The automotive industry is entering a period of deep disruption that will make it unrecognizable, according to a new analysis from Morgan Stanley.
“The auto industry is a century-old ecosystem being ogled by outside players hungry for a slice of a $10-trillion mobility market," warns Adam Jonas, the lead auto analyst at Morgan Stanley Research. "Many want in. It’s just beginning. And it won’t stop.”
At the start of the conflict in Donbas, the Ukrainian military appeared to be almost completely incapable of defending its territory. Kiev’s forces were unprepared for Russia’s annexation of Crimea and seemed powerless to prevent it. In recent months, it has become a somewhat more effective war-fighting force, though not one that is powerful enough to withstand a full-scale future Russian military invasion. If the current ceasefire fails and Russia intervenes fully in Donbas, the Ukrainian military will not have the capability to defend the country.
A novel method of estimating pterosaur skeletal mass using computed tomography scans
Authors:
Martin et al
Abstract:
Body mass is an important, basic parameter of life. It is central to understanding many aspects of an animal's ecology and behavior and is potentially the most important factor affecting locomotor performance (Biewener, 1989). Body mass is particularly significant for volant animals, because it affects the speed required for take off and landing, flight speed, and maneuverability in flight and influences the upper body size limit of flight (Alexander, 1998). Accordingly, accurate mass estimates are key to understanding the behavior and capability of extinct animals.
Estimates of body mass have been obtained for a number of extinct volant animals, including birds (e.g., Hone et al., 2008) and pterosaurs (e.g., Bramwell and Whitfield, 1974; Brower and Veinus, 1981; Witton, 2008; Henderson, 2010). Because pterosaurs were both the first vertebrates to achieve powered flight and the largest animals ever to do so, accurate mass estimates are crucial to our understanding of pterosaurian biomechanics and the upper size limits on their flight. The two main approaches that have previously been taken to calculate pterosaur body mass rely either on estimates of total body volume and density distributions (Bramwell and Whitfield, 1974; Brower and Veinus, 1981; Henderson, 2010) or the relationship between skeletal mass and total mass (Witton, 2008), using data from modern birds (Prange et al., 1979).
The results vary greatly from method to method—for example, the mass of the 10.5-m wingspan Quetzalcoatlus northropi has been estimated at 75 kg (Brower and Veinus, 1981), 259 kg (Witton, 2008), and 544 kg (Henderson, 2010), although this larger estimate is thought to be based on an anatomically incorrect reconstruction (Witton and Habib, 2010). This range is so wide that it spans from an animal with an improbably low implied average body density of 0.15 g/cm3 (Witton, 2008) to a heavy animal, incapable of flight (Henderson, 2010). Even Witton's (2008) estimate of 259 kg would render the animal flightless, according to some analyses (e.g., Chatterjee and Templin, 2004), but not others (e.g., Witton and Habib, 2010).
Witton (2008) applied the skeletal mass approach to pterosaurs, estimating skeletal mass from bone volume calculated using simple geometric shapes—a pragmatic method, and the only feasible approach in the absence of comprehensive three-dimensional (3D) morphological information. To estimate cortical thickness, Witton (2008) applied a regression analysis of thickness-to-diameter data for a range of pterosaur bones. Then, to estimate total body mass, the relationship found by Prange et al. (1979) between skeletal mass and total mass in birds was applied, allowing determination of the body mass of various pterosaur species over a wide range of animal sizes. This relationship was deemed to be appropriate because it applies to both birds and terrestrial mammals, which are distant in phylogenetic terms, and it was therefore thought to likely be accurate for pterosaurs as well.
Here, we present a novel method that uses computed tomography (CT) scans to estimate the volume, and hence the mass, of pterosaur wing bones and thus provides a more robust foundation for the methodology adopted by Witton (2008). The use of CT scans to analyze fossils is a relatively new process, but representatives of a number of different groups, including arthropods (e.g., Penney et al., 2007), mammals (e.g., Ni et al., 2012), and dinosaurs (e.g., Martinez et al., 2011), have already been studied. However, few CT studies have been performed on pterosaurs, focusing mainly on the skull (e.g., Witmer et al., 2003) or axial skeleton (Claessens et al., 2009). Only one study has reported CT scans for any part of the pterosaurian appendicular skeleton—a single humerus of Bennettazhia (Habib, 2008). To demonstrate the method, we estimate the mass of three first wing phalanges from different ornithocheirid pterosaur individuals, using CT scans that are new to the scientific literature.
Integrated paleoenvironmental analysis of the Niobrara Formation: Cretaceous Western Interior Seaway, northern Colorado
Authors:
Da Gama et al
Abstract:
This study presents a regional chronostratigraphic framework and paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the Niobrara Formation in northern Colorado based upon multidisciplinary biostratigraphic and lithostratigraphic data. A local biostratigraphic zonation is described for the Coniacian to earliest Campanian of this region of the Western Interior Seaway based primarily upon the distribution of calcareous nannofossils. Three key paleoenvironmental packages are also identified and linked to the evolution of regional sedimentary facies.
During the Early to Late Coniacian, Tethyan water masses interacted with Boreal surface currents to produce regional upwelling along tectonically-controlled bathymetric highs. A well mixed, relatively well oxygenated water column with warm surface water temperatures and high fertility sustained a rich microflora/fauna and promoted higher carbonate production.
Enhanced fluvial input and a weakening of Tethyan influence during the Early Santonian marks the onset of a regional environmental shift. This period of transition extends through the Middle Santonian and is characterized by pulses of transported material and relatively frequent turnover of faunal associations. Increased terrigenous runoff likely produced eutrophic surface waters and intensified water column stratification, leading to a general deterioration of the bottom water environment in a progressively dysoxic setting.
Continued strengthening of fluvial input during the Late Santonian to Early Campanian resulted in surface water freshening and sustained primary productivity. This surface water environment—in conjunction with stifled vertical mixing—promoted the development of a stagnant and intensely stratified water column. The basin was therefore severely dysoxic (possibly anoxic) and corrosive with chemically reducing bottom waters and an expanded oxygen minimum zone, thereby limiting biotic development and causing the deposition of finely laminated, mid rich (carbonate poor) sediments.
With the rapid operation that resulted in the annexation of Crimea earlier this year, the Russian military returned to the collective consciousness of the American public. Many commentators were impressed with the “little green men’s” professional demeanor and shiny new equipment. In some cases, this impression was undeservedly expanded to apply to the rest of the Russian military. In this context, it is important to discuss what the Crimean operation does and does not tell us about the capabilities of the Russian military.
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It has become fashionable, on the eve of the centennial of the outbreak of World War One, to ask, or worry about, whether it could all happen again. This vague sense of anxiety – this sense of how good we have it now, and how it could all be gone tomorrow – is perhaps fitting, given that it has become an accepted (if debatable) point of history that neither the decision-makers nor the publics of the various European powers expected a prolonged and civilization-devastating war. Such anxiety has a long pedigree: Kipling, writing a poem for Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee a mere decade and a half before the war broke out, chose to quietly shelve his now-infamous imperialist tribute, “The White Man’s Burden,” for another occasion, in favor of publishing the more sombre and (at the time) jarring “Recessional,” which reminded its reader that all glory is fleeting and God alone is permanent (“Far-called, our navies melt away/On dune and headland sinks the fire/Lo, all our pomp of yesterday/Is one with Nineveh and Tyre…”).
In fact, the war’s outbreak and subsequent course probably were predictable in advance, and if anything reflected what we would now call a failure of analysis, either on the part of the leaders of the European states, or on the part of their people.
