A clean hot-water drill was used to gain access to Subglacial Lake Whillans (SLW) in late January 2013 as part of the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project. Over 3 days, we deployed an array of scientific tools through the SLW borehole: a downhole camera, a conductivity-temperature-depth (CTD) probe, a Niskin water sampler, an in situ filtration unit, three different sediment corers, a geothermal probe and a geophysical sensor string. Our observations confirm the existence of a subglacial water reservoir whose presence was previously inferred from satellite altimetry and surface geophysics. Subglacial water is about two orders of magnitude less saline than sea water (0.37-0.41 psu vs 35 psu) and two orders of magnitude more saline than pure drill meltwater (<0.002 psu). It reaches a minimum temperature of -0.558C, consistent with depression of the freezing point by 7.019 MPa of water pressure. Subglacial water was turbid and remained turbid following filtration through 0.45 mm filters. The recovered sediment cores, which sampled down to 0.8 m below the lake bottom, contained a macroscopically structureless diamicton with shear strength between 2 and 6 kPa. Our main operational recommendation for future subglacial access through water-filled boreholes is to supply enough heat to the top of the borehole to keep it from freezing.

Mutations in the photoreceptor tetraspanin gene peripherin-2/retinal degeneration slow (PRPH2/RDS) cause both rod- and cone-dominant diseases. While rod-dominant diseases, such as autosomal dominant retinitis pigmentosa, are thought to arise due to haploinsufficiency caused by loss-of-function mutations, the mechanisms underlying PRPH2-associated cone-dominant diseases are unclear. Here we took advantage of a transgenic mouse line expressing an RDS mutant (R172W) known to cause macular degeneration (MD) in humans. To facilitate the study of cones in the heavily rod-dominant mouse retina, R172W mice were bred onto an Nrl(-/-) background (in which developing rods adopt a cone-like fate). In this model the R172W protein and the key RDS-binding partner, rod outer segment (OS) membrane protein 1 (ROM-1), were properly expressed and trafficked to cone OSs. However, the expression of R172W led to dominant defects in cone structure and function with equal effects on S- and M-cones. Furthermore, the expression of R172W in cones induced subtle alterations in RDS/ROM-1 complex assembly, specifically resulting in the formation of abnormal, large molecular weight ROM-1 complexes. Fundus imaging demonstrated that R172W mice developed severe clinical signs of disease nearly identical to those seen in human MD patients, including retinal degeneration, retinal pigment epithlium (RPE) defects and loss of the choriocapillaris. Collectively, these data identify a primary disease-causing molecular defect in cone cells and suggest that RDS-associated disease in patients may be a result of this defect coupled with secondary sequellae involving RPE and choriocapillaris cell loss.

Understanding ice sheet evolution through the geologic past can help constrain ice sheet models that predict future ice dynamics. Existing geological records of grounding line retreat in the Ross Sea, Antarctica, have been confined to ice‐free and terrestrial archives, which reflect dynamics from periods of more extensive ice cover. Therefore, our perspective of grounding line retreat since the Last Glacial Maximum remains incomplete. Sediments beneath Ross Ice Shelf and grounded ice offer complementary insight into the southernmost extent of grounding line retreat, yielding a more complete view of ice dynamics during deglaciation. Here we thermochemically separate the youngest organic carbon to estimate ages from sediments extracted near the Whillans Ice Stream grounding line to provide direct evidence of mid‐Holocene (7.5–4.8 kyr B.P.) grounding line retreat in that region. Our study demonstrates the utility of accurately dated, grounding‐line‐proximal sediment deposits for reconstructing past interactions between marine and subglacial environments.

ABSTRACT. A new, clean, hot-water drill system (HWDS) was developed by the Science Management Office, University of Nebraska-Lincoln, for use in the Whillans Ice Stream Subglacial Access Research Drilling (WISSARD) project to gain access to Subglacial Lake Whillans beneath �800 m of ice in West Antarctica. One primary borehole was drilled into the basal ice environment of Subglacial Lake Whillans during the initial field season in 2012/13. This paper describes the process of designing, fabricating, assembling, shipping, testing, commissioning and traversing the WISSARD HWDS leading up to the first scientific use of the system.

The Subglacial Antarctic Lakes Scientific Access (SALSA) Project accessed Mercer Subglacial Lake using environmentally clean hot-water drilling to examine interactions among ice, water, sediment, rock, microbes and carbon reservoirs within the lake water column and underlying sediments. A ~0.4 m diameter borehole was melted through 1087 m of ice and maintained over ~10 days, allowing observation of ice properties and collection of water and sediment with various tools. Over this period, SALSA collected: 60 L of lake water and 10 L of deep borehole water; microbes >0.2 μm in diameter from in situ filtration of ~100 L of lake water; 10 multicores 0.32–0.49 m long; 1.0 and 1.76 m long gravity cores; three conductivity–temperature–depth profiles of borehole and lake water; five discrete depth current meter measurements in the lake and images of ice, the lake water–ice interface and lake sediments. Temperature and conductivity data showed the hydrodynamic character of water mixing between the borehole and lake after entry. Models simulating melting of the ~6 m thick basal accreted ice layer imply that debris fall-out through the ~15 m water column to the lake sediments from borehole melting had little effect on the stratigraphy of surficial sediment cores.