for formation and autophagic degradation of cytoplasmic ubiquitin-positive inclusions. Moreover, both p62 and ALFY localize to nuclear promyleocytic leukemia (PML) bodies. The Drosophila p62 homologue Ref(2) P accumulates in ubiquitinated inclusions in the brain of flies carrying mutations in the ALFY homologue Blue cheese, demonstrating that ALFY is required for autophagic degradation of p62-associated ubiquitinated proteins in vivo. We conclude that p62 and ALFY interact to organize misfolded, ubiquitinated proteins into protein bodies that become degraded by autophagy.

Abstract Late Pliocene and Early Pleistocene epochs 3.6 to 0.8 million years ago 1 had climates resembling those forecasted under future warming 2 . Palaeoclimatic records show strong polar amplification with mean annual temperatures of 11–19 °C above contemporary values 3,4 . The biological communities inhabiting the Arctic during this time remain poorly known because fossils are rare 5 . Here we report an ancient environmental DNA 6 (eDNA) record describing the rich plant and animal assemblages of the Kap København Formation in North Greenland, dated to around two million years ago. The record shows an open boreal forest ecosystem with mixed vegetation of poplar, birch and thuja trees, as well as a variety of Arctic and boreal shrubs and herbs, many of which had not previously been detected at the site from macrofossil and pollen records. The DNA record confirms the presence of hare and mitochondrial DNA from animals including mastodons, reindeer, rodents and geese, all ancestral to their present-day and late Pleistocene relatives. The presence of marine species including horseshoe crab and green algae support a warmer climate than today. The reconstructed ecosystem has no modern analogue. The survival of such ancient eDNA probably relates to its binding to mineral surfaces. Our findings open new areas of genetic research, demonstrating that it is possible to track the ecology and evolution of biological communities from two million years ago using ancient eDNA.

Methane is the final product of the anaerobic decomposition of organic matter. The conversion of organic matter to methane (methanogenesis) as a mechanism for energy conservation is exclusively attributed to the archaeal domain. Methane is oxidized by methanotrophic microorganisms using oxygen or alternative terminal electron acceptors. Aerobic methanotrophic bacteria belong to the phyla Proteobacteria and Verrucomicrobia, while anaerobic methane oxidation is also mediated by more recently discovered anaerobic methanotrophs with representatives in both the bacteria and the archaea domains. The anaerobic oxidation of methane is coupled to the reduction of nitrate, nitrite, iron, manganese, sulfate, and organic electron acceptors (e.g., humic substances) as terminal electron acceptors. This review highlights the relevance of methanotrophy in natural and anthropogenically influenced ecosystems, emphasizing the environmental conditions, distribution, function, co-existence, interactions, and the availability of electron acceptors that likely play a key role in regulating their function. A systematic overview of key aspects of ecology, physiology, metabolism, and genomics is crucial to understand the contribution of methanotrophs in the mitigation of methane efflux to the atmosphere. We give significance to the processes under microaerophilic and anaerobic conditions for both aerobic and anaerobic methane oxidizers. In the context of anthropogenically influenced ecosystems, we emphasize the current and potential future applications of methanotrophs from two different angles, namely methane mitigation in wastewater treatment through the application of anaerobic methanotrophs, and the biotechnological applications of aerobic methanotrophs in resource recovery from methane waste streams. Finally, we identify knowledge gaps that may lead to opportunities to harness further the biotechnological benefits of methanotrophs in methane mitigation and for the production of valuable bioproducts enabling a bio-based and circular economy.

Methane hydrate is an icelike substance that is stable at high pressure and low temperature in continental margin sediments. Since the discovery of a large number of gas flares at the landward termination of the gas hydrate stability zone off Svalbard, there has been concern that warming bottom waters have started to dissociate large amounts of gas hydrate and that the resulting methane release may possibly accelerate global warming. Here, we corroborate that hydrates play a role in the observed seepage of gas, but we present evidence that seepage off Svalbard has been ongoing for at least 3000 years and that seasonal fluctuations of 1° to 2°C in the bottom-water temperature cause periodic gas hydrate formation and dissociation, which focus seepage at the observed sites.

BACKGROUND: The prevalence of metabolic syndrome (obesity, glucose intolerance, low serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol [HDL-C], high serum triglycerides, hypertension) is high and increasing in parallel with an increasing breast cancer incidence worldwide. HDL-C represents an important aspect of the syndrome, yet its role in breast cancer is still undefined. METHODS: In two population-based screening surveys during 1977-1983 and 1985-1987, serum HDL-C was assayed enzymatically among 38,823 Norwegian women aged 17-54 years at entry. Height, weight, blood pressure, serum lipids, fat and energy intake, physical activity, parity, oral contraceptive use, hormone therapy use, alcohol intake, and tobacco use were also assessed. We used Cox proportional hazards modeling to estimate the relative risk (RR) of breast cancer associated with serum HDL-C levels and to adjust for potential confounding variables. We performed stratified analyses to evaluate effect modification by body mass index (BMI) and menopausal status. All statistical tests were two-sided. RESULTS: During a median follow-up of 17.2 years, we identified 708 cases of invasive breast cancer. In multivariable analysis, the risk of postmenopausal breast cancer was inversely related to quartile of HDL-C (P(trend) =.02). Among women with HDL-C above 1.64 mmol/L (highest quartile) versus below 1.20 mmol/L (lowest quartile), the relative risk was 0.75 (95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.58 to 0.97). The HDL-C association was confined to women in the heavier subgroup (BMI > or =25 kg/m2), for whom the relative risk of postmenopausal breast cancer in those with HDL-C above 1.64 mmol/L versus below 1.20 mmol/L was 0.43 (95% CI = 0.28 to 0.67; P(trend)<.001; P(interaction) =.001). CONCLUSION: Low HDL-C, as part of the metabolic syndrome, is associated with increased postmenopausal breast cancer risk.

We report the results from 264.1 hr of nearly continuous time-series photometry on the pulsating pre-white dwarf star (DOV) PG 1159-035. The high-resolution power spectrum of this data set is dominated by power in the range from roughly 1000 to 2600 μHz (1000 s to 385 s periods). This power is completely resolved into 125 individual frequencies; we have identified 101 of them with specific, quantized pulsation modes, and the rest are completely consistent with such modal assignment. The luminosity variations are therefore certainly the result of g-mode pulsations. Although the amplitudes of some of the peaks exhibit significant variations on time scales of a year or so, the underlying frequency structure of the pulsations is stable over much longer intervals. With the help of existing linear theory we use these identifications to determine, or strongly constrain, many of the fundamental physical parameters describing this star. We find its mass to be 0.586 M<SUB>⊙</SUB>, its rotation period 1.38 days, its magnetic field less than 6000 G, its pulsation and rotation axes to be aligned, and its outer layers to be compositionally stratified. With straightforward extensions of existing theory it may be possible to determine uniquely from this data set all of the parameters necessary to construct a quantitative model of its interior. These observations also reveal several interesting phenomena that challenge the current theory of nonradial pulsations, and may require substantial new developments to describe them.

We searched and meta-analyzed studies comparing flipped classroom teaching with traditional, lecture-based teaching to evaluate the evidence for the flipped classroom’s influence on continuous-learning measures, pass/fail rates, and student evaluations of teaching. Eight electronic reference databases were searched to retrieve relevant studies. Our results indicate a small effect in favor of the flipped classroom on learning (Hedges’ g = 0.35, 95% confidence interval [CI] [0.31, 0.40], k = 272). However, analyses restricted to studies with sufficient power resulted in an estimate of 0.24 (95% CI [0.18, 0.31], k = 90). Effects on pass rates (odds ratio = 1.55, 95% CI [1.34, 1.78], k = 45) and student satisfaction (Hedges’ g = 0.16, 95% CI [0.06, 0.26], k = 69) were small and also likely influenced by publication bias. There is some support for the notion that the positive impact on learning may increase slightly if testing student preparation is part of the implementation.

The Last Interglacial (LIG, 129–116 thousand of years BP, ka) represents a test bed for climate model feedbacks in warmer-than-present high latitude regions. However, mainly because aligning different palaeoclimatic archives and from different parts of the world is not trivial, a spatio-temporal picture of LIG temperature changes is difficult to obtain. Here, we have selected 47 polar ice core and sub-polar marine sediment records and developed a strategy to align them onto the recent AICC2012 ice core chronology. We provide the first compilation of high-latitude temperature changes across the LIG associated with a coherent temporal framework built between ice core and marine sediment records. Our new data synthesis highlights non-synchronous maximum temperature changes between the two hemispheres with the Southern Ocean and Antarctica records showing an early warming compared to North Atlantic records. We also observe warmer than present-day conditions that occur for a longer time period in southern high latitudes than in northern high latitudes. Finally, the amplitude of temperature changes at high northern latitudes is larger compared to high southern latitude temperature changes recorded at the onset and the demise of the LIG. We have also compiled four data-based time slices with temperature anomalies (compared to present-day conditions) at 115 ka, 120 ka, 125 ka and 130 ka and quantitatively estimated temperature uncertainties that include relative dating errors. This provides an improved benchmark for performing more robust model-data comparison. The surface temperature simulated by two General Circulation Models (CCSM3 and HadCM3) for 130 ka and 125 ka is compared to the corresponding time slice data synthesis. This comparison shows that the models predict warmer than present conditions earlier than documented in the North Atlantic, while neither model is able to produce the reconstructed early Southern Ocean and Antarctic warming. Our results highlight the importance of producing a sequence of time slices rather than one single time slice averaging the LIG climate conditions.

Widespread methane release from thawing Arctic gas hydrates is a major concern, yet the processes, sources, and fluxes involved remain unconstrained. We present geophysical data documenting a cluster of kilometer-wide craters and mounds from the Barents Sea floor associated with large-scale methane expulsion. Combined with ice sheet/gas hydrate modeling, our results indicate that during glaciation, natural gas migrated from underlying hydrocarbon reservoirs and was sequestered extensively as subglacial gas hydrates. Upon ice sheet retreat, methane from this hydrate reservoir concentrated in massive mounds before being abruptly released to form craters. We propose that these processes were likely widespread across past glaciated petroleum provinces and that they also provide an analog for the potential future destabilization of subglacial gas hydrate reservoirs beneath contemporary ice sheets.

Environmental carcinogens contained in air pollution, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, aromatic amines or N-nitroso compounds, predominantly form DNA adducts but can also generate interstrand cross-links and reactive oxygen species. If unrepaired, such lesions increase the risk of somatic mutations and cancer. Our study investigated the relationships between 22 polymorphisms (and their haplotypes) in 16 DNA repair genes belonging to different repair pathways in 1094 controls and 567 cancer cases (bladder cancer, 131; lung cancer, 134; oral-pharyngeal cancer, 41; laryngeal cancer, 47; leukaemia, 179; death from emphysema and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, 84). The design was a case-control study nested within a prospective investigation. Among the many comparisons, few polymorphisms were associated with the diseases at the univariate analysis: XRCC1-399 Gln/Gln variant homozygotes [odds ratios (OR) = 2.20, 95% confidence intervals (CI) = 1.16-4.17] and XRCC3-241 Met/Met homozygotes (OR = 0.51, 95% CI = 0.27-0.96) and leukaemia. The recessive model in the stepwise multivariate analysis revealed a possible protective effect of XRCC1-399Gln/Gln in lung cancer (OR = 0.22, 95% CI = 0.05-0.98), and confirmed an opposite effect (OR = 2.47, 95% CI = 1.02-6.02) in the leukaemia group. Our results also suggest that the XPD/ERCC1-GAT haplotype may modulate leukaemia (OR = 1.28, 95% CI = 1.02-1.61), bladder cancer (OR = 1.38, 95% CI = 1.06-1.79) and possibly other cancer risks. Further investigations of the combined effects of polymorphisms within these DNA repair genes, smoking and other risk factors may help to clarify the influence of genetic variation in the carcinogenic process.

The global atmospheric level of methane (CH 4 ), the second most important greenhouse gas, is currently increasing by ∼10 million tons per year. Microbial oxidation in unsaturated soils is the only known biological process that removes CH 4 from the atmosphere, but so far, bacteria that can grow on atmospheric CH 4 have eluded all cultivation efforts. In this study, we have isolated a pure culture of a bacterium, strain MG08 that grows on air at atmospheric concentrations of CH 4 [1.86 parts per million volume (p.p.m.v.)]. This organism, named Methylocapsa gorgona , is globally distributed in soils and closely related to uncultured members of the upland soil cluster α. CH 4 oxidation experiments and 13 C-single cell isotope analyses demonstrated that it oxidizes atmospheric CH 4 aerobically and assimilates carbon from both CH 4 and CO 2 . Its estimated specific affinity for CH 4 (a 0 s ) is the highest for any cultivated methanotroph. However, growth on ambient air was also confirmed for Methylocapsa acidiphila and Methylocapsa aurea , close relatives with a lower specific affinity for CH 4 , suggesting that the ability to utilize atmospheric CH 4 for growth is more widespread than previously believed. The closed genome of M. gorgona MG08 encodes a single particulate methane monooxygenase, the serine cycle for assimilation of carbon from CH 4 and CO 2 , and CO 2 fixation via the recently postulated reductive glycine pathway. It also fixes dinitrogen and expresses the genes for a high-affinity hydrogenase and carbon monoxide dehydrogenase, suggesting that atmospheric CH 4 oxidizers harvest additional energy from oxidation of the atmospheric trace gases carbon monoxide (0.2 p.p.m.v.) and hydrogen (0.5 p.p.m.v.).