Search results for " Analysis"

Carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotope fractionation during food cooking: Implications for the interpretation of the fossil human record.

2017

13 pages; International audience; ObjectivesStable isotope data provide insight into the reconstruction of ancient human diet. However, cooking may alter the original stable isotope compositions of food due to losses and modifications of biochemical and water components.MethodsTo address this issue, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen isotope ratios were measured on meat aliquots sampled from various animals such as pork, beef, duck and chicken, and also from the flesh of fishes such as salmon, European seabass, European pilchard, sole, gilt-head bream, and tuna. For each specimen, three pieces were cooked according to the three most commonly-known cooking practices: boiling, frying and roasting on…

Regional provenance of dolerite prehistoric objects through mineral analysis

2016

Abstract A methodology based on the mineral analysis determination has been developed to identify the origin of dolerite stone outcrops collected to fabricate lithic objects during the Prehistoric period. The method is based on the use of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) to analyse rare earth elements (REE) and trace elements. Additionally a no destructive geochemical analysis based on X-ray fluorescence (XRF) was employed for major elements analysis. The aforementioned methodologies were applied to samples from different archaeological fields or natural outcrops located in the Mediterranean area of Spain, between Valencia and Alicante. Principal component analysis (PCA…

Tectonic evolution of the northern Austral-Magallanes basin in the Southern Patagonian Andes from provenance analysis

2019

We studied the northern tip of the Austral-Magallanes basin in the Southern Patagonian Andes, between the Buenos Aires Lake and the Mayer River at 46°35′ SL and 48°35′ SL, respectively. Proposed objectives were: i) to differentiate Mesozoic-Cenozoic tectonostratigraphic units and, ii) to characterize the different deformational events that took place in the area linked to a variable regional geodynamic context. Sandstones provenance analysis was performed on the Aptian - Albian compressive retroarc deposits and Cenozoic foreland deposits. Studied samples were classified using tectonic discrimination diagrams which show: i) for Cretaceous rocks a dominant sediment source from a recycled orog…

Basin analysis in the Southern Tethyan margin: Facies sequences, stratal pattern and subsidence history highlight extension-to-inversion processes in…

2018

Abstract In the Mediterranean, the South-Tethys paleomargin experienced polyphased tectonic episodes and paleoenvironmental perturbations during Mesozoic time. The Cretaceous shallow-water carbonate successions of the Panormide platform, outcropping in the northern edge of the Palermo Mountains (NW Sicily), were studied by integrating facies and stratal pattern with backstripping analysis to recognize the tectonics vs. carbonate sedimentation interaction. The features of the Requienid limestone, including geometric configuration, facies sequence, lithological changes and significance of the top-unconformity, highlight that at the end of the Lower Cretaceous the carbonate platform was tecton…

Burned bones forensic investigations employing near infrared spectroscopy

2017

The use of near infrared (NIR) spectroscopy was evaluated, by using chemometric tools, for the study of the environmental impact on burned bones. Spectra of internal and external parts of burned bones, together with sediment samples, were treated by Principal Component Analysis and cluster classification as exploratory techniques to select burned bone samples, less affected by environmental processes, to properly carry out forensic studies. Partial Least Square Discriminant Analysis was used to build a model to classify bone samples based on their burning conditions, providing an efficient and accurate method to discern calcined and carbonized bone. Additionally, Partial Least Square regres…

Linking theories, past practices, and archaeological remains of movement through ontological reasoning

2020

The amount of information available to archaeologists has grown dramatically during the last ten years. The rapid acquisition of observational data and creation of digital data has played a significant role in this &ldquo

The ecogenetic link between demography and evolution: can we bridge the gap between theory and data?

2007

Calls to understand the links between ecology and evolution have been common for decades. Population dynamics, i.e. the demographic changes in populations, arise from life history decisions of individuals and thus are a product of selection, and selection, on the contrary, can be modified by such dynamical properties of the population as density and stability. It follows that generating predictions and testing them correctly requires considering this ecogenetic feedback loop whenever traits have demographic consequences, mediated via density dependence (or frequency dependence). This is not an easy challenge, and arguably theory has advanced at a greater pace than empirical research. Howeve…

Economic modelling as a tool to support macroalgal bloom management: a case study (Sacca di Goro, Po river delta)

2003

During the last 20, years, intensive mollusk farming has been developed in coastal waters, mostly in sheltered bays and lagoons. Often, mollusk stocks are threatened by frequent anoxic events from macroalgal blooms. Here, a decision support tool is described to select the optimal short-term strategy to control algal biomasses. Even though long-term and detailed studies of the lagoon systems are required to provide reliable, biologically based policies, we have here developed a simplified analysis that overlooks most of the ecological complexity, but explicitly includes environmental variability and uncertainty in parameter estimation in the economic assessment of the performances of differe…

Environmental drivers interactively affect individual tree growth across temperate European forests

2019

Forecasting the growth of tree species to future environmental changes requires a better understanding of its determinants. Tree growth is known to respond to global-change drivers such as climate change or atmospheric deposition, as well as to local land-use drivers such as forest management. Yet, large geographical scale studies examining interactive growth responses to multiple global-change drivers are relatively scarce and rarely consider management effects. Here, we assessed the interactive effects of three global-change drivers (temperature, precipitation and nitrogen deposition) on individual tree growth of three study species (Quercus robur/petraea, Fagus sylvatica and Fraxinus exc…

2018

Climatically controlled allocation to reproduction is a key mechanism by which climate influences tree growth and may explain lagged correlations between climate and growth. We used continent-wide datasets of tree-ring chronologies and annual reproductive effort in Fagus sylvatica from 1901 to 2015 to characterise relationships between climate, reproduction and growth. Results highlight that variable allocation to reproduction is a key factor for growth in this species, and that high reproductive effort ('mast years') is associated with stem growth reduction. Additionally, high reproductive effort is associated with previous summer temperature, creating lagged climate effects on growth. Con…