Microorganisms play an important role in the weathering of silicate minerals in many subsurface environments, but an unanswered question is whether the mineral plays an important role in the microbial ecology. Silicate minerals often contain nutrients necessary for microbial growth, but whether the microbial community benefits from their release during weathering is unclear. In this study, we u...

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The presence of clay-sized particles and clay minerals in modern sands and ancient sandstones has long presented an interesting problem, because primary depositional processes tend to lead to physical separation of fineand coarse-grained materials. Numerous processes have been invoked to explain the common presence of clay minerals in sandstones, including infiltration, the codeposition of floc...

Fe(III) (oxyhydr)oxides affect the mobility of contaminants in the environment by providing reactive surfaces for sorption. This includes the toxic metal cadmium (Cd), which prevails in agricultural soils and is taken up by crops. Fe(III)-reducing bacteria can mobilize such contaminants by Fe(III) mineral dissolution or immobilize them by sorption to or coprecipitation with secondary Fe mineral...

Fired clay minerals rehydroxylate after firing, a phenomenon that causes the long-term mass gain and expansion seen in archaeological ceramics. During rehydroxylation, fired clay minerals react with H2O to form structural hydroxyl (OH). Recent models propose that rehydroxylation is described by a quartic root (t1/4) time dependence, which has led to a dating method based on the process (RHX, re...

Strong evidence for evaporitic sulfate minerals such as gypsum and jarosite has recently been found on Mars. Although organic molecules are often codeposited with terrestrial evaporitic minerals, there have been no systematic investigations of organic components in sulfate minerals. We report here the detection of organic material, including amino acids and their amine degradation products, in ...

There has been considerable recent interest in the suggestion that mineral fibres other than asbestos might be associated with mesotheliomas in the pleural and peritoneal cavities. Compared with the wealth of information on the consequences of exposure to asbestos, information about the effects of other fibrous minerals is sparse and much of it is of a preliminary nature. In this editorial the ...

Although there are many studies on biomineralization processes, most of them focus on the role of prokaryotes. As fungi play an important role in different geological and biogeochemical processes, it was considered of interest to evaluate their role in a natural extreme acidic environment, Río Tinto, which has a high level of fungal diversity and a high concentration of metals. In this work we ...