Sills and gas generation in the Siberian Traps.

On its way to the surface, the Siberian Traps magma created a complex sub-volcanic plumbing system. This resulted in a large-scale sill emplacement within the Tunguska Basin and subsequent release of sediment-derived volatiles during contact metamorphism. The distribution of sills and the released sediment-stored gas volume is, however, poorly constrained. In this paper, results from a study of nearly 300 deep boreholes intersecting sills are presented. The results show that sills with thicknesses above 100 m are abundant throughout the upper part of the sedimentary succession. A high proportion of the sills was emplaced within the Cambrian evaporites with average thicknesses in the 115-130 m range and a maximum thickness of 428 m. Thermal modelling of the cooling of the sills shows that the contact metamorphic aureoles are capable of generating 52-80 tonnes of CO2 m-2 with contributions from both marine and terrestrial carbon. When up-scaling these borehole results, an area of 12-19 000 km2 is required to generate 1000 Gt CO2 This represents only 0.7-1.2% of the total area in the Tunguska Basin affected by sills, emphasizing the importance of metamorphic gas generation in the Siberian Traps. These results strengthen the hypothesis of a sub-volcanic trigger and driver for the environmental perturbations during the End-Permian crisis.This article is part of a discussion meeting issue 'Hyperthermals: rapid and extreme global warming in our geological past'.

Text4baby in the United States and Russia: an opportunity for understanding how mHealth affects maternal and child health.

Text4baby uses new technology to deliver health messages and engage pregnant women and new mothers in healthy behaviors. The authors describe the need for carefully conducted early adopter epidemiologic evaluation and describe one such evaluation in a women, infant, and children clinic population in the United States and its proposed adaptation for use among early users of Text4baby in Russia. Collaborative efforts among countries can guide international understanding and use of best practices of this emerging technology.

Phylogenetic and taxonomic relationships of northern Far Eastern phoxinin minnows, Phoxinus and Rhynchocypris (Pisces, Cyprinidae), as inferred from allozyme and mitochondrial 16S rRNA sequence analyses.

Analyses of allozyme (18 loci) and partial mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences (1295 bp, 16S rRNA) support the classification of phoxinin minnows from the northern Far East into 2 genera of 8 species: Phoxinus phoxinus, Rhynchocypris oxycephalus, R. perenurus, R. czekanowskii, R. kumgangensis, R. semotilus, R. lagowskii and R. sp. (bergi ?). Although R. lagowskii from Japan and the Amur basin and R. sp. from Vladivostok region to Korea have been classified into a single species by many authors as R. lagowskii, they form separate clusters in both analyses, suggesting different specific status. Some R. oxycephalus and R. perenurus had the mtDNA haplotypes of R. lagowskii and R. czekanowskii, respectively, which probably indicates that local introgression of mtDNA occurred through inter-specific hybridization. Rhynchocypris forms a monophyletic cluster with dace genera Tribolodon and Pseudaspius, not with Phoxinus. Eurasian and American Phoxinus are suggested to be paraphyletic.