In North America, terrestrial records of biodiversity and climate change that span Marine Oxygen Isotope Stage (MIS) 5 are rare. Where found, they provide insight into how the coupling of the ocean–atmosphere system is manifested in biotic and environmental records and how the biosphere responds to climate change. In 2010–2011, construction at Ziegler Reservoir near Snowmass Village, Colorado (USA) revealed a nearly continuous, lacustrine/wetland sedimentary sequence that preserved evidence of past plant communities between ~140 and 55 ka, including all of MIS 5. At an elevation of 2705 m, the Ziegler Reservoir fossil site also contained thousands of well-preserved bones of late Pleistocene megafauna, including mastodons, mammoths, ground sloths, horses, camels, deer, bison, black bear, coyotes, and bighorn sheep. In addition, the site contained more than 26,000 bones from at least 30 species of small animals including salamanders, otters, muskrats, minks, rabbits, beavers, frogs, lizards, snakes, fish, and birds. The combination of macro- and micro-vertebrates, invertebrates, terrestrial and aquatic plant macrofossils, a detailed pollen record, and a robust, directly dated stratigraphic framework shows that high-elevation ecosystems in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado are climatically sensitive and varied dramatically throughout MIS 5.

The presbytery vault at St Albans is one of only two thirteenth-century wooden vaults over a main span to survive in England. A programme of cleaning and conservation carried out between 1997 and 2002, coupled with an analysis of the source and date of the timber used in its construction, significantly advanced our understanding of both the late thirteenth-century presbytery campaign at St Albans and thirteenth-century timber vault construction generally. As the inevitable density and restricted circulation of the final report on that work has hindered its wider reception, the following paper offers a summary, drawing attention to two features that may have wider implications for an appreciation of vaulting in timber. The first is that, although the general form adopted at St Albans is one associated with masonry vaulting, the wooden boards used for the vault webbing required a junction between the wall and the ridge rib, meaning that shallow liernes were originally deployed to run parallel to the central ridge. It is difficult to see this as imitative of vaulting in stone; rather it is likely to be the result of carpenters developing their own solutions to the constraints imposed by timber. Secondly, the late medieval remodelling of the vault replaced these liernes with false tiercerons, and rather nicely illustrates the ease with which timber vaulting could be modified. The dendrochronology gives a date range of 1273–93, and a date of around 1285 is suggested for the primary build. The major late medieval alterations are here associated with the second abbacy of John of Wheathampstead (1452–65).

Using high resolution lattice imaging techniques, the morphology of thepolycrystalline silicon - single crystal silicon interface has been correlated to (1) the surface treatment used prior to polysilicon deposition, (2) the polysilicon implant dose, and (3) high temperature annealing. Specimens which were chemically oxidized prior to deposition exhibited a continuous layer of amorphous oxide ≈1.5nm thick. High temperature annealing produces small discontinuities in this oxide which allow the polysilicon to make direct contact with, and become epitaxially aligned to, the substrate. Specimens which were etched in HF prior to deposition were characterized by nearly oxide-free interfaces, which, following implantation and annealing, exhibited regions of epitaxial realignment significantly larger than those found in the chemically oxidized films. Heavily implanted films annealed at high temperature displayed almost complete epitaxial realignment.

Water vapor in the atmosphere of Venus was discovered in November 1959 by observations made at 80000-ft. altitude with a manned balloon-telescope system. This result was confirmed and measured far more precisely in February 1964 with an automatic unmanned system. The method of observing Venus water-vapor absorption in the 1.13-μ band, and the interpretation of that absorption, are described.