Plasmonic metamaterials are composite, artificial materials, consisting of metallic resonant building blocks designed with state-of-the-art configurations. Many exotic phenomena not occurring in nature such as negative refraction (Burgos et al., 2010; Dolling et al., 2006; Lezec et al., 2007; Liu et al., 2008; Pendry, 2000; Shalaev, 2007; Shelby et al., 2001; Smith et al., 2000; Valentine et al...

Prosthesis-patient mismatch (PPM) was first described over 30 years ago (Rahimtoola, 1978) for aortic valve replacement: when the in vivo effective orifice area (EOA) of the prosthetic valve is less than that of the native, non-diseased, human valve. Extensive documentation on the role of PPM after aortic valve replacement (AVR) particularly addresses left ventricular mass regression and patien...

Drought-induced forest mortality is emerging as a widespread phenomenon with potentially large 12 implications for forest function and dynamics (Allen et al., 2010; Anderegg et al., 2012; Martínez13 Vilalta et al., 2012). Although the physiological mechanisms underlying tree mortality are still not 14 completely understood, there is agreement that they involve the storage and transport systems ...

Received 6 January 2011 Accepted 14 January 2011 One of the most significant consequences of climate warming is the likely change in streamflow as a result of warming air temperatures. Hydrologists have responded to the challenge of understanding these effects. Many recent studies quantify historical trends in streamflow and usually attribute these trends to climate warming, via altered evapotr...

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abstract solar radiation (rs) has many applications in most sciences such as agriculture and irrigation however, its measurement has been done in few weather stations of iran. therefore, estimation methods were used. in this study, weather data of rasht station, from 2004 to 2006 were employed for calibration of some equations, and weather data of years 2007 and 2008 were used for evaluating th...

Currently, adverse wireless and mobile networks including Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX), Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN), Third Generation (3G) mobile communications such as Universal Mobile Telecommunications Systems (UMTS), Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) and Bluetooth as shown in Fig. 1, have emerged and continuously developed to achieve high-speed...

In recent years we can observe an increasing number of publications describing different incidents of infections, where species of Corynebacterium are isolated as the etiological factor of infection (Anderson et al., 2008; Campanile et al., 2009; Chiner et al., 1999; Dela et al., 2008; Fernandez-Roblas et al., 2009; Funke et al., 1997a; Funke et al., 1997b; Lagrou et al., 1998; Otsuka et al., 2...

Pneumocystis pneumonia is considered one of the most serious fungal respiratory infections in immunocompromised patients and animals. Molecular comparisons of various gene sequences clearly demonstrated that the single name P. carinii corresponds in fact to a complex group of eukaryotic organisms, which should be assigned to the kingdom Fungi (Edman et al., 1988; Stringer, 1996; AliouatDenis et...

Mangroves forests can truly be considered as evolutionary hotspots where terrestrial species have re-adapted to marine life, and marine species have undergone the transition to terrestrial species. In fact, mangroves are salt tolerant trees which evolved from rainforest trees over 50 million years ago (Duke 1995; Ellison et al. 1999), unique in their adaptation to the distinct environmental req...