Stratigraphy, U-Th chronology, and paleoenvironments at Gladysvale Cave: insights into the climatic control of South African hominin-bearing cave deposits.

Gladysvale Cave is one of the few Plio-Pleistocene hominin-bearing cave sites in South Africa that contains a well-stratified cave fill with clastic sediments interspersed with flowstones. The clastic sediments can be divided into units based on the presence of intercalated flowstones, forming flowstone bounded units (FBU). Ten MC-ICP-MS uranium-series dates on several flowstone horizons in the Gladysvale Internal Deposit fan indicate deposition from the late mid-Pleistocene ( approximately 570 ka) to Holocene ( approximately 7 ka) during limited periods of higher effective moisture.

Coral record of equatorial sea-surface temperatures during the penultimate deglaciation at huon peninsula.

Uplifted coral terraces at Huon Peninsula, Papua New Guinea, preserve a record of sea level, sea-surface temperature, and salinity from the penultimate deglaciation. Remnants have been found of a shallow-water reef that formed during a pause, similar to the Younger Dryas, in the penultimate deglaciation at 130,000 +/- 2000 years ago, when sea level was 60 to 80 meters lower than it is today. Porites coral, which grew during this period, has oxygen isotopic values and strontium/calcium ratios that indicate that sea-surface temperatures were much cooler (22 degrees +/- 2 degreesC) than either Last Interglacial or present-day tropical temperatures (29 degrees +/- 1 degreesC).

Temperature and surface-ocean water balance of the mid-holocene tropical western pacific.

Skeletal Sr/Ca and 18O/16O ratios in corals from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia, indicate that the tropical ocean surface approximately 5350 years ago was 1 degrees C warmer and enriched in 18O by 0.5 per mil relative to modern seawater. The results suggest that the temperature increase enhanced the evaporative enrichment of 18O in seawater.

Predominance of immunoglobulin G sub-class 3 among the complement-fixing antibodies to streptococcal M-associated protein.

During investigation of the absorption of group-A streptococcal antibodies from human sera by a protein A-positive Staphylococcus aureus strain, we found that the complement-fixing antibodies to M-associated protein (MAP) were only partially absorbed from the majority of sera tested, although they were shown to belong to the immunoglobulin G (IgG) class by density gradient centrifugation. In contrast, other streptococcal antibodies: anti-streptolysin O (ASO), anti-deoxyribonuclease B (anti-DNAase B), 'bactericidal' M antibody and anti-opacity factor (anti-OF), were completely absorbed from all but a minority of sera. We suggest that the complement-fixing antibodies to MAP may be of restricted heterogeneity and have an abnormal IgG sub-class distribution, with a marked predominance of IgG3 (the only sub-class that does not interact with protein A) over the IgG1 and IgG2 sub-class; IgG4 does not participate in complement fixation.