Polychlorinated biphenyls, dioxins, and furans in weaned, free-ranging northern elephant seal pups from central California, USA
Bibliographic record
Abstract
The aim of this study was to measure persistent organic pollutants in northern elephant seals ([NES], Mirounga angustirotris). We obtained blubber biopsy samples from six healthy, newly weaned NES pups from Año Nuevo, California (USA). Contaminant levels were lower than those of other pinnipeds studied on the west coast of North America. Blubber concentrations of polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), polychlorinated dibenzo-p-dioxins, and polychlorinated dibenzofurans averaged 700 +/- 130 microg/kg, 32 +/- 23 ng/kg, and 17 +/- 5 ng/kg (lipid wt), respectively. These contaminants originate from transplacental transfer and from maternal milk, which, in turn, reflect contaminants acquired by the mother from prey during long-distance foraging trips in the northeastern Pacific Ocean. The PCB profile in the blubber of NES pups mainly was composed of penta-, hexa-, and hepta-chlorobiphenyls, possibly reflecting the deep-sea nature of the mother's diet. Our results suggest that NES pups, in contrast to pups of other pinnipeds in the eastern Pacific Ocean, are exposed to low levels of persistent organic pollutants, reflecting an open ocean signal.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".