Bird surveys are among the most widely used biodiversity inventories and serve as the basis for an increasing proportion of pure and applied ecological research. It is rarely possible to conduct exhaustive censuses of all individuals present at a particular site, so stopping rules are routinely used to determine when sampling should finish. Most bird survey methods use (implicit) effort-based s...

Macroalgae are considered as primary producers in ecosystem food chain. This study investigated spatial and temporal variation of three species of macroalgae namely, Laurencia caspica (red macroalga) Enteromorpha intestinalis and Cladophora glomerata (green macroalgae) on the hard substrates of the southern Caspian Sea coasts and their relation with environmental factors. Seasonal sampling pref...

The correlations between sampling sites situated in the close vicinity of copper smelter (Bor, Serbia) based on heavy metal (Pb, Cu, Zn) content in plant parts and soil of acacia (Robinia pseudoacacia L.) were determined. Very strong correlations (R>0.9) were observed between the sites Town park and Hospital in the urban-industiral zone due to high air pollution in this sampling area. The perfo...

For many problems it is necessary to draw samples from some distribution D on a typically large set V . In order to do so, one often considers a Markov chain on V whose limiting distribution is D. The efficiency of the sampling algorithm requires the Markov chain to converge quickly. Two famous examples where this approach have been applied successfully are approximation algorithms for the perm...

x " I've never touched the hard stuff, only smoked grass a few times with the boys to be polite, and that's all, though ten is the age when the big guys come around teaching you all sorts to things. But happiness doesn't mean much to me, I still think life is better. Happiness is a mean son of a bitch and needs to be put in his place. Him and me aren't on the same team, and I'm cutting him dead...

As urbanization has increased, so has degradation of urban streams. Urban water quality monitoring has focused on storm runoff sampling, but in arid climates, dry-weather runoff is a significant contributor of pollutants to aquatic systems. The majority of dry-weather runoff studies sample a small window of the entire dry-season. For this study constituent concentrations were compared using two...

A strategy for sampling soil from intact monolith lysimeters was established based on measurements of spatial heterogeneity within the lysimeter area. This was part of an ongoing study to determine relationships between soil microbial diversity and nutrient loss by leaching. The sampling protocol had to allow for collection of soil on a regular basis (as opposed to destructive sampling) and ens...

the predatory mites of suborder prostigmata are important natural enemies of spider mites. in this study abundance and biodiversity of predatory mites of super families of raphignathoidea, bdelloidea and erythraeoidea in pomefruit orchards of mashhad) educational orchard of agricultural college of ferdowsi unuversity of mashhad, agricultural research centre of torogh and laeen, torghabe and sha...

The interaction between interleukin-6 (IL-6) and IL-6 receptor (IL-6R) is the initial and most specific step in the IL-6 signaling pathway. Understanding its mechanism at the amino acid level is the basis for developing small IL-6-inhibiting molecules. We studied the human IL-6 (hIL-6)/hIL-6R binding interface by a combination of molecular modelling and site-directed mutagenesis. Our model sugg...

A study was conducted to compare nutrient flows determined by a reticular sampling technique with those made by sampling digesta from the omasal canal. Six lactating dairy cows fitted with ruminal cannulas were used in a design with a 3 x 2 factorial arrangement of treatments and 4 periods. Treatments were 3 grass silages differing mainly in neutral detergent fiber (NDF) concentrations: 412, 53...