BACKGROUND We investigated changes in the spatial distribution of schistosomiasis in Mali following a decade of donor-funded control and a further 12 years without control. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS National pre-intervention cross-sectional schistosomiasis surveys were conducted in Mali in 1984-1989 (in communities) and again in 2004-2006 (in schools). Bayesian geostatistical models were...

Nucleation from a boundary is experimentally and numerically studied in a one-dimensional array in two excitable media consisting of Chua's circuits and the Oregonator model, respectively. Forcing from a boundary with a pulse of constant amplitude and infinite duration gives rise to a periodic wave train propagating through the array. As the amplitude of the pulse increases, wave period evolves...

Phenology of vegetation is a sensitive and valuable indicator of the dynamic responses of terrestrial ecosystems to climate change. Therefore, to better understand and predict ecosystems dynamics, it is important to reduce uncertainties in detecting phenological changes. Here, changes in phenology over the past several decades across the northern high-latitude region (≥60N) were examined by cal...

[1] Ground-based aerosol optical depth (AOD) climatologies at three high-altitude sites in Switzerland (Jungfraujoch and Davos) and Southern Germany (Hohenpeissenberg) are updated and re-calibrated for the period 1995–2010. In addition, AOD time series are augmented with previously unreported data, and are homogenized for the first time. Trend analysis revealed weak AOD trends (l = 500 nm) at J...

Much research has suggested that facial identification has some characteristics of automaticity, in that it is rapid, nonconscious, and mandatory. However, little research has tested whether it can occur even if attention is already devoted to the demanding central processes of another task. In the present study, we addressed this type of automaticity using the psychological refractory period p...

For d ≥ 2, we construct a doubling measure ν on Rd and a rectifiable curve Γ such that ν(Γ) > 0.

Two psychological refractory period (PRP) experiments were conducted to examine overlapping processing in younger and older adults. A shape discrimination task (triangle or rectangle) for Task 1 (T1) and a lexical-decision task (word or nonword) for Task 2 (T2) were used. PRP effects, response time for T2 increasing as stimulus onset synchrony (SOA) decreased, were obtained for both age groups....