On January 1, 2006, the Medicare program began offering prescription drug coverage (Medicare Part D) to over 42 million Medicare beneficiaries. This policy brief provides a first snapshot of enrollment in rural and urban areas across the United States and outlines the early findings from an analysis of plans available to rural persons under Medicare's Part D program. The data in this brief will...

Mowing is commonly implemented to Artemisia tridentata ssp. wyomingensis (Beetle & A. Young) S.L. Welsh (Wyoming big sagebrush) plant communities to improve wildlife habitat, increase forage production for livestock, and create fuel breaks for fire suppression. However, information detailing the influence of mowing on winter habitat for wildlife is lacking. This information is crucial because m...

Forest fragmentation threatens the sustainability of forest communities in the eastern United States. Forest communities exhibiting either a low total area or low percentage of intact forest are subject to relatively higher risk of shifts in stand composition towards edge-adapted and invasive species. Such changes in stand composition could result in local extirpation of communities, homogeniza...

Incidence and severity of visible foliar ozone injury on cutleaf coneflower (Rudbeckia laciniata L.) and crown-beard (Verbesina occidentalis Walt.) were determined along selected trails at three locations in Great Smoky Mountains National Park during the summers of 2000 and 2001: Clingmans Dome, Cherokee Orchard Road and Purchase Knob. Cutleaf coneflower exhibited a greater amount of foliar inj...

In managed landscapes, conservation planning requires effective methods to identify high-biodiversity areas. The objective of this study was to evaluate the potential of airborne laser scanning (ALS) and forest estimates derived from satellite images extracted at two spatial scales for predicting the stand-scale abundance and species richness of birds and beetles in a managed boreal forest land...

Uncertainties remain in the potential of forest plantations to sequestrate carbon (C). We synthesized 86 experimental studies with paired-site design, using a meta-analysis approach, to quantify the differences in ecosystem C pools between plantations and their corresponding adjacent primary and secondary forests (natural forests). Totaled ecosystem C stock in plant and soil pools was 284 Mg C ...

introduction atrial standstill is a rare condition, characterized by absence of atrial electrical and mechanical activity evident in surface electrocardiography echocardiography, or fluoroscopy, which is associated with unresponsiveness of atria to maximal output electrical stimulation. this condition can be present with thromboembolic complication, low cardiac output, and sometimes palpitation...

stand establishment in crusting soil is one of the main concerns in the production of crops with delicate seedlings such as cotton, onions and rape seed. crust breaking, maintaining soil moisture and adding chemical and organic amendments to soil are different methods to weaken soil strength and allow the shoots to emerge. these methods are not always successful because they depend on factors s...

Balance is essential to several activities of daily life, from the capacity stand independently execution complex sport movements. The extent which balance can be improved has led researchers consider whether underlying features a general ability exists, and they used predict performance on future tasks. Adjacent this investigation debate between theorists who support motor (GMA) those advocate...

The risk of tick-borne disease in humans depends on the exposure to pathogen-infected ticks, which turn is driven by local tick population densities, pathogen prevalence and human activity. Variation densities between green spaces differing habitat characteristics, location geography has been well documented. In contrast, variation within spaces, although vital for management prevention risk, r...