The enhanced cumulus convection in tropical disturbances acts in two opposing ways. In one sense the condensation heat from the cumulus acts to warm the inner portions of the disturbance and induce vertical shear of the horizontal wind through the thermal wind relationship. In the opposite sense the cumulus also act to suppress vertical wind shear by transfer of horizontal momentum within their...

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Since the founding of PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases more than six years ago, I have written about the interface between disease and geopolitics. The neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) are the world’s most common infections of people living in poverty [1]. Where they are widespread in affected communities and nations, NTDs can be highly destabilizing and ultimately may promote conflict and af...

1. A review of the literature shows that in nearly all cases tropical rain forest fragmentation has led to a local loss of species. Isolated fragments suffer eductions in species richness with time after excision from continuous forest, and small fragments often have fewer species recorded for the same effort of observation than large fragments orareas of continuous forest. 2. Birds have been t...

The concept of a National Forest Programme (NFP) is not new. It was first popularised in the 1980s when the Food and Agriculture Organisation, along with the World Bank, United Nations Development Programme and World Resources Institute, launched the Tropical Forests Action Programme (TFAP). There were five action programmes within the TFAP: forestry in land use; forest-based industrial develop...

The issue of the relationship between the central mean sealevel pressure (Pc) and maximum mean near-surface wind* (the wind-pressure relationship, hereafter WPR) in a tropical cyclone (TC) has been the subject of ongoing debate for many decades and a number of relationships have been developed during this period. This is demonstrated by the fact that the three Australian Tropical Cyclone Warnin...

[1] This study addressed the diurnal cycle of rainfall during the summer monsoon season (May to September) around the Indochina peninsula, with a focus on the diurnal cycle’s relationship to terrain. The investigation used 10 year (1998–2007) Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission Precipitation Radar (TRMM‐PR) observations. Results revealed that the diurnal variations in rainfall over the Indochin...

We find a relation between mixed volumes of several polytopes and the convex hull of their union, deducing it from the following fact: the mixed volume of a collection of polytopes only depends on the product of their support functions (rather than on the individual support functions). For integer polytopes, this dependence is a certain specialization of the isomorphism between two well-known c...

BACKGROUND The fate of tropical forests is a global concern, yet many far-reaching decisions affecting forest resources are made locally. We explore allocation of logging rights using a case study from Loreto, Peruvian Amazonia, where millions of hectares of tropical rainforest were offered for concession in a competitive tendering process that addressed issues related to locality. METHODOLOG...