One of the most famous methods to predict the stiffness of short fiber composites is micromechanical modeling. In this study, a Representative Volume Element (RVE) of a beech wood flour natural composite has been designed and the orientation averaging approach has been utilized to predict its stiffness tensor. The novelty of this work is in finding the proper fiber orientation distribution func...

We introduce in this paper a new interacting particle system intended to model an example of ecological succession involving two species: Pteridium aquilinum L. commonly called bracken and Fagus sylvatica L. or european beech. The species both compete over vacant sites, assimilated to windfall, according to fundamentally different evolutionary strategies. Our main objective is to exhibit phase ...

Methanol and other VOC fluxes from a Danish beech forest during springtime G. W. Schade, S. J. Solomon, E. Dellwik, K. Pilegaard, and A. Ladstätter-Weissenmayer Dept. Atmos. Sci., Texas A&M Univ., 3150 TAMU, College Station, TX 77843, USA IUP, University of Bremen, Otto-Hahn-Allee 1, 28359 Bremen, Germany Biosystems Department, Risø National Laboratory for Sustainable Energy, Technical Universi...

Facilitative or positive interactions are ubiquitous in nature and play a fundamental role in the configuration of ecological communities. In particular, habitat modification and niche construction, in which one organism locally modifies abiotic conditions and favours other organisms by buffering the effects of adverse environmental factors, are among the most relevant facilitative interactions...

BACKGROUND There are varying degrees of compatibility between malaria parasite-mosquito species, and understanding this compatibility may be crucial for developing effective transmission-blocking vaccines. This study investigates the compatibility of different biological forms of a malaria vector, Anopheles stephensi, to Plasmodium berghei ANKA strain. METHODS Several biologically different a...

Eukaryotic organisms play essential roles in the biology and fertility of soils. For example the micro and mesofauna contribute to the fragmentation and homogenization of plant organic matter, while its hydrolysis is primarily performed by the fungi. To get a global picture of the activities carried out by soil eukaryotes we sequenced 2×10,000 cDNAs synthesized from polyadenylated mRNA directly...

This study investigated the influence of climate on the carbon isotopic composition (sigma13C) and oxygen isotopic enrichment (delta18O) above the source water of different organic matter pools in European beech. In July and September 2002, sigma13C and delta18O were determined in phloem carbohydrates and in bulk foliage of adult beech trees along a transect from central Germany to southern Fra...