One consequence of climate change is the alteration of global water fluxes, both in amount and seasonality. As a result, the seasonal difference between dry- (p < 100 mm/month) and wet-season (p > 100 mm/month) precipitation (p) has increased over land during recent decades (1980-2005). However, our analysis expanding to a 60-year period (1950-2009) showed the opposite trend. This is, dry-seaso...

Studies of assemblages of insects that have largely agonistic relationships with plants are rare compared to those that study mutualistic relationships between plants and animals. Flowers have evolved multiple defense mechanisms to protect against nectar-thieving ants, which may decrease plant reproductive success. We evaluated season-specific patterns of biodiversity as well as trophic and tem...

The title compound, C(22)H(28)O(4), is composed of a central octa-decane ring and two spiro-[bicyclo-[2.2.1]hept[2]ene-7,2'-[1,3]dioxolane] units. This polycycle has pseudo twofold symmetry and the central cyclo-octane ring has a distorted boat configuration.

The story of the widow’s oˆering as found in Mark 12:41–44 has long provided the Church with an example of humble devotion to the Lord. Further, it speaks to the people of God about the true nature of giving. Calvin considered this account as providing “a highly useful doctrine, that whatever men oˆer to God ought to be estimated not by its apparent value, but only by the feeling of the heart, ...

We examined lexical choice and variability in referring expressions during direction-giving to pedestrians. The Walking Around Corpus comprises an experimentally parameterized collection of spontaneous spoken dialogues produced by 36 pairs of people communicating by mobile telephone; it provides both a testbed for lexical entrainment “in the wild” as well as a resource for pedestrian navigation...

Through the past 60 years, forests, now of various age classes, have been established in the southern part of the Korean Peninsula through nationwide efforts to reestablish forests since the Korean War (1950-53), during which more than 65% of the nation's forest was destroyed. Careful evaluation of long-term changes in vegetation growth after reforestation is one of the essential steps to ensur...

Southern China hosts coral communities in marginal environments that are characterized by low linear extension rates, low coral cover and/or no reef formation, thus providing natural laboratories to study coral communities with below average growth rates. Here we compare the annual linear extension rates over 10 years (range 1.2 to 11.4 mm yr-1) of six Porites sp. coral cores collected from Hon...

Fire season precipitation trends were investigated using daily rainfall data obtained from seventy-six Remote Automated Weather Stations (RAWS) across Idaho and Montana for the period 1982 to 2006. Missing and erroneous values from each station were corrected with gridded data from the North American Regional Reanalysis (NARR), creating temporally consistent, comparable records. Monthly precipi...

Ten metals were analyzed in samples collected in three seasons (the dry season, the early rainy season, and the late rainy season) from two rivers in China. No observed toxic effect concentrations were used to estimate the risks. The possible sources of the metals in each season, and the dominant source(s) at each site, were assessed using principal components analysis. The metal concentrations...