The Upper Cretaceous (Maastrichtian) Whitemud Formation is a potentially commercial kaolin deposit located in southern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta. The Whitemud Formation contains a lower kaolinitic sandstone, a middle lignite and carbonaceous shale, and an upper interbedded siltstone and claystone. The sediments that comprise the rocks of the Whitemud Formation were deposited on alluvial or upper deltaic plains located along the northwest flank of the Williston Basin.

Mineralogy and textures were determined by X-ray powder diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and optical microscopy. Kaolinite abundance increases upward from the underlying rocks of the Eastend Formation through the Whitemud Formation, and the abundance of smectite, micas, and feldspars decreases from the Eastend Formation into the Whitemud Formation. Vermiform kaolinite crystals are in close spatial association with feldspar and mica grains. Near the top of the Whitemud Formation, etched quartz and feldspar grains, and gibbsite suggest the presence of a strong chemical leaching environment.

Mineral distributions, presence of root remains, pedologic mottles, grain coatings composed of clay, and soil horizons indicate the Whitemud Formation sediments were modified by intense weathering in a paleosol environment.

Kaolin concentrated from selected kaolinitic sandstone deposits, and beneficiated by oxidation, leaching, and high-intensity wet-magnetic separation has a product brightness up to filler quality. Recovery of lowabrasion kaolin is low and viscosity of a fine-particle kaolin fraction is high. Economics of producing a wet-processed filler-grade kaolin is marginal.

Utilizing high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM), energy-dispersive spectroscopy (EDS) and X-raydiffraction (XRD) techniques, we have studied the transition from shallower smectite-rich mudrocks to deeper illite-rich mudrocks in Pliocene-age turbidite sediments from the northern Gulf of Mexico (GOM). Our objective in this work was to better understand how the smectite-illite transition may affect the onset of geopressuring in GOM sediments. The samples studied were sidewall cores from an offshore Louisiana well. In previous studies of GOM sediments, the smectite-to-illite reaction has mainly been documented in considerably older, Miocene-age sediments.

The results of this study elucidate the reaction mechanisms entailed in the transformation of clays in this sediment from smectitic to illitic. We found that illite formed at the expense of smectite in 2 ways: 1) growth of preexisting discrete illite flakes, and 2) creation of new illite layers within mixed-layer illite-smectite. Also, illitization apparently proceeded via a dissolution/precipitation, Al-conserving reaction rather than a solid-state, layer-conserving reaction. Smectite illitization is commonly believed to require input of K from feldspar dissolution. Our XRD results found little correlation between decreases in K-feldsparand increases of illite. However, in 1 instance TEM/EDS analyses indicated the presence of high-charge smectite, which suggests that insufficient K was available for illitization. TEM images also show small packets of authigenic chlorite in illite-rich mudrock. This chlorite may act as a sink for Fe liberated upon smectite illitization.

The National Environmental Isotope Facility (NEIF) Radiocarbon Laboratory at the Scottish Universities Environmental Research Centre (SUERC) performs radiocarbon measurement of a wide range of sample matrices for applications in environmental research. Radiocarbon is applied to palaeoenvironmental, palaeoceanographic, and palaeoclimatic investigations, as well as work to understand the source, fate, turnover, and age of carbon in the modern carbon cycle. The NEIF Radiocarbon Laboratory supports users in the development and deployment of novel sampling techniques and laboratory approaches. Here, we give an overview of methods and procedures used by the laboratory to support the field collection, laboratory processing, and measurement of samples. This includes in-house development of novel and/or specialized methods and approaches, such as field collection of CO2 and CH4, hydropyrolysis, and ramped oxidation. The sample types covered include organic remains (e.g., plant material, peat, wood, charcoal, proteins), carbonates (e.g., speleothems, foraminifera, mollusc shell, travertine), waters (dissolved organic and inorganic carbon), gases (CO2 and CH4), soils and sediments (including sub-fractions).

Anaemia is characterised by low hemoglobin (Hb) concentration. Despite being a public health concern in Ethiopia, the role of micronutrients and non-nutritional factors as a determinant of Hb concentrations has been inadequately explored. This study focused on the assessment of serum micronutrient and Hb concentrations and a range of non-nutritional factors, to evaluate their associations with the risk of anaemia among the Ethiopian population (n 2046). It also explored the mediation effect of Zn on the relation between se and Hb. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were performed to identify the relationship between serum micronutrients concentration, inflammation biomarkers, nutritional status, presence of parasitic infection and socio-demographic factors with Hb concentration (n 2046). Sobel–Goodman test was applied to investigate the mediation of Zn on relations between serum se and Hb. In total, 18·6 % of participants were anaemic, 5·8 % had iron deficiency (ID), 2·6 % had ID anaemia and 0·6 % had tissue ID. Younger age, household head illiteracy and low serum concentrations of ferritin, Co, Cu and folate were associated with anaemia. Serum se had an indirect effect that was mediated by Zn, with a significant effect of se on Zn (P < 0·001) and Zn on Hb (P < 0·001). The findings of this study suggest the need for designing a multi-sectorial intervention to address anaemia based on demographic group.

Consumers now demand evidence of welfare assurance at all stages of animal production, marketing, transport and slaughter. In response, retailers have increasingly adopted preferred supply chain relationships which preclude sourcing animals via livestock auction markets. One of the criteria dictating this action is a perceived improvement in animal welfare resulting from direct transport from farm to abattoir.

A survey of complete journey structures of 18 393 slaughterweight lambs from farm to abattoir was conducted between April and July 1997. Journeys were characterized in terms of distances travelled, duration and the number of discrete components within a whole journey which comprised: transport; trans-shipping (when animals were transferred from one vehicle to another); multiple pickups from a number of farms; and holding at either assembly points, lairages or auction markets. The results identified that journeys in the livestock distribution system are diverse and range in complexity, irrespective of marketing channel. Journey complexity was found to be positively related to distance travelled.

The study demonstrates that discussions concerning welfare of livestock in transit should consider the journey structure and not just the marketing channel per se. Furthermore, it also shows that changes taking place in the infrastructure of the marketing and meat processing sectors may result in a reduction in animal welfare.

Theories of early cooperation in human society often draw from a small sample of ethnographic studies of surviving populations of hunter–gatherers, most of which are now sedentary. Borneo hunter–gatherers (Punan, Penan) have seldom figured in comparative research because of a decades-old controversy about whether they are the descendants of farmers who adopted a hunting and gathering way of life. In 2018 we began an ethnographic study of a group of still-nomadic hunter–gatherers who call themselves Punan Batu (Cave Punan). Our genetic analysis clearly indicates that they are very unlikely to be the descendants of neighbouring agriculturalists. They also preserve a song language that is unrelated to other languages of Borneo. Dispersed travelling groups of Punan Batu with fluid membership use message sticks to stay in contact, co-operate and share resources as they journey between rock shelters and forest camps. Message sticks were once widespread among nomadic Punan in Borneo, but have largely disappeared in sedentary Punan villages. Thus the small community of Punan Batu offers a rare glimpse of a hunting and gathering way of life that was once widespread in the forests of Borneo, where prosocial behaviour extended beyond the face-to-face community, facilitating successful collective adaptation to the diverse resources of Borneo's forests.

We present the most sensitive and detailed view of the neutral hydrogen ( ${\rm H\small I}$ ) emission associated with the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), through the combination of data from the Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (ASKAP) and Parkes (Murriyang), as part of the Galactic Australian Square Kilometre Array Pathfinder (GASKAP) pilot survey. These GASKAP-HI pilot observations, for the first time, reveal ${\rm H\small I}$ in the SMC on similar physical scales as other important tracers of the interstellar medium, such as molecular gas and dust. The resultant image cube possesses an rms noise level of 1.1 K ( $1.6\,\mathrm{mJy\ beam}^{-1}$ ) $\mathrm{per}\ 0.98\,\mathrm{km\ s}^{-1}$ spectral channel with an angular resolution of $30^{\prime\prime}$ ( ${\sim}10\,\mathrm{pc}$ ). We discuss the calibration scheme and the custom imaging pipeline that utilises a joint deconvolution approach, efficiently distributed across a computing cluster, to accurately recover the emission extending across the entire ${\sim}25\,\mathrm{deg}^2$ field-of-view. We provide an overview of the data products and characterise several aspects including the noise properties as a function of angular resolution and the represented spatial scales by deriving the global transfer function over the full spectral range. A preliminary spatial power spectrum analysis on individual spectral channels reveals that the power law nature of the density distribution extends down to scales of 10 pc. We highlight the scientific potential of these data by comparing the properties of an outflowing high-velocity cloud with previous ASKAP+Parkes ${\rm H\small I}$ test observations.

Multiple micronutrient deficiencies are widespread in Ethiopia. However, the distribution of Se and Zn deficiency risks has previously shown evidence of spatially dependent variability, warranting the need to explore this aspect for wider micronutrients. Here, blood serum concentrations for Ca, Mg, Co, Cu and Mo were measured (n 3102) on samples from the Ethiopian National Micronutrient Survey. Geostatistical modelling was used to test spatial variation of these micronutrients for women of reproductive age, who represent the largest demographic group surveyed (n 1290). Median serum concentrations were 8·6 mg dl−1 for Ca, 1·9 mg dl−1 for Mg, 0·4 µg l−1 for Co, 98·8 µg dl−1 for Cu and 0·2 µg dl−1 for Mo. The prevalence of Ca, Mg and Co deficiency was 41·6 %, 29·2 % and 15·9 %, respectively; Cu and Mo deficiency prevalence was 7·6 % and 0·3 %, respectively. A higher prevalence of Ca, Cu and Mo deficiency was observed in north western, Co deficiency in central and Mg deficiency in north eastern parts of Ethiopia. Serum Ca, Mg and Mo concentrations show spatial dependencies up to 140–500 km; however, there was no evidence of spatial correlations for serum Co and Cu concentrations. These new data indicate the scale of multiple mineral micronutrient deficiency in Ethiopia and the geographical differences in the prevalence of deficiencies suggesting the need to consider targeted responses during the planning of nutrition intervention programmes.

Precise instrumental calibration is of crucial importance to 21-cm cosmology experiments. The Murchison Widefield Array’s (MWA) Phase II compact configuration offers us opportunities for both redundant calibration and sky-based calibration algorithms; using the two in tandem is a potential approach to mitigate calibration errors caused by inaccurate sky models. The MWA Epoch of Reionization (EoR) experiment targets three patches of the sky (dubbed EoR0, EoR1, and EoR2) with deep observations. Previous work in Li et al. (2018) and (2019) studied the effect of tandem calibration on the EoR0 field and found that it yielded no significant improvement in the power spectrum (PS) over sky-based calibration alone. In this work, we apply similar techniques to the EoR1 field and find a distinct result: the improvements in the PS from tandem calibration are significant. To understand this result, we analyse both the calibration solutions themselves and the effects on the PS over three nights of EoR1 observations. We conclude that the presence of the bright radio galaxy Fornax A in EoR1 degrades the performance of sky-based calibration, which in turn enables redundant calibration to have a larger impact. These results suggest that redundant calibration can indeed mitigate some level of model incompleteness error.