Wildlife health surveillance is a rapidly evolving field. The goal of this commentary is to share the authors perspectives on the evolving expectations of wildlife health surveillance. We describe the basis for developing our opinions using multiple information sources including a narrative literature review, convenience samples of websites and conversations with experts. With increasing prominence of wildlife health, expectations for surveillance have increased. Situational awareness and threat or vulnerability detection were expected outputs. Action expectation themes included knowledge mobilization, reliable action thresholds and evidence-based decision making. Information expectations were broad and included the need for information on social and ecological risk drivers and impacts and evaluation of surveillance systems. Surveillance systems developers should consider: (1) What methods can equivalently and reliably manage the biases, uncertainties and ambiguities of wildlife health information; (2) How surveillance and intelligence systems support acceptable, ethical, efficient and effective actions that do not generate unintended consequences; and (3) How to generate evidence to show that surveillance and intelligence systems lead to decisions affecting vulnerability or resilience to endemic health threats, emerging diseases, climate change and other conservation threats.

Radiocarbon (14C) measurements play important roles in dating and tracing applications where the isotopic concentration can differ from 0.1 to 106 pMC (percent modern carbon). A liquid scintillation counter cannot provide enough sensitivity when dealing with low-concentration samples of limited amounts over a reasonable time period. Accelerator mass spectroscopy (AMS) measures low-concentrations well but must first do dilution for high-concentration samples, and suffers from high instrument and maintenance costs. Saturated absorption CAvity Ring-down spectroscopy (SCAR) has now been developed into a practical technique with performances close to AMS but at much lower costs. The dynamic range covers 1–105 pMC, and the measurement uncertainties in the range of 0.4–1 pMC can be achieved within 0.5–2.5 hr of operation time. SCAR measures CO2 gases directly without graphitization in sample preparation. The typical sample consumption is ∼1 mg of carbon mass and the time for sample preparation can be as short as 15 min. Applications of SCAR to Suess-effect evaluation, biogenic-component analysis, ancient- and modern-sample dating, food-fraud detection and medicine-metabolism study have all been demonstrated by employing a close-to-automatic sample preparation system.

River terraces serve as excellent indicators of the landform evolution of the Guizhou Plateau. This paper presents the results of terrace investigation and optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) dating focused on five sections along the Liujiang River of the southeastern Guizhou Plateau. The OSL ages of the terraces range from 0.21 ± 0.02 to 16.0 ± 1.4 ka for the first terraces (T1) and from 3.5 ± 0.3 to 26.5 ± 3.3 ka for the second terraces (T2), which are much younger than those of other basins on the Guizhou Plateau. These ages, considered in tandem with the results of previous investigations, enhance our understanding of the fluvial landform evolution of the Guizhou Plateau since the Late Pleistocene. On the Guizhou Plateau platform, terraces are considered to be the response of river evolution to tectonic uplift, indicating a relatively slow geomorphic process. In the slope zone, climate change has had a significant impact on the fluvial landform processes, driving the formation of the younger terraces along the Liujiang River. In the platform–slope transition zone, the evolution of terraces was driven by both tectonic uplift and climate change, where the landform processes were dominated by strong headward erosion.

Ever since the first discovery of urn burials in eastern Serbia during the 1980s, their dating has been uncertain and based on distant analogies and typological parallels. In this paper, we present radiocarbon dates from five urn cemeteries and three associated settlement sites, showing that the initial dating (Late Bronze Age; 14th–11th BCE) is highly questionable. Instead, radiocarbon dating and modeling presented here connect the urn cemeteries—characterized by a specific grave architecture and associated with settlements that display evidence of copper production—to a period between the 20th and 16th centuries BC. The fact that many of our dates come from cremated bones requires a discussion with regard to the circumstances of carbon exchange during cremation. The absolute dates thus far available for most urn cemeteries from the neighboring regions of the Balkans are all markedly younger (15th–11th century BC) than the data presented here and fall in the frame of the overall expansion of cremation in Europe during the Urnfield period. The new absolute dates from eastern Serbia provide a possibility to change our understanding of the Bronze Age dynamics of the 2nd millennium in the broader area of southeastern Europe and indicate a much earlier acceptance of cremation among certain groups than previously thought.

Amongst the various strategies studied to reduce polluting agents in water, both from anthropogenic and natural sources, adsorption processes are among the most widespread techniques. Layered double hydroxides (LDH, anionic adsorbers) play a fundamental role in the treatment of industrial wastewater, which often contains both anionic and cationic species. The objectives of the present study were to synthesize a (Mg, Zn)Al-NO3 LDH, and a composite between the LDH and montmorillonite (Mnt, cationic exchanger), and to test their adsorption capacity for both cationic and anionic pollutants in two different samples of industrial wastewater. The compounds were characterized by means of inductively coupled plasma-atomic emission spectroscopy (ICP-AES), X-ray powder diffraction (XRPD), Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, differential thermal analysis/thermogravimetry (DTA-TG), and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). Results of product yields and extraction performance provided evidence that the synthesized compounds were active in the removal of various kinds of pollutants from real wastewaters. The adsorption capacity, in the case of the removal of cations varied from ~85 to 100% and from ~92 to 100% when the LDH and the LDH-Mnt, respectively, were used. The 56–100% removal of anions was instead obtained for both the adsorbents.

Trace fossils are described for the first time from the Purpurberg Quartzite of the Weesenstein Group, where deposition is so far considered to be glacio-eustatic controlled during the ∼565 Ma-old Weesenstein–Orellana glaciation. The mineralogically mature quartzites are locally rich in trace fossils, but the bedding plane bioturbation index is commonly less than 3. The trace fossil assemblage is of low diversity and comprises abundant Palaeophycus isp. and Palaeophycus tubularis and rare Phycodes, likely Phycodes cf. palmatus. One large Lockeia siliquaria and likely also a poorly preserved Rusophycus? isp. were found. Based on these findings and regional correlation with quartz-rich sequences of Saxo-Thuringia, an Early Ordovician age is suggested for the Purpurberg Quartzite, which can be regarded as a facies equivalent to shallow marine, quartz-rich sequences of southwestern Europe deposited along the northern Gondwanan margin during the Early Ordovician. In the light of this new insight, stratigraphic implications for the Weesenstein diamictite are also briefly discussed.