Publications

Garnet, the birthstone for the month of January, has been used as a gemstone for centuries. Garnet necklaces dating from the Bronze Age have been found in graves, and garnet is found among the ornaments adorning the oldest Egyptian mummies. However, garnet’s characteristics, such as its relatively high hardness and chemical inertness, make it ideal for many industrial applications.

The article offers basic information about the mineral resource potash. According to the author, potash is the generic term for a variety of mined and manufactured salts that contain the mineral potassium in a water-soluble form. The author adds that potash is used in fertilizers, soaps and detergents, glass and ceramics, and alkaline batteries.

Titanium is hip - at least when it comes to airplanes and jewelry. Known for its high strength-to weight ratio and its resistance to corrosion, titanium and its alloys can also be found in everything from knee replacements to eyeglass frames to baseball bats to fighter planes.

Geologically, the occurrence of indium minerals is rare. The element most often occurs as a sulfide inclusion or substitutes in other base-metal minerals, including cassiterite, chalcopyrite, sphalerite and stannite. Indium’s abundance in the crust is estimated to be 0.05 parts per million, which makes it more abundant than silver, but it is so widely disseminated that it does not occur in high en

You may not realize it, but the walls of your office are probably made from a mineral: gypsum. Gypsum is an abundant, evaporite-derived sedimentary mineral with deposits located throughout the world. It is often associated with paleoenvironmental lake and marine environments. In its pure form, gypsum consists of calcium sulfate dihydrate, although most crude gypsum naturally occurs in combination

The U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) is a multidisciplinary agency that provides assessments of natural resources (geological, hydrological, biological), the disturbances that affect those resources, and the disturbances that affect the built environment, natural landscapes, and human society. Until now, USGS map products have been generated and distributed primarily as 2-D maps, occasionally providi

No abstract available

Since 2006, numerous bat colonies in North America have experienced unusually high incidences of mortality. In these colonies, bats are infected by a white fungus named Geomyces destructans, which has been observed on bat muzzles, noses, ears, and (or) wings. Although it is not exactly certain how and why these bats are dying, this condition has been named white-nose syndrome (WNS). WNS appears to

Human activities such as hydropower development, water withdrawals, and commercial fisheries often put fish species at risk. Engineered solutions designed to protect species or their life stages are frequently based on assumptions about swimming performance and behaviors. In many cases, however, the appropriate data to support these designs are either unavailable or misapplied. This article provid

No abstract available.

We document the isolation and characterization of 19 tetra-nucleotide microsatellite DNA markers in northern snakehead (Channa argus) fish that recently colonized Meadow Lake, New York City, New York. These markers displayed moderate levels of allelic diversity (averaging 6.8 alleles/locus) and heterozygosity (averaging 74.2%). Demographic analyses suggested that the Meadow Lake collection has not

Managers at Alaska?s Denali National Park and Preserve (DENA) sponsored this research to assess and monitor visitor-created informal trails (ITs). DENA is located in south-central Alaska and managed as a six million acre wilderness park. This program of research was guided by the following objectives: (1) Investigate alternative methods for monitoring the spatial distribution, aggregate lineal ext