Knowledge of the past variability of climate at high northern latitudes during astronomical analogues of the present interglacial may help to inform our understanding of future climate change. Unfortunately, long-term continuous records of ice-sheet variability in the Northern Hemisphere only are scarce because records of benthic (18)O content represent an integrated signal of changes in ice volume in both polar regions. However, variations in Northern Hemisphere ice sheets influence the Siberian High (an atmospheric pressure system), so variations in the East Asian winter monsoon (EAWM)--as recorded in the aeolian dust deposits on the Chinese Loess Plateau--can serve as a useful proxy of Arctic climate variability before the ice-core record begins. Here we present an EAWM proxy record using grain-size variations in two parallel loess sections representative of sequences across the whole of the Chinese Loess Plateau over the past 900,000 years. The results show that during periods of low eccentricity and precessional variability at approximately 400,000-year intervals, the grain-size-inferred intensity of the EAWM remains weak for up to 20,000 years after the end of the interglacial episode of high summer monsoon activity and strong pedogenesis. In contrast, there is a rapid increase in the EAWM after the end of most other interglacials. We conclude that, for both the 400,000-year interglacials, the weak EAWM winds maintain a mild, non-glacial climate at high northern latitudes for much longer than expected from the conventional loess and marine oxygen isotope records. During these times, the less-severe summer insolation minima at 65° N (ref. 4) would have suppressed ice and snow accumulation, leading to a weak Siberian High and, consequently, weak EAWM winds.

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We present a continuous record of fossil diatoms from Huguang Maar Lake (HML) in southeastern China, spanning the time interval 17,500 to 6000 calendar years (cal years) B.P. The seasonal change in relative abundance of the dominant diatom taxa, Aulacoseira and Cyclotella species, can be used as a proxy of the strength of winter monsoon winds (WMW), which is supported by the results of a sediment trap experiment in HML and by an extensive review of the literature on the autoecologies of these species. In the sediment, high C. stelligera abundance and high‐diatom concentration, which indicate warm conditions and low wind‐driven turbulence of the water column, characterize an interval equivalent to the Greenland Interstadial 1. This is followed by an interval with low‐diatom concentration and with assemblages dominated by Aulacoseira species, which suggests high wind‐driven turbulence and therefore strong WMW. This interval corresponds with the Greenland Stadial 1. During the early and middle Holocene, another two episodes with strong WMW are evident from the data between 10,000 and 8500 and between 7000 and 6000 cal years B.P. The diatom record implies that strong winter monsoon episodes not only occurred during the last glacial‐Holocene transition but also during the Holocene “thermal maximum.”

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In this study we examine the relationships between Abies and Picea abundance in surface pollen and sub‐alpine coniferous forest (SCF) distribution, elevation and climate in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau using a large modern pollen data set consisting of 857 samples. Results indicate that Abies and Picea pollen are abundant in the southern and eastern Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau, where SCF dominates the landscape. Pollen percentages of both Abies and Picea show a unimodal pattern with changes in elevation and climate, and their optima occur at elevations from 2500 to 4000 m a.s.l., mean annual temperature from −1 to 10 °C and mean annual precipitation from 450 to 850 mm. The optimal elevation of Abies and Picea pollen distribution decreases with latitude from c. 4000 m in the south (21–32°N) to c. 2500 m in the north (43–49°N). The spatial pattern of Abies and Picea pollen abundance is highly correlated with the modern distribution of these taxa, which is largely controlled by elevation and climate. These relationships could provide a practical reference for interpretation of fossil pollen data in terms of climate and elevation in the Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau.

Synopsis Silicone oils have wide range of applications in personal care products due to their unique properties of high lubricity, non‐toxicity, excessive spreading and film formation. They are usually employed in the form of emulsions due to their inert nature. Until now, different conventional emulsification techniques have been developed and applied to prepare silicone oil emulsions. The size and uniformity of emulsions showed important influence on stability of droplets, which further affect the application performance. Therefore, various strategies were developed to improve the stability as well as application performance of silicone oil emulsions. In this review, we highlight different factors influencing the stability of silicone oil emulsions and explain various strategies to overcome the stability problems. In addition, the silicone deposition on the surface of hair substrates and different approaches to increase their deposition are also discussed in detail.

Knowledge of the behavior of Northern Hemisphere (NH) ice sheets over the past million years is crucial for understanding the role of orbitally driven insolation changes on glacial/interglacial cycles. Here, based on the demonstrable link between changes in Chinese loess grain-size and NH ice-sheet extent, we use loess grain-size records to confirm that northern ice-sheets were restricted during marine oxygen isotope stage (MIS) 14. Thus, an unusually long NH interglacial climate of over 100 kyr persisted during MISs 15−13, much longer than expected from marine oxygen isotope records. Taking a global view of the paleoclimate records, MIS 14 inception seems to be a response to changes in Antarctic ice-sheets rather than to NH cooling. Orbital configuration in the two Polar regions shows that the onset of MIS 14 was forced by austral insolation changes, rather than by boreal summer insolation, as Milankovitch theory proposes. Our analysis of MIS 14 raises the possibility that southern insolation forcing may have played an important role in the inception of several other glacials. We suggest that the extra-long NH interglacial climate during MISs 15−13 provided favorable conditions for the second major dispersal episode of African hominins into Eurasia.

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