Compositions and Ni-Cu-Platinum Group Element Tenors of Nova-Bollinger Ores with Implications for the Origin of Pt Anomalies in Platinum Group Element-Poor Massive Sulfides

The Nova-Bollinger Ni-Cu-platinum group element (PGE) deposit in the Fraser zone of the Albany-Fraser orogen consists of two main orebodies, Nova and Bollinger, hosted by the same tube-shaped intrusion but having distinctly different Ni tenors of around 6.5 and 4.8 wt %, respectively. Nova is also higher in Pd, but Cu and Pt tenors are similar. Both deposits have very low PGE tenors, with average Pd concentrations of 110 ppb in massive sulfide at Bollinger and 136 ppb at Nova. The Nova and Bollinger orebodies show relatively little internal differentiation overall on deposit scale but show strong differentiation into chalcopyrite-rich and chalcopyrite-poor regions at a meter scale. This differentiation is more prevalent at Nova, where massive sulfide-filled vein arrays are more extensively developed, and in massive ores, particularly veins, than in net-textured ores. Net-textured and disseminated ores have on average Ni and Cu grades and tenors similar to those of massive, semimassive, and breccia ores in the same orebody but a smaller range of variation, largely due to a more limited extent of sulfide liquid fractionation and higher average concentrations of Pt and Pd than adjacent massive ores. Unusually for differentiated magmatic sulfides, there is no systematic positive correlation between Pt, Pd, and Cu. A partial explanation for the lack of a Pd-Cu correlation is that Pd was partitioned into peritectic pentlandite in the middle stages of sulfide liquid solidification. This explanation is not applicable to Pt, as Pt characteristically forms its own phases rather than residing in base metal sulfides. PGE tenors are very low in both orebodies, very similar to those observed in other Ni-Cu-Co sulfide ores in orogenic settings, notably the Savannah and Savannah North orebodies. This depletion is attributed to sulfide retention in the mantle source of the parent magmas rather than to previous fractional extraction of sulfide liquid in staging chambers or feeder networks. The higher Ni and Pd tenors at Nova are attributed to reworking and upgrading of precursor sulfide liquid originally deposited upstream at the Bollinger site. Replicate analyses of multiple jaw-crusher splits returned highly variable Pt and Au assays but much smaller relative errors in the other PGEs. The poor Pt and Au reproducibilities are attributed to nugget effects, explicable by much of the Pt and Au in the samples being present in sparse Pt- and Au-rich grains. This is principally true for Pt in massive rather than disseminated ores, accounting for a strong contrast in the distribution of Pt/Pd ratios between the two ore types. Numerical simulation suggests that Pt is predominantly resident in Pt-rich platinum group minerals with grain diameters of 100 μm or more and that at the low (<100 ppb) concentrations in these ores, this results in most assays significantly underreporting Pt. This is likely to be true in other low-PGE ores, such that apparent negative Pt anomalies in massive ores may in such cases be attributable to sampling artifacts.

New faunistic records of cockroaches (Insecta: Blattodea) from Oman

The knowledge of Blattodea from Oman is still incipient. One species of cockroaches are reported from Oman so far and this indicates the large blank in our knowledge in this order when compared to recorded species from other neighboring countries in the Arabian Peninsula. Blattodea have been collected at various localities in Sultanate of Oman with different sampling artifacts. The present communication records five species of cockroaches from Oman, namely Blattella biligata (Walker, 1868), Heterogamisca Bey-Bienko, 1950, Pycnoscelus surinamensis (Linnaeus, 1758), Tivia fusca Bohn, 2008 from northern Oman and Neostylopyga rhombifolia (Stoll, 1813) from southern Oman.

Patterns of variation of mutation rates of mitochondrial and nuclear genes of gastropods

Background Although mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) of many animals tends to mutate at higher rates than nuclear DNA (nuDNA), a recent survey of mutation rates of various animal groups found that the gastropod family Bradybaenidae (suborder Helicina) shows a nearly 40-fold difference in mutation rates of mtDNA ($$\mu$$ μ m) and nuDNA ($$\mu$$ μ n), while other gastropod taxa exhibit only two to five-fold differences. To determine if Bradybaenidae represents an outlier within Gastropoda, I compared estimated values of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n of additional gastropod groups. In particular, I reconstructed mtDNA and nuDNA gene trees of 121 datasets that include members of various clades contained within the gastropod subclasses Caenogastropoda, Heterobranchia, Patellogastropoda, and Vetigastropoda and then used total branch length estimates of these gene trees to infer $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n. Results Estimated values of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n range from 1.4 to 91.9. Datasets that exhibit relatively large values of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n (i.e., > 20), however, show relatively lower estimates of $$\mu$$ μ n (and not elevated $$\mu$$ μ m) in comparison to groups with lower values. These datasets also tend to contain sequences of recently diverged species. In addition, datasets with low levels of phylogenetic breadth (i.e., contain members of single genera or families) exhibit higher values of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n than those with high levels (i.e., those that contain representatives of single superfamilies or higher taxonomic ranks). Conclusions Gastropods exhibit considerable variation in estimates of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n. Large values of $$\mu$$ μ m/$$\mu$$ μ n that have been calculated for Bradybaenidae and other gastropod taxa may be overestimated due to possible sampling artifacts or processes that depress estimates of total molecular divergence of nuDNA in groups that recently diversified.

Improved surrogates in inertial confinement fusion with manifold and cycle consistencies

Neural networks have become the method of choice in surrogate modeling because of their ability to characterize arbitrary, high-dimensional functions in a data-driven fashion. This paper advocates for the training of surrogates that are 1) consistent with the physical manifold, resulting in physically meaningful predictions, and 2) cyclically consistent with a jointly trained inverse model; i.e., backmapping predictions through the inverse results in the original input parameters. We find that these two consistencies lead to surrogates that are superior in terms of predictive performance, are more resilient to sampling artifacts, and tend to be more data efficient. Using inertial confinement fusion (ICF) as a test-bed problem, we model a one-dimensional semianalytic numerical simulator and demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach.