We explored the genetic architecture of metabolic risk factors of cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) and their clustering in Chinese boys and girls. Seven metabolic traits (body mass index [BMI], waist circumference [WC], systolic blood pressure [SBP], diastolic blood pressure [DBP], total cholesterol [TC], triglyceride [TG], and uric acid [UA]) were measured in a sample of 1016 twins between 8 and 17 years of age, recruited from the Qingdao Twin Registry. Cholesky, independent pathway, and common pathway models were used to identify the latent genetic structure behind the clustering of these metabolic traits. Genetic architecture of these metabolic traits was largely similar in boys and girls. The highest heritability was found for BMI (a2 = 0.63) in boys and TC (a2 = .69) in girls. Three heritable factors, adiposity (BMI and WC), blood pressure (SBP and DBP), and metabolite factors (TC, TG, and UA), which formed one higher-order latent phenotype, were identified. Latent genetic, common environmental, and unique environmental factors indirectly impacted the three factors through one single latent factor. Our results suggest that there is one latent factor influencing several metabolic traits, which are known risk factors of CVDs in young Chinese twins. Latent genetic, common environmental, and unique environmental factors indirectly imposed on them. These results inform strategies for gene pleiotropic discovery and intervening of CVD risk factors during childhood and adolescence.

Pre-Quaternary terrestrial climate variability is less well understood than that during the Quaternary. The continuous eolian Red Clay sequence underlying the well-known Quaternary loess-paleosol sequence on the Chinese Loess Plateau (CLP) provides an opportunity to study pre-Quaternary terrestrial climate variability in East Asia. Here, we present new mineral magnetic records for a recently found Red Clay succession from Shilou area on the eastern CLP, and demonstrate a marked East Asian climate shift across the Miocene-Pliocene boundary (MPB). Pedogenic fine-grained magnetite populations, ranging from superparamagnetic (SP)/single domain (SD) up to small pseudo-single domain (PSD) sizes (i.e., from <30 nm up to ~1000 nm), dominate the magnetic properties. Importantly, our mineral magnetic results indicate that both pedogenic formation of SP grains and transformation of SP grains to SD and small PSD grains accelerated across the MPB in the Shilou Red Clay, which are indicative of enhanced pedogenesis. We relate this enhanced pedogenesis to increased soil moisture availability on the CLP, associated with stronger Asian Summer Monsoon precipitation during an overall period of global cooling. Our study thus provides new insights into the Miocene-Pliocene climate transition in East Asia.

It has been proposed that within the Tarim Basin tectonic activity has been limited since Triassic time. However, on the basis of magnetostratigraphy from the eastern Tarim Basin, which defines the chronology of sedimentation and structural evolution of the basin, we show that the basin interior has been uplifted and partitioned during Quaternary. The magnetostratigraphy was constructed from 2228 samples that yielded acceptable inclination values. Characteristic remnant magnetization (ChRM) with both normal (N1–N11) and reversed (R1–R11) polarity was isolated by thermal demagnetization. The data correlate best with polarity chrons C3r to C1n, which range from 5.39 Ma to recent on the geological time scale 2004 (GTS2004). An abrupt decrease in the sedimentation rate is observed at 1.77 Ma in the Ls1 core. This change does not overlap with known Pleistocene climate-change events. We attribute this sedimentation rate decrease to a structurally controlled local decrease in accommodation space where basin basement uplifts occur. This period of sedimentary environmental change reveals that structural partitioning in the basement of the Tarim Basin occurred since ~ 1.77 Ma, and we speculate that tilting of the Southeast Uplift (a sub-basin unit) within the Tarim Basin began in early Pleistocene time.

Eolian quartz flux (EQF, g cm−2(103 yr)−1) to Lake Biwa, central Japan, provides direct information on variations of the East Asian winter monsoon. Lake Biwa sediments spanning the past ca. 145,000 yr are characterized by two main periods when EQF values were significantly greater than 5.50 g cm−2(103 yr)−1, and two main intervals during which EQF values were lower. Two periods with EQF values >5.50 g cm−2(103 yr)−1occurred from ca. 145,000 to 125,000 and 73,000 to 13,000 yr B.P., while times of lower EQF values occurred from ca. 125,000 to 73,000 yr B.P. and around ca. 5500 yr B.P. Between ca. 125,000 and 73,000 yr B.P., three minimum EQF values and two intervening peaks of slightly higher EQF values are recorded. EQF increased markedly from ca. 73,000 to 13,000 yr B.P., whereas between ca. 53,000 and 20,000 yr B.P. the values recorded were relatively lower than those recorded during either the preceding or the subsequent episodes. The data imply that the East Asian winter monsoon strengthened during the periods when EQF values were high, and weakened during the intervals with low EQF values. The EQF record of Lake Biwa can be correlated with the grain-size record of the quartz fraction in Chinese loess and with the SPECMAP marine δ18O record. However, the EQF record apparently lags ca. 5000 yr behind the loess and δ18O records during stage 6/5 and 2/1 transitions and ca. 10,000 yr during stage 5/4 transition. These apparent lags could be due to problems with the chronology; alternatively, they may imply that the eolian quartz flux depended more on the extent of dust source regions than on wind intensity during these transitions.

In order to examine high-frequency variations of East Asian winter monsoon in Quaternary climatic extremes, two typical loess–paleosol sequences in the Chinese Loess Plateau were investigated. Sandy layers in the loess deposits, the “Upper sand” and “Lower sand” (layers L9 and L15, respectively), which represent a high-resolution record of paleomonsoon changes, have been sampled at intervals of 5–6 cm from sections at Luochuan and Xifeng. The grain size and magnetic susceptibility was measured for all samples. The grain-size results (a proxy of winter monsoon strength) indicate that the winter monsoon strength fluctuated on a millennial timescale during cold climatic extremes, with climatic events of a few hundred to a few thousand years. However, the winter monsoon was relatively stable during warm periods. The magnetic susceptibility signal (a proxy of summer monsoon intensity) is practically constant over the same period. This is tentatively explained by the assumption that the summer monsoon intensity was too low to be recorded in the magnetic susceptibility signal. The intensified winter monsoon events show periodicities in a range of 1000 to 2770 yr, with a dominant cycle of approximately 1450 yr. The detection of this oscillation in older glacial stages strongly suggests that it may be a pervasive cycle of the cold climatic phases of the Quaternary. Millennial-scale variations of the winter monsoon may be caused by instability of the westerly jet, which is determined by temperature differences between the polar and the equatorial regions.

The record of the biogenic silica flux (BSF, g cm−2(103yr)−1) in Lake Biwa reflects changes in diatom productivity in the lake and provides information regarding changes in paleoclimatic conditions. The BSF record of Lake Biwa demonstrates five periods over the past ca. 145,000 yr when the BSF values were significantly greater than 7.5 g cm−2(103yr)−1, and five intervals when they were lower. The data imply that paleoclimatic conditions were warmer and wetter from ca. 123,000 to 115,000, 103,000 to 95,000, 88,000 to 72,000, 57,000 to 32,000 yr B.P., and around ca. 6000 yr B.P. when the BSF values were greater, and relatively dry and cold from ca. 141,000 to 123,000 yr B.P. and during intervals between two of the five warm and wet episodes when the BSF values were lower. Time series of the BSF record can be correlated with the record of biogenic silica content in Lake Baikal and the marine oxygen isotope stages 1 through 6. Furthermore, the BSF values varied with much higher amplitude during the last interglaciation than during the last glaciation, probably implying that the diatom productivity in Lake Biwa was likewise more variable and had a larger range under interglacial conditions than under glacial conditions.

Efforts to extract weak geomagnetic excursion signals from Chinese loess-paleosol 10Be have generally been unsuccessful due to the complexities of its accumulation, because the geomagnetic and climate (precipitation and dust) signals contained in loess-paleosol sequence are tightly overprinted. Here, we present a reconstruction of geomagnetic relative paleointensities for the past 130 kyr from 10Be records in 2 Chinese loess-paleosol sections using a correction based on the correlation of 10Be with magnetic susceptibility (SUS) to remove the climatic contamination. Both these records reveal the Laschamp and Blake events, which lie in the loess and paleosol (L1SS1 and S1SS3) horizons corresponding to mid-MIS 3 and 5e, respectively. The good agreement between our results and other geomagnetic intensities reconstructions from Atlantic and Pacific sediments indicates that our method is robust. Our study suggests the potential application of loess-paleosol 10Be for reconstructing geomagnetic intensity variations spanning the whole Quaternary.

The cosmogenic radionuclide 10Be is produced by cosmic-ray spallation in Earth's atmosphere. Its production rate is regulated by the geomagnetic field intensity, so that its accumulation rate in aeolian sediments can, in principle, be used to derive high-resolution records of geomagnetic field changes. However, 10Be atmospheric fallout rate also varies locally depending on rainfall rate. The accumulation rate of 10Be in sediments is further complicated by overprinting of the geomagnetic and precipitation signals by 10Be attached to remobilized dust, which fell from the atmosphere at some time in the past. Here, we demonstrate that these signals can be deconvoluted to derive both geomagnetic field intensity and paleoprecipitation records of Asian Monsoon intensity in an 80,000-yr-long 10Be record from Chinese loess. The strong similarity between our derived paleomagnetic intensity record and the SINT 200 (Guyodo and Valet 1996) and NAPIS 75 (Laj et al. 2002) stacked-marine records suggests that this method might be used to produce multimillion-yr-long records of paleomagnetic intensity from loess. This technique also reveals a new method for extracting quantitative paleoprecipitation records from continental interior regions. Our derived precipitation record is broadly similar to the speleothem δ18O-based records of paleo-Asian Monsoon intensity from Dongge (Yuan et al. 2004) and Hulu (Wang et al. 2001) caves, and suggests that the paleo-Asian Monsoon intensity may be responding to a combination of both Northern and Southern Hemisphere insolation forcing.

We report here first results on the bulk soil organic carbon (SOC), apparent radiocarbon ages and δ13C characteristics of the tropical and subtropical forest soil in Dinghushan Biosphere Reserve (DHSBR). The forest oxisol in Dinghushan has developed during the Holocene. The δ13C variation curves in all three profiles may be divided into two sections. The upper section from 0 to 40 cm has δ13C values varying from −27.4 to −24.1‰, −27.5 to −22.2‰, and −24.4 to −20.1‰. in the Wukesong, Qingyunsi and Kengkou profiles, respectively. The lower section, including the 40–160 cm horizons, has a uniform δ13C. The mean δ13C values of the soil organic carbon could be used not only to discriminate between C3 and C4 plants, but also to distinguish between coniferous and broad-leaf plants.

Individual rings from 1899–1990 were pooled from four radii of four cross-sections obtained from trees at a managed forest site near Huangling, north of Xian in north central China. Splits of wood ground to 20-mesh were analyzed independently at both the Xian and Arizona laboratories, using their respective methods for cellulose isolation, combustion and mass-spectrometric analysis. The δ13C results were highly correlated (r2 = 0.66) and absolute values typically within 0.2–0.3‰. Inter-tree variability was estimated as 1–1.5‰. The Huangling δ13C curve shows an overall downward trend with year-to-year fluctuations of up to 1.5‰ superimposed. A subset of δ13C maxima corresponded with below-normal precipitation and above-normal temperature in May and June, and minima were associated with above-normal precipitation and below-normal temperature in May and June, perhaps signaling early arrival of the East Asian Summer Monsoon. The generally poor climate correlations with all δ13C values, however, could be a consequence of the fairly mesic environment or of human disturbance. Chronologies of isotopic discrimination (δ) and Ci/Ca had flat slopes, suggesting the δ13C trend was driven by global rather than local effects.