Impact of a potential 21st century “grand solar minimum” on surface temperatures and stratospheric ozone

We investigate the effects of a recently proposed 21st century Dalton minimum like decline of solar activity on the evolution of Earth's climate and ozone layer. Three sets of two member ensemble simulations, radiatively forced by a midlevel emission scenario (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change RCP4.5), are performed with the atmosphere-ocean chemistry-climate model AOCCM SOCOL3-MPIOM, one with constant solar activity, the other two with reduced solar activity and different strength of the solar irradiance forcing. A future grand solar minimum will reduce the global mean surface warming of 2 K between 1986–2005 and 2081–2100 by 0.2 to 0.3 K. Furthermore, the decrease in solar UV radiation leads to a significant delay of stratospheric ozone recovery by 10 years and longer. Therefore, the effects of a solar activity minimum, should it occur, may interfere with international efforts for the protection of global climate and the ozone layer.

Authorising History: Gestures of Authorship in Fourteenth-Century English Historiography

This book discusses the strategies and rhetorical means by which four authors of Middle English verse historiography seek to authorise their works and themselves. Paying careful attention to the texts, it traces the ways in which authors inscribe their fictional selves and seek to give authority to their constructions of history. It further investigates how the authors position themselves in relation to their task of writing history, their sources and their audiences. This study provides new insights into the processes of the appropriation of history around 1300 by social groups whose lack of the relevant languages, before this 'anglicising' of the dominant Latin and French history constructions, prevented their access to the history of the British isles.

Sea surface temperature and sea ice variability in the subpolar North Atlantic from explosive volcanism of the late thirteenth century

In this study, we use IP and alkenone biomarker proxies to document the subdecadal variations of sea ice and sea surface temperature in the subpolar North Atlantic induced by the decadally paced explosive tropical volcanic eruptions of the second half of the thirteenth century. The short- and long-term evolutions of both variables were investigated by cross analysis with a simulation of the IPSL-CM5A LR model. Our results show short-term ocean cooling and sea ice expansion in response to each volcanic eruption. They also highlight that the long response time of the ocean leads to cumulative surface cooling and subsurface heat buildup due to sea ice capping. As volcanic forcing relaxes, the surface ocean rapidly warms, likely amplified by subsurface heat, and remains almost ice free for several decades

Narrow dust jets in a diffuse gas coma: a natural product of small active regions on comets

Comets often display narrow dust jets but more diffuse gas comae when their eccentric orbits bring them into the inner solar system and sunlight sublimates the ice on the nucleus. Comets are also understood to have one or more active areas covering only a fraction of the total surface active with sublimating volatile ices. Calculations of the gas and dust distribution from a small active area on a comet’s nucleus show that as the gas moves out radially into the vacuum of space it expands tangentially, filling much of the hemisphere centered on the active region. The dust dragged by the gas remains more concentrated over the active area. This explains some puzzling appearances of comets having collimated dust jets but more diffuse gaseous atmospheres. Our test case is 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, the Rosetta mission target comet, whose activity is dominated by a single area covering only 4% of its surface.

Structure and mechanism of an active lipid-linked oligosaccharide flippase

The flipping of membrane-embedded lipids containing large, polar head groups is slow and energetically unfavourable, and is therefore catalysed by flippases, the mechanisms of which are unknown. A prominent example of a flipping reaction is the translocation of lipid-linked oligosaccharides that serve as donors in N-linked protein glycosylation. In Campylobacter jejuni, this process is catalysed by the ABC transporter PglK. Here we present a mechanism of PglK-catalysed lipid-linked oligosaccharide flipping based on crystal structures in distinct states, a newly devised in vitro flipping assay, and in vivo studies. PglK can adopt inward- and outward-facing conformations in vitro, but only outward-facing states are required for flipping. While the pyrophosphate-oligosaccharide head group of lipid-linked oligosaccharides enters the translocation cavity and interacts with positively charged side chains, the lipidic polyprenyl tail binds and activates the transporter but remains exposed to the lipid bilayer during the reaction. The proposed mechanism is distinct from the classical alternating-access model applied to other transporters.

Isolation of an active gene and of two pseudogenes for mouse U7 small nuclear RNA

Three U7 RNA-related sequences were isolated from mouse genomic DNA libraries. Only one of the sequences completely matches the published mouse U7 RNA sequence, whereas the other two apparently represent pseudogenes. The matching sequence represents a functional gene, as it is expressed after microinjection into Xenopus laevis oocytes. Sequence variations of the conserved cis-acting 5' and 3' elements of U RNA genes may partly explain the low abundance of U7 RNA.