introduction selection of the clear and transparent index for the precipitation using long-term homogeneous data is an important point for the researchers. several investigations have led to different indices for heavy rainfall. in some cases the specific amount of precipitation was used for heavy rainfall (rahimzadeh, 2005; masoodian, 2008; kamiguchi et al., 2006), e.g. alijani (2002) has sugg...

Recently many studies on evolutionary algorithms using real encoding have been done. They include ant colony optimization (Socha & Dorigo, 2008), artificial bee colony algorithm (Akay & Karaboga, 2010; Kang et al., 2011), evolution strategies (ES) (Beyer, 2001), differential evolution (Das & Suganthan, 2011; Dasgupta et al., 2009; Kukkonen & Lampinen, 2004; 2005; Mezura-Montes et al., 2010; Nom...

1767 NOVEMBER 2007 AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY | R ecent literature has been refocusing on the association between tropical North Atlantic Ocean sea surface temperature (SST) and Atlantic hurricane activity. Emanuel (2005) demonstrated this relationship using a power dissipation index (PDI), which depends on storm intensity and the lifetime of each storm over each hurricane season. Emanuel’...

INTRODUCTION The cerebral cortex, the site of higher brain function, has undergone dramatic expansion during mammalian, and notably primate, evolution (Abdel-Mannan et al., 2008; Caviness et al., 1995; Molnar et al., 2006; Rakic, 1995; Rakic, 2007). The concomitant increase in neuron number is, in essence, due to an increase in neural progenitors that undergo neurogenic divisions (Götz and Hutt...

plexity. This conclusion is conceptually similar to our own, and it little alters the broader impacts of our published findings; still, the general relevance of the issues warrants a response. In their reanalysis, Gutierrez-Ibanez et al. [2016] perform a ‘residual analysis’, which regresses body weight on brain weight with phylogenetic generalized least squares (PGLS) to obtain size-corrected r...

Although it is well established that exercise training conditions the vasculature (Joyner and Green, 2009), the status of arterial function in long-term trained subjects (i.e., athletes, ATH) has been recently disputed (Green, 2013; Montero et al., 2013). The controversy arose as to whether vasodilator function was enhanced in ATH compared with untrained healthy peers (Green et al., 2013). This...

Liquid crystal (LC) based photonic devices are important in light modulated applications including amplitude modulation and phase modulation. [Yang et al. (2006)] The anisotropic properties of LC result in employing two polarizers in most of LC devices. The optical efficiency (~3%) and the viewing angle are limited. Therefore, it is highly desirable to develop polarizer-free LC devices. [Yang e...

Cardiovascular event and infection are the first and second leading causes of death in the peritoneal dialysis (PD) populations (Parfrey and Foley, 1999; Go et al., 2004; Schiffrin et al., 2007; USRDS, 2008); both events are closely related. PD-related peritonitis is the crucial infection in PD patients (Aslam et al., 2006; Bender et al., 2006). Peritoneal toxin should be absorbed to the system...

To make food resources accessible, provide supplemental nutrition and fend off parasites, animals, including humans, often rely on symbiotic microorganisms (Dethlefsen et al. 2007; Rosenberg et al. 2007; Klepzig et al. 2009). In contrast, many microbes, such as filamentous fungi or bacteria, render food sources unpalatable to animals (Janzen 1977; Burkepile et al. 2006; Rozen et al. 2008). Inse...