African geoxyles evolved in response to fire; frost came later

Savanna fire and the origins of the 'underground forests' of Africa.

The origin of fire-adapted lineages is a long-standing question in ecology. Although phylogeny can provide a significant contribution to the ongoing debate, its use has been precluded by the lack of comprehensive DNA data. Here, we focus on the 'underground trees' (=geoxyles) of southern Africa, one of the most distinctive growth forms characteristic of fire-prone savannas. We placed geoxyles w...

Multiple routes underground? Frost alone cannot explain the evolution of underground trees.

Finckh et al. (2016; this issue of New Phytologist, pp. 904–909) query our inferences drawn from a recent study (Maurin et al., 2014) on the evolutionary origins of the geoxylic suffrutex life form in southern Africa. Geoxylic suffrutices, or more informally ‘underground trees’ represent a distinct growth form characterized by a long-lived woody xylopodia underground with often short lived aeri...

Osler came to Boston.

Characteristics of Almond Selections in Relation to Late Frost Spring

Almond is one of the most important nut crops in Iran. Due to the suitable climatic conditions, Iran is one of the most important growing centers for wild and domesticated species of almond in world. Native genotypes typically are early flowering, due to late spring frost, often; they have been damaged. So frost damage to the flowers and early developing fruits is one of the most limiting facto...

Efficient and Dynamic Response to Fire

Most first-person shooter game AI's are poor at quickly getting out of lines of fire. AI agents that pass up obvious opportunities to hide or take cover can ruin a game's immersiveness. We will present the sensor grid algorithm that can be used to address this problem, and has been implemented on top of America's Army. The algorithm performs a focused run-time search in the immediate vicinity o...